Elsewhereonline explores the world through travel, scholarship, education and the arts. It is also a data-bank of images and texts for travellers, scholars, writers, and artists. Maintained by Australians Studying Abroad in partnership with a group of Australian universities, and their international collaborators, to explore the idea of ‘place’ and particular places through a range of analytical and creative interactions with place-worlds.

For humans, a ‘place’ is not just the coordinates on a map. It is matrix of personal and collective cultural meanings and memories. We explore how humans are formed by places and place memories, the ways they make places, and the ways they use them.

Elsewhereonline has been developed with an Australian Research Council grant: ‘A Web-Based Humanities Image Database and Descriptive Catalogue for Academic, Industry and Community Application’.

In order to fulfil this diverse commitment to the investigation of ‘place’, elsewhereonline comprises a number of discrete but inter-related sections:

Explore: Is a search system that allows you to find text and images in this diverse and intricate site. It helps you in particular to explore the ‘Resources’ section of elsewhereonline (see below).

News: Keeps you up-to-date with the activities of the elsewhereonline community, the latest collaborative projects, and recent content added to our site.

Events: Notifies visitors to the site of important, conferences, seminars, workshops, lectures, performances and exhibitions, in universities and other institutions around the world.

Review: Is a creative review dedicated to the imaginative interactions of writers, artists, architects, musicians and ‘soundscapists’ with places and the meanings of ‘place’. It publishes high quality travel writing, theoretical and imaginative essays, and also presents a virtual gallery where photographers and visual artists in other media can exhibit their captured and created place-worlds.

Place: Is an international, interdisciplinary, peer-reviewed journal dedicated to the scholarly analysis of place from the point of view of such fields philosophy, human and cultural geography, archaeology, anthropology and all forms of spatial history, the history of art and architecture, urban studies, architecture and planning, and musicology. It explores the interrelatedness of different scholarly perspectives on place, and investigates the interrelatedness of the past with the present.

Tours: Australians Studying Abroad (ASA) presents educational tour programs for the general public as well as overseas credit courses run by Australian universities in partnership with ASA. This site grew from ASA’s interest in the interdisciplinary study of places and the past by travellers who interact with them.

Resources: Within and throughout the elsewhereonline framework sits a huge image-bank of photographs and reproductions of engravings in university and other visual collections. The site is designed to facilitate scholarly research, secondary and tertiary education, and also for use by educated travellers who wish to explore the places they visit. We catalogues these images, link them to texts and analytical information, and make them easily searchable through the explore section

Resources are grouped into three major sections:

Countries

Collections

Themes

Projects: Describes projects which analyse places, in particular those mounted by Australian and overseas universities. It gives special emphasis to international collaborative projects between universities and other organizations.

The Elsewhereonline Team.

Elsewhereonline has been created and is funded by Australians Studying Abroad to encourage collaboration between public sector institutions and a private educational tour company. In 2005-6, a team of humanities academic researchers received financial support to create an innovative research framework to catalogue and search visual images for the site, from an Australian Research Council Special Research Initiatives E-Research grant, “A Web-Based Humanities Image Database and Descriptive Catalogue for Academic, Industry and Community Application”, involving Dr Susan Broomhall (The University of Western Australia), Associate Professor Richard Pennell (University of Melbourne), Dr Bronwyn Stocks (Monash University), and Christopher Wood (Australians Studying Abroad).

Elsewhereonline also provides resources for the Australian Research Council-funded Network for Early European Research (NEER).  A consultative board of senior academics, artists and writers monitors Elsewhereonline’s development and essays presented for inclusion within the peer-reviewed Place journal are subjected to a rigorous double blind refereeing process.

Who contributes to Elsewhereonline?

If you are a scholar, or a travel writer, journalist, photographer, musicologist or a committed traveller you can contribute to a relevant section of elsewhereonline. Elsewhereonline is visited by large numbers of people throughout the world. It therefore provides excellent exposure for your analytical and/or creative work. You can present a written profile and photograph of yourself for the profile section that accompanies your publication. If you would like to contribute to ElsewherOnline please contact Christopher Wood (chris@asatours.com.au)

Who visits Elsewhereonline?

You may be a traveller who wishes to research thoroughly the place you are visiting, a scholar or student reading a scholarly article in the refereed journal Place or using Elsewhereonline’s considerable image-bank in your studies. You may be a student participating in a course which uses the site, a critic wishing to review an exhibition in Review, or member of the general public visiting an Elsewhereonline photographic exhibition.

How can I examine the coding used to create this site?

This site uses Plone open-source products, available through GPLU licence. Elsewhereonline will assist institutions interested in creating their own Plone sites.

For access to the open source code contact greysmith@greytonedesigns.com.au for details