Lois Tilbrook was the inaugural Macleay Miklouho Maclay Fellow in 1989. The Macleay Collection is the oldest natural history collection in Australia. Collected by Alexander Mcleay, the items are now part of the Chau Chak Wing Museum at the University of Sydney. Lois researched the collectors and their handwriting, and published her findings as The Macleay collectors: a working notebook (1992), Macleay Museum Occasional Series 2.