Dr Monika Schott is a writer, researcher and engagement specialist. Monika focuses her work on industrial communities and those that have been abjected, isolated and marginalised, to give voice to those that are not heard. She wrote the social history of Melbourne’s sewerage farm community in an avant-garde style of literary nonfiction, The faraway land of the house and two cows, and as a song, The faraway land. Her scholarship funded research in sewerage ghost towns in Australia and Europe gave new understandings on how these communities flourish in their abject margins and what happens once they disband. Monika was shortlisted in the Ada Cambridge Writing Prize, has several short stories published in anthologies and presents regularly at international forums.
Monika is being funded to undertake research to uncover the history, personalities and science of the State Research Farm in Melbourne, Australia, in collaboration with the Wyndham Community Cultural Foundation. The past industrial site is of state heritage significance for scientific research and advancement of agricultural practices in Australia, and illustrates a change from European agricultural practices to practices specific to Australia's climate and conditions.