for cohorts who were denied the opportunity to openly express othernesss (beyond trivial renditions of ethnicity), it’s not unexpected that their ‘internal worlds’, rather than clearly identified public spaces, should be richer and unarchived.
Conference Report: Oral History Australia 2017
The Oral History Australia Conference was held last week in sunny Sydney (13-16 September). I was torn between wanting to scurry…
Workshopping Migrant Heritage in Australia: Pilot Projects and New Directions
A number of things have become apparent to me over the last week. First: the institutional, government-funded interest in creating…
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’.
Making Migrant Heritage – What is it?
But what is ‘Making Migrant Heritage’? The rationale for the project grew out of a concern that too little scholarly attention had been paid to how ‘subaltern’ publics, including the ‘migrants’ who are the subject of many exhibitions and commemorations, actively create and publicise their own ‘heritage’.
Nobody’s Sons: Migrant Protest at Bonegilla
July 12 was another emotional night of history telling and listening. I was afforded the opportunity to speak at Museo…
Greek experiences of migrant reception centres – community networks
On Thursday night I had the honour of presenting a paper in front of an engaged crowd at the Greek…
Histories of Controversy: Food and Migrant Resistance in Post-war Australia
Below is a short extract from my upcoming book Histories of Controversy: Bonegilla Migrant Centre (available for pre-order now). Each chapter addresses…
Conference report: Public History and Historians at the IFPH 2017
As someone who’s come to public history via memory studies and then oral history, perhaps it’s inevitable that I should…
Migrant Histories and Heritage Making 