Rachel Jackson

Photo: Cassia Davis © 2023
J. Paul Getty Trust.

Biography

Rachel Jackson is a heritage consultant with over two decades in practice; conserving significant heritage places in Australia including the Australian War Memorial, Old Parliament House, Port Arthur Historic Site, Kingston and Arthur’s Vale Historic Area in Norfolk Island, and historic buildings and sites on Christmas Island in the Indian Ocean Territories.

Rachel is also a co-founder of Canberra Modern, a heritage advocacy group that engages the community through tours and events to promote the appreciation for 20th-century modern architecture, landscape, and urban planning in the national capital.

Rachel is a Principal and Company Director of one of Australia’s leading heritage consultancies. She has a Masters in Heritage Conservation from the University of Sydney and a Bachelor of Design, in Interior Design from the University of Technology, Sydney.

Rachel is a Getty Scholar. Her scholarship undertaken at the Getty Conservation Institute, Los Angeles in 2023, involved a world heritage comparative analysis of 20th-century designed capital cities with Canberra, Australia’s national capital. As part of her Getty research term, Rachel had the opportunity to tour some of the most renowned modernist architectural works in the USA designed by influential architects such as Frank Lloyd Wright, Mies van der Rohe, John Lautner, Pierre Koenig, Rudolph Schindler, and Richard Neutra, as well as the iconic Ray and Charles Eames Case Study House.

Rachel is also an occasional lecturer at the University of Canberra in heritage conservation in the built environment, and archaeological illustration. She has also had a long-standing association with the University of Sydney’s Pella excavations in Jordan, where she is a dig illustrator; and on days off work, Rachel and Ben take day tours with the dig-volunteers, to other amazing archaeological sites near Pella. 

Rachel’s first tour was a month-long tour of the Silk Road in China in 1995, as tour manager with husband Ben Churcher. Her passion for travel has been unwavering since then.

Since 2017, Rachel has been designing and leading tours and events in Canberra, with the award-winning heritage advocacy group, Canberra Modern.