Author: Alexandra Dellios

Alexandra Dellios is a cultural, oral and public historian in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. Her research considers the public and oral history of migrant and refugee communities in Australia. She has published on child migration, popular representations of multiculturalism, immigration centres and hostels, and public history practices and cultural heritage management in Australia. Her book Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre was released with Melbourne University Publishing in 2017. She is national delegate for Oral History NSW, a founding member of the Australian Migration History Network, and ACT Representative for the Australian Women’s History Network. She was awarded her PhD in History at the University of Melbourne in March 2015. She remains engaged in oral history projects and teaching, community volunteering and heritage interpretation efforts.

Europeana Migration Collection and Australian infrastructure

Large, well-funded digital archives provide the means to facilitate not only the collection and preservation of migrant-related collections, but also their promotion and uptake by researchers and other members of the public. This requires a coordinated effort on the part of large institutions, like the National Library of Australia—and I would argue, given the topic is migration, it calls for transnational collaboration. Enter: Europeana Migration Collection, a new initiative as part of the Europeana digital archive.

Benalla and the Victorian Heritage Register: Expanding the Boundaries of Migrant Heritage

They are motivated by a desire to publicly remember the trials of their mothers, single working migrant women. Accordingly, many are also motivated by a sense of exclusion and injustice. However, not all the stories they voice are negative, although they do have the potential to challenge existing notions of post-war migrant ‘welcome’.