Meet our Board

Dr Brian Lindsay, Board Chair

Ms Elizabeth Tydd, Board Deputy Chair

The Hon. Justice John Sackar

Justice Sackar has a deep interest in matters of cultural heritage and historical significance. Last year he published, to international acclaim, a biography of Lord Devlin. He has also been, since 2019, President of the Arts Law Centre of Australia and has sat on a wide variety of committees of the Supreme Court of New South Wales and also in relation to Defamation Law reform.

Ms Amy Beaumont, General Counsel at Port Authority of New South Wales

Executive in a highly regarded state owned corporation with extensive experience in risk management developed from the delivery and management of diverse legal services in Australia and internationally within corporate and NSW Government. 

Dr Naomi Parry Duncan

Naomi Parry Duncan is a social historian and heritage consultant. Her PhD was written from State Records in NSW and Tasmania and examined the experiences of the Stolen Generations and non-Indigenous children in government welfare systems. She was the NSW Historian on the Find & Connect web resource, working with stakeholders to improve access to both State Records and the archives of charities. She also worked on the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse and the Dictionary of Sydney and lectured in family history at the University of Tasmania. She is a Member of the Professional Historians Association of NSW/ACT, the History Council of NSW and the Australian Historical Association.

Dr Elizbeth McEntyre

Dr Elizabeth McEntyre is a Worimi and Wonnarua Woman Elder belonging to Lands and Waters spanning Port Stephens, the Great Myall Lakes, the Barrington Tops, and the Hunter Valley in NSW. Dr McEntyre is an accredited mental health social worker in disability and justice with a doctorate in social work and criminology. She is the Aboriginal Official Visitor of prisons state-wide with the NSW Inspector of Custodial Services, and a member of the NSW Mental Health Review Tribunal conducting civil and forensic hearings. In addition to this work, Elizabeth is a Board Member of Mindaribba Local Aboriginal Land Council (covering Maitland and Lower Hunter Valley) and Hunter Local Land Services (covering Lower and Upper Hunter Valleys, Mid North Coast, Lake Macquarie, Newcastle areas)and a Board Director of Indigenous Allied Health Australia and Life Without Barriers.

Dr McEntyre is an appointed member of the NSW Aboriginal Fishing Trust Expenditure Committee, NSW National Parks and Wildlife Hunter Central Coast Regional Advisory Committee, and Port Stephens – Great Lakes Marine Park Advisory Committee. She is a member of the Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency Community Advisory Council and Culturally Safe Notifications Working Group, the Aged Care Standards Clinical Expert Working Group for the Australian Commission on Safety and Quality in Health Care, and the Department of Health and Aged Care Quality Aged Care Consumer Reference Group.

As an Aboriginal-Led research consultant, Elizabeth advises several professional associations, service providers, Universities and consultative groups including the Royal Australian and New Zealand College of Psychiatrists (RANZCP), Greening Australia, University of Sydney, and University of NSW.

Dr John Vallance FAHA, Museums of History NSW interim CEO

In 2022, changes to the State Records Act 1998 were made, which created a State Records Authority NSW Board position to be filled by the Museums of History NSW (MHNSW) CEO.

Work is currently underway to recruit the inaugural CEO of the Museums of History NSW. In the meantime, the State Librarian Dr John Vallance FAHA is supporting MHNSW as its interim CEO and member of the State Records Authority NSW Board

Dr John Vallance attended the University of Sydney where he studied classics and archaeology, followed by Cambridge where he completed his MA and PhD in classics at St John’s College. After graduating with starred First Class Honours in Classics, he became a Fellow of Gonville and Caius College, Cambridge and taught in the Faculty of Classics at Cambridge for eight years. He has published widely in the field of ancient Greek science and medicine. Between 1999 and 2017 he was Headmaster of Sydney Grammar School.

He has served as a member of the Library Council of NSW and as a Trustee of the State Library Foundation and is an Honorary Professor for the Public Understanding of the Humanities at the University of New South Wales.