Shenachie Productions is committed to:

• recording histories in a way that helps to ensure the preservation of memories for future generations
• bringing history to life through digital storytelling and new technologies.

About Judy Hughes

Judy Hughes is a historian and journalist with expertise in the field of industrial relations through her background as a specialist industrial reporter for both Australian Associated Press and The Australian newspaper and managing communications for the national workplace relations tribunal.

While working for the Australian Industrial Relations Commission and its successor Fair Work Australia she helped establish the Sir Richard Kirby Archives, developed content for a number of exhibitions including the Commission’s Centenary Exhibition in 2004-05 (which toured nationally) and conducted 30 oral history interviews with retiring Commission members and prominent industrial identities.

In recent years Judy: completed a Masters research thesis on how print journalists coped with change in the decades following the introduction of computers; worked on a number of oral history projects, and presented papers at national and international oral history conferences.

She is a past president of Oral History Victoria, web manager of the Oral History Australia website,  a member of Professional Historians Australia and the Australian Society for the Study of Labour History and a PhD Candidate with La Trobe University. In her PhD, Judy is researching the significance of the 1980 national journalists strike and related issues of activism and identity. This research involves a significant number of whole-of-life oral history interviews.

• See a showcase of her work.

What’s a Shenachie?

The term ‘shenachie’ is used in Celtic culture to describe a professional recorder and reciter of family history, genealogy and traditions. In Scotland, for example, a shenachie was attached to the household of a clan chieftain or person of high rank.