Dr Julie Collins is an architectural historian, curator and active researcher. Her interests range from the architectural history of therapeutic places to the study of architectural drawing collections and heritage.
At the Architecture Museum she is Director of an invaluable research collection of 400,000 items of architectural design documentation, drawings, photographs, artefacts and ephemera.  As well as managing this physical collection, Dr Collins researches and writes biographies, catalogues, guides to sources and website content, while curating exhibitions and presenting public lectures and outreach events.
Dr Collins was named '2024 South Australian Historian of the Year' by the History Council of South Australia with a citation which reads: 'The 2024 Historian of the Year has established a national profile as an authority on South Australian architecture, architectural collections and the history of therapeutic places. She has contributed new knowledge to the field, not only in Australia, but increasingly on an international level. Her expertise is evident through numerous authored and co-authored publications, and she is highly regarded by her peers and history organisations. Her community engagement has strengthened the profile of South Australia’s architectural history and is building public knowledge that will influence the heritage preservation of these places. Dr Julie Collins is a respected, active and engaging historian of South Australia’s designed environment, architecture, and its architects, both through her work as Curator of the University of South Australia’s Architecture Museum, but also through her research, raising awareness of history and bringing it to new audiences.'
Dr Collins has written or co-written several books including "The Architecture and Landscape of Health: A Historical Perspective on Therapeutic Places 1790-1940" published in 2020 by Routledge, "Not for ourselves alone: The South Australian Home Builders’ Club, 1945- 1965" (2013), and "The Architects Board of South Australia: A History 1939-2009" (2010). She has contributed many book chapters to edited volumes including 'A powerful, creative history: the reticence of women architects to donate professional records to archival repositories' in the international compendium "Women in Architecture" (Routledge 2018), 'An Architectural Ornament', in "Adelaide’s Jubilee International Exhibition 1887-1888" (2016), and 'South Australian Architecture' in "The Cambridge Encyclopedia of Australian Architecture" (Cambridge University Press, 2012).
Her research projects have included those on the history of Department Stores in South Australia, the Adelaide Jubilee International Exhibition building of 1887, work on the influence of climate on the colonial architecture of Adelaide, the history of psychiatric asylum landscapes, and early tuberculosis sanatoria in Australia. She has also researched the South Australian Home Builders' Club 1945-1965, the Small Homes Service of South Australia and the modern postwar house, the emergence of tall buildings in Adelaide 1912-1939, and women in the architectural profession 1910-1960. Dr Collins' PhD thesis was titled ‘Ways of Living: The expression of the home/work relationship in Australian architectural design of the late twentieth century’ (2003).
Among Dr Collins’ many sole or co-authored journal articles are "Designing the Sleepout in South Australia", Journal of the HIstorical Society of South Australia (2022), "Consumption Crusade", Planning Perspectives (2021), “A Visual Literacy Approach to Born-Digital Design Records", American Archivist (2021), “Lost landscapes of healing: the decline of therapeutic mental health landscapes”, Landscape Research, (2016), “Climate discourse and the architectural style debates surrounding Adelaide’s nineteenth century public buildings”, History Australia (2015), and “Life in the Open Air: Place as a Therapeutic and Preventative Instrument in Australia's Early Open-Air Tuberculosis Sanatoria”, Fabrications: Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand, (2012).
Her current research builds on previous work into the cultural significance of architectural records, retail architecture of the modern period, and Modernism in South Australia. Dr Collins is also an author and editor of the 'Architects of South Australia' database which documents the lives and works of a selection of the state's architects from colonial times to the present day.