Eventlist

Join Kon Karapanagiotidis as he discusses hidden histories of immigration and refuge to Australia from 1947 to the 1970s with historians Dr Alexandra Dellios, Dr Claire Higgins and Dr Jayne Persian. All proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the Asylum Seeker Resource Centre.

Dr Alexandra Dellios is a lecturer at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. She is the author of Histories of Controversies: Bonegilla Migrant Centre, revealing an alternative picture of the migrant centre's role as a place of containment, control, deprivation and political discontent. This book tells a more complex tale than a harmonious making of modern Australia to include stories of migrant resistance and their demands on a society and its systems.

Dr Claire Higgins is a Senior Research Associate at the Andrew and Renata Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law at UNSW. She is the author of Asylum by Boat: origins of Australia’s refugee policy.The book traces how the Fraser government handled the arrival of Vietnamese asylum seekers by boat, and reveals how turn-backs and detention were proposed - and rejected. This important book is driven by the question of how we moved from a humanitarian approach to policies of mandatory detention − including on remote islands − and boat turn-backs. Like now, the politicians of the time wanted to control entry. Unlike now, they also wanted to respect Australia’s obligations under international law.

Dr Jayne Persian is a Lecturer in History at the University of Southern Queensland. She is the author of Beautiful Balts: From Displaced Persons to New Australians. The book recounts the extraordinary story of Australia’s first large-scale settlement of non-Anglo-Celtic migrants, who transformed not only Australia’s immigration policy but the country itself. Jayne is also Co-Chief Investigator on a 2016-19 ARC Discovery Project: Displacement and Resettlement: Russian and Russian-speaking Jewish displaced persons arriving in Australia via the ‘China’ route in the wake of the Second World War.

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