Helen Ennis has worked extensively as an independent photography curator and writer. Since 2000 she has curated four major exhibitions: Mirror with a Memory: Photographic portraiture in Australia (National Portrait Gallery); Olive Cotton (Art Gallery of New South Wales); the two part exhibition In a New Light: Australian Photography 1850s-2000 (National Library of Australia, 2003 and 2004). Her publications include Olive Cotton Photographer and Intersections: Photography, history and the National Library of Australia. Her biography Margaret Michaelis: Love, loss and photography is to be published by the National Gallery of Australia in May 2005 to coincide with an exhibition on the same subject. Helen Ennis is a Senior Lecturer at the ANU School of Art and is currently working on a volume Photography and Australia for publication by Reaktion Press.

Helen Ennis will be chairing the panel session Language and the art museum and responding to Bob Ellis' keynote address The world within the word.