Researchers

Publications

• Damousi, Joy. "The Campaign for Japanese-Australian Children to enter Australia, 1957-1968. A History of Post-War Humanitarianism," Australian Journal of Politics and History 64, no. 2 (2018), pp. 211-26
• Damousi, Joy. "The Greek Civil War, Child Removal and Traumatic Pasts in Australia" in Mason, Robert (ed.,). Legacies of Violence: Rendering the Unspeakable Past in Modern Australia. Berghan Books, 2017
• Damousi, Joy. "Building "healthy happy family units": Aileen Fitzpatrick and reuniting children separated by the Greek Civil War with their families in Australia, 1949-1954," in The History of the Family 2017
• Damousi, Joy. ""This is against all the British traditions of fair play": Violence against Greeks on the Australian home-front during the First World War," in Walsh, Michael and Vankos, Andrekos (eds.,). Australia and the Great War: Identity, Memory and Mythology. Melbourne: Melbourne University Press, 2016, pp. 128-145
• Damousi, Joy. "Humanitarianism in the interwar years: How Australians responded to the child refugees of the Armenian genocide and the Greek-Turkish exchange," in History Australia 12, No.1, 2015, pp. 95-115
• Damousi, Joy. Memory and Migration in the Shadow of War: Australia's Greek Immigrants after World War II and the Greek Civil War. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press

Media

May 2018

Interview with Trevor Chappell, ABC Radio, Overnights with Trevor Chappell

When did Australia resort to conscription?

Conscription has been a contentious issue throughout our history - when was it first introduced and how was it used through two world wars and the Vietnam War? Trevor Chappell discussed with Joy Damousi, who is Professor of History at the University of Melbourne and Editor of 'The Conscription Conflict and the Great War'

November 2015

Growing up Greek in Australia

Professor Joy Damousi on the Pursuit website.

I am the child of Greek post-war immigrants. I grew up in the inner-Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy in the 1960s and early 70s.

May 2015

Through a child's eyes

Professor Joy Damousi talks about the 'Child Refugees and Australian Internationalism from 1920 to the present' project.

Mary Tomsic is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Associate researching the history of visual representations of child refugees. Her broad teaching and research interests are in cultural history in particular visual culture, film and history; historical representations in popular culture; Australian film culture as well as understandings of gender and sexuality. Her book Beyond the Silver Screen: A History of Women, Filmmaking and Film Culture in Australia 1920-1990 was be published in October 2017. Mary is a co-convenor of the Australian Women’s History Network and the Melbourne Feminist History Group.

Picturing Refugee Children

My project explores shifting understandings of child refugees and displaced children depicted in visual sources since 1920. I will examine a range of representations over several decades, including photographs, film, fundraising materials, picture story books, newsreel and television footage and children's art works. Through these visual representations, I will explore how child refugees have been characterised and the role of visual depictions in mobilising support or opposition to child refugees in Australia and around the world. In drawing together a wide array of visual depictions I hope to better understand the impact of visual culture in the stories and histories that are told about displaced children in the past and today.

Publications

• Tomsic, Mary. "'Happiness again’: photographing and narrating the arrival of Hungarian child refugees and their families 1956-1957," in The History of the Family, 2017
• Tomsic, Mary, "The politics of picture books: Stories of displaced children in 21st century Australia" in History Australia 2017
• Tomsic, Mary. Beyond the Silver Screen. A history of women, filmmaking and film culture in Australia, 1920-1990, Melbourne University Press, 2017
• Damousi, Joy, Rubenstein, Kim and Tomsic, Mary (eds.), Diversity in Leadership: Australian women, past and present, Canberra: ANU Press, 2014

Media

May 2018

Interview with Trevor Chappell, ABC Radio, Overnights with Trevor Chappell

Beyond the Silver Screen. Women in Film

Today women are demanding that they be taken equally and seriously in the film industry (witness the recent protest in Cannes and the #Metoo movement) But what has been the history - to what extent have women been able to tell their stories? Here's Trevor Chappell with Dr Mary Tomsic from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne – and author of ‘Beyond the Silver Screen - A History of Women, filmmaking and film culture in Australia 1920-1990'.

January 2018

Interview with Trevor Chappell, ABC Radio, Overnights with Trevor Chappell

The experiences of refugee children

Trevor Chappell discussed this with Dr Mary Tomsic who is part of a team looking into the child migrant experience. She is from the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts, University of Melbourne.

November 2017

Interview with Clare Bowditch, ABC Radio Afternoons (audio expired)

Dr Mary Tomsic speaks with Clare Bowditch about her recently published book, Beyond the Silver Screen. The interview begins at 1:05:27.

October 2017

Women 'Beyond the Silver Screen'

Dr Mary Tomsic talks with Fran Kelly on the ABC's RN breakfast program about how women, as early as the 1920s, have been making their mark in the world of film in Australia.

Speaking Beyond the Silver Screen with Dr Mary Tomsic

Dr Mary Tomsic discusses her book Beyond The Silver Screen; A history of women, filmmaking and film culture in Australia, 1920-1990 (Melbourne University Press, 2017) with Perth community radio station RTR FM.

June 2017

Learning form the Past. Working with WWII Refugees

Dr Mary Tomsic on the Pursuit website: "Since civil war erupted in Syria six years ago, millions of refugees have made the perilous journey, by land and sea, to Europe, to escape bloodshed and conflict. It’s been referred to by organisations like the United Nations as the “biggest refugee crisis since World War 2”.

February 2015

Gabrielle Murphy, "Writing history in pictures", The Age 5 February 2015

Dr Jordana Silverstein is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Associate, researching the history of Australian government policy towards child refugees from 1970 to the present. Her research has examined histories of modern Jewish identity, memory, sexuality and diasporism, and explored notions of belonging and racialisation, in Australia and the United States. She is the author of Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century (Berghahn Books, 2015hb, 2017pb) and co-editor of In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation (Vallentine Mitchell, 2016). Jordana is a co-convenor of the Australian Women's History Network and is on the Editorial Board of Australian Historical Studies, and in 2016 was on the judging panel of the non-fiction prize for the Victorian Premiers Literary Award.

A History of Australian Immigration Policy and Child Refugees: 1970 to the Present

This project investigates the ways that child refugees have been discussed and managed through Australian immigration policy since 1970. Starting with the notion that neither the child nor the refugee are natural categories, but rather are historically created and produced, and do particular work, this research will present a cultural history of the production of this category of person, by governments, politicians, policy makers, and the general public, to understand the moments when it becomes visible, and what it is used for. This research will examine the histories of particular instruments, ideas, and pieces of legislation - such as the Immigration (Guardianship of Children) Act 1946 - as well as the emotions which swirl around, and are produced by and through, this field of policy-making.

Publications

• Silverstein, Jordana. "'The beneficent and legal godfather': a history of the guardianship of unaccompanied immigrant and refugee children in Australia, 1946-1975," in The History of the Family, 2017
• Silverstein, Jordana. ""I Am Responsible": Histories of the Intersection of the Guardianship of Unaccompanied Child Refugees and the Australian Border," in Cultural Studies Review 22, No. 2, 2016, pp. 65-89
• Silverstein, Jordana. Anxious Histories: Narrating the Holocaust in Jewish Communities at the Beginning of the Twenty-First Century. New York: Berghahn Books, 2015
• Jilovsky, Esther, Silverstein, Jordana and Slucki, David (eds.,). In the Shadows of Memory: The Holocaust and the Third Generation. London: Vallentine Mitchell, 2015

Media

February 2016

What comes after #LetThemStay?

Jordy Silverstein and Max Kaiser on the Overland website 23 February 2016. The focus on children leads to a perpetuation of a discourse around asylum seekers that is ultimately damaging to longer-term aims of dismantling the border regime.

November 2015

How do modern Jewish communities narrate the Holocaust?

Jordana Silverstein on the ABC News website.

The Israeli Prime Minister's offended Palestinians and Jewish Holocaust survivors. He's left historians astonished, and in Israel inspired widespread mirth and hundreds of new internet memes.

Tackling difficult history lessons

Jordana Silverstein, RN Afternoons on the ABC Radio National website.

When it comes to educating young people about their history and the history of others, parents and teachers must work out how to interpret events in order to paint the most accurate picture of what occurred.

Dr Rachel Stevens received her PhD in immigration and refugee history at Monash University in 2011. During her Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship, Rachel conducted extensive archival research throughout Australia and in the United States (states of New York, Rhode Island, Minnesota and Ohio), Britain and Switzerland. Based in part on her doctoral research her first book, Immigration Policy from 1970 to the Present (Routledge) was published in 2016.

With Monash colleague Associate Professor Seamus O'Hanlon, Rachel has recently published two peer-reviewed articles:

• Rachel Stevens and Seamus O'Hanlon (2018), "Intimate Oral Histories: Intercultural Romantic Relationships in Postwar Australia," Australian Historical Studies Volume 49, Issue 3, pp. 359-377
• Seamus O'Hanlon and Rachel Stevens (2017), "A Nation of Immigrants or a Nation of Immigrant Cities? The Urban Context of Australian Multiculturalism, 1947-2011," in Australian Journal of Politics and History 63, No. 4, pp. 556-71

During the spring of 2018 Rachel was a research fellow at the National Library of Australia, conducting extensive research on her current project, Refugees, Relief and Revolution. Australians in the Bangladeshi Liberation War. In 2019, she will be co-editing a special issue of The Australian Journal of Politics and History with Professor Joy Damousi on the interdisciplinary theme Refugees: Past and Present.

Sarah Green's research and professional work focus on the experiences of people who lived through adverse circumstances in childhood. She is particularly interested in how children's lives are heard, understood and remembered in different contexts.

Her PhD research combines oral histories with artefacts, diaries and other records kept by children at the time of the war. Through these sources, Sarah draws attention to evidence of children's resilience and agency. She is also interested in how memories narrated by child survivors should be positioned and understood within the current political climate in Bosnia, where the lives and deaths of children have become a focal point for debate about war remembrance.

Publications

• Green, Sarah (2018), "'All Those Stories. All Those Stories.' How Do Bosnian Former Child Refugees Maintain Connections to Bosnia and Community Groups in Australia?" in Immigrants and Minorities 36, No. 2, pp. 161-177
• Green, Sarah (2016), "'I didn't see the footprints': children's monuments and contested memory in Bosnia and Herzegovina," in Exploring the Role of Transitional Justice in Rebuilding Trust in a Post-conflict Society, Sarajevo: International University of Sarajevo

Conference highlights

• "'I Was Just A Child': Exploring How the Lives of Children are Remembered, Commemorated and Forgotten", Why Remember? Memory and Forgetting in Times of War and its Aftermath, Hotel Europe, Sarajevo, 30 June - 2 July 2017
• Children as the faces of war: The experiences of Bosnian children in Australia, Children and War: Past and Present, University of Salzburg, 13-15 July 2016
• '"And I always remember ... there was ice cream in the freezer": the effects of contemporary political debate on the narrated personal histories of Bosnian child refugees in Australia', Horrible Histories? Children’s Lives in Historical Contexts, King's College London, 16-18 June 2016

Niro Kandasamy is a PhD candidate in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. She completed her undergraduate degree at the University of New South Wales in 2013 (Honours Class 1). Before commencing her PhD in 2015 under the supervision of Professor Joy Damousi and Dr Jordana Silverstein, she worked as a social researcher for Western Sydney Information and Research. She also worked as a social researcher for Anglicare Victoria from 2015-2017.

Throughout her PhD candidature, she has been presenting her research at conferences in Australia and overseas. She also has published articles in Medicine, Conflict and Survival, Forced Migration Studies, Australian Social Work, and a book chapter in Disability and Rurality: Identity, Gender and Belonging (Routledge, 2017). In 2016, she was awarded the Prue Torney Memorial Prize to undertake archival research in Sri Lanka. Her broad research interests include forced migrant histories, refugee resettlement and welfare service delivery. She is also currently working as a sessional tutor and research assistant.

Her PhD study explores the resettlement experiences of Sri Lankan Tamil forced migrants arriving in Australia during the late twentieth century. The study draws on oral history interviews and archival materials collected in Australia and Sri Lanka to present new insights into the everyday lives of Tamil children navigating new landscapes. The study reveals how key aspects in Tamil children’s lives such as education, religion and culture were connected to spaces and contexts around histories and ideas that shaped their past.

Publications

• Kandasamy, Niro (2018), "Unravelling Memories of Family Separation Among Sri Lankan Tamils Resettled in Australia, 1983-2000," in Immigrants and Minorities 36, No. 2, pp. 143-60
• Kandasamy, Niro (2017), "An unequal partnership: resettlement service providers in Australia," in Forced Migration Review 54, pp. 41-43

Anh Nguyen was a Vietnamese child refugee raised in Carrollton, Texas. She graduated with a Masters of Theological Studies from Harvard Divinity and Bachelors of Arts in English Literature from Bryn Mawr College. In 2002, she had a postgraduate fellowship from Harvard to conduct research interviews about the acculturation of Vietnamese in Australia. She then worked with Harvard School of Public Health on AIDS research and treatment in Nigeria, and became a bilingual legal aid advocate for Vietnamese immigrants in Boston. She currently works as a paralegal for Native Title Services Victoria and is pursuing her PhD on the oral history of Vietnamese Australian child refugees in Australia.

Towards a New Historical and Psychological Perspective of Acculturation and Success: Oral History of Vietnamese Australian Child Refugees as Adults

The research captures the history of Vietnamese Australian child migration, acculturation, and factors that that contributed to their success and challenges as adults. Based on the narratives of child refugees, unaccompanied minors, adoptees, and reverse migrants living and working in Vietnam, it examines what are the historical, cultural, psychological, family and self-generated narratives that have motivated and sustained them as adults? How has this contributed to their public, private, economic and social success in Australia? It also investigates the international policies and political ideologies from 1975 to 2000, how they impacted those experiences, and how they differ from our current perspective on refugees and asylum seekers.