Ann McCarthy was raised in New Zealand, and has a background in archival work at Archives New Zealand and also at the e-Scholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne, where she was a member of the team that worked on the archival records of Diane Elizabeth Barwick, anthropologist, historian and Indigenous rights supporter. Ann studied history and English at Victoria University of Wellington, and her Masters thesis, completed at the University of Melbourne with Patricia Grimshaw and Katherine Ellinghaus, was a postcolonial analysis of an early novel by a Native American woman – Cogewea, by Mourning Dove (Okanogan). Ann’s current PhD project, which is informed by the work of philosopher Agnes Heller, explores the emotional households of fictional characters, drawing on two 1940s Australian novels.