The Age of Inquiry A global mapping of institutional abuse inquiries

This project is funded by the Oak Foundation, via Child Rights International Network (CRIN). The grant is enabling the expansion of The Age of Inquiry resource, which in turn, aims to support advocacy and research into child safety and justice for victims and survivors of child sexual assault and other forms of institutional violence against children. We gratefully acknowledge support that CRIN and the Oak Foundation are providing.

The pilot phase of this project was funded by La Trobe University’s Transforming Human Societies Research Focus Area: “The Age of Inquiry: A genealogy of inquiries into historical abuse” (2016-2017). Various grants have subsequently partially supported the development and maintenance of this project, including two Australian Research Council (ARC) funded projects: 'Reclaiming Child Rights: Activism, Public Inquiries and Social Change' (DP220100376) and 'Childhood maltreatment and late modernity: public inquiries, social justice and education' (DE140100060). The project was also supported by the 2016 Research Excellence Award received by Professor Katie Wright from La Trobe University.

From the outset, The Age of Inquiry was envisaged as a collaborative enterprise, and the project has been considerably enriched by the generous contributions of numerous scholars. In addition to the core project team, the resource includes entries created by people with expertise on particular inquiries.

We extend our thanks and appreciation to experts who have contributed to the generation of data for this online resource. In particular, we thank Dr Fiona Davis (Australian Catholic University), Dr Joel Löw (Linköping University, Sweden), and Professor Ingunn Studsrød (University of Stavanger, Norway).

Associate Professor Gavan McCarthy, Dr Ailie Smith and Dr Antonina Lewis (The University of Melbourne) assisted with the conceptualisation of the resource and provided the technical expertise for the first version of The Age of Inquiry, which was powered by the Online Heritage Resource Manager (OHRM), a context-based resource discovery, access and management system developed by the eScholarship Research Centre (ESRC) at The University of Melbourne. We thank Sean Byrne for developing the software that is currently used.

The project has also benefited from collaborations and assistance at various stages. In particular we thank Sari Braithwaite (La Trobe University) for her insights, ideas and ongoing support. We also would like to acknowledge Dr Kathleen McPhillips (University of Newcastle) and Sidrah McCarthy (La Trobe University) for their contributions early in the project.

If you have a suggestion for an inquiry to be included, and/or would like to contribute by sharing details of an inquiry, please contact us

We thank the La Trobe University Library for hosting this site and for providing technical support and assistance.

The Age of Inquiry homepage was designed by Molly Seeary.

We thank the following organisations for permission to use images on this site: SAVIA, CLAN, Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse, Getty, National Archives of Australia, State Library of Victoria, State Library of NSW, State Archives and Records NSW.