Project Team and Advisory Board

Professor Rachel Ankeny 

Professor Rachel Ankeny is an interdisciplinary scholar with several lines of research, including migration history. She is particularly interested in food habits and medical care among migrants who went through the hostels in South Australia and elsewhere. She is the team leader for the Hostel Stories project at the University, the chief investigator on the Australian Research Council Linkage Project grant for the project, and supervisor of the postgraduate students and interns involved in the project.

Dr Karen Agutter

Dr Karen Agutter is an historian with a focus on the history of migration, particularly issues of migrant identity and receiving society reception. She obtained her first PhD, a comparative study of the Italian migrant experience in Australia, Canada, Great Britain, and Argentina during WWI, at Flinders University in 2008. Karen completed her second PhD as a member of the Hostel Stories Project at the University of Adelaide. This thesis, More Than Just a Roof Over Their Heads: Migrant Accommodation Centres and the Assimilation of “New Australians” 1947-1960 was completed by publication. Karen continues to research and publish in migration history and has a special interest in the Displaced Persons who arrived in Australia 1948-1953.

Daniella Pilla

Daniella Pilla is a PhD student at the University of Adelaide within the area of migration history. She is currently working on the ARC funded Hostel Stories project with a particular interest in the latter lifespan of the Pennington Migrant Hostel. Daniella's focus includes gaining a deeper understanding of the on-arrival support, reception and accommodation of refugees in Australia during the 1970s, 80s and early 90s and how this has changed over time.

Justin Madden

Justin Madden completed his Master of Philosophy as a member of the Hostel Stories Project at the University of Adelaide. His thesis, British Migrants in Post-War South Australia: Expectations and Lived Experiences focuses, as the title suggests, on the British migrants who arrived in this state between 1945 and 1982. Using archival documents and oral histories Justin’s research considers the Department of Immigration’s role in this diaspora and contributes to the knowledge of the British migrant experience by examining their motivations and expectations of migration, the time spent in the accommodation centres/hostels, and their ongoing choices resettlement, particularly in the satellite city of Elizabeth.

The Hostel Stories Project was grateful for the input and expertise of the following members of the Advisory Board (2012-2019)

Margaret Allen

Margaret Allen is Professor Emerita in Gender Studies at the University of Adelaide. She has researched gendered histories for four decades publishing on women writers and Australian cultural history, South Australian women's history and nineteenth-century British Quakers. She has long experience in oral history, and led a project on oral histories of older women of Non-English Speaking Backgrounds. In her current project, which explores links between India and Australia in the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, she has focussed upon Indian men living in Australia under the White Australia Policy and upon Australian women missionaries to India.

Margaret Anderson

Margaret Anderson is the Chief Executive Officer of History SA, which researches, preserves and presents the history of South Australia. The organisation manages three museums, including the Hostel Stories project partner Migration Museum, the State History Collection and a statewide community history program. Margaret has published research in women's history, the demography of the family, the history of work and South Australian history generally, as well as the practice of public history.

Meredith Blundell

Meredith Blundell is Local History Officer for the City of Port Adelaide Enfield, and oversees the local history room and collection located at Port Adelaide Library.

Mark Carroll

Mark Carroll is a Professor at the Elder Conservatorium of Music. He specialises in contemporary popular and classical music; music and politics; music and society (Australia and abroad); and music history and has a special interest in migrant music habits in relation to the hostels and beyond.

Vesna Drapac

Vesna Drapac was born in Adelaide and holds degrees from the Universities of Adelaide (BA and BA Hons) and Oxford (D.Phil). On her return from Oxford, where she studied at New College as a Rhodes Scholar, she was Tutor in History at the Flinders University of South Australia. She has been teaching at the University of Adelaide since 1992. Vesna's research interests are primarily in the area of modern European history, with particular focus on the social and cultural impact of war in the twentieth century; the historiography of resistance and collaboration in Hitler's Europe; representations of women at war; film and history; and Catholic devotional life and practice. Vesna's secondary research interest is the history of twentieth-century Australian immigration in the context of identity politics, multiculturalism and citizenship.

Graeme Hugo

Prior to his sad passing Graeme Hugo was an ARC Australian Professorial Fellow, Professor of the Discipline of Geography, Environment and Population and Director of the Australian Population and Migration Research Centre at the University of Adelaide. His research interests included population issues in Australia and South East Asia, especially migration. He is the author of over four hundred books, articles in scholarly journals and chapters in books, as well as a large number of conference papers and reports. His recent research has focused on migration and development, environment and migration and migration policy. In 2012 he was named an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) for distinguished service to population research, particularly the study of international migration, population geography and mobility, and through leadership roles with national and international organisations.

Catherine Kevin

Catherine Kevin is a Senior Lecturer in Australian History in the School of International Studies at Flinders University. She has published on the history of Italian migration to NSW, the histories of pregnancy, the reproductive body and maternal loss, feminist historiography, and race relations in Australia and their cinematic representations. Her two current projects are on the history of miscarriage and the history race relations in mid-twentieth century rural New South Wales and the making of the film ‘Jedda' (1955).

Linda Lacey

As Cultural Heritage Project Officer at the City of Charles Sturt, Linda Lacey works with the community to capture, recognise and celebrate local heritage and the important stories associated with Charles Sturt identity, place and culture. She initiated a project via Charles Sturt focused on migrant hostels, particularly Finsbury-Pennington, and was critically involved in the recent renovation and relaunch of the Pennington Memorial Reserve.

Catherine Manning

Catherine Manning has been part of the Migration Museum team since 2002 where she works on exhibitions, collections management and online content. She has a particular interest in oral history and greatly enjoys working with community groups on collaborative projects. Catherine is a partner investigator on the Hostel Stories ARC Linkage grant.

Lan Mong Nguyen

Lan Mong Nguyen is the Managing Director (Community Access and Services SA) for the Vietnamese Community in Australia /SA Chapter Inc. (VCASA).

Amanda Nettelbeck

Before her appointment to the University of Adelaide in 1998, Amanda Nettelbeck taught at the University of Western Australia and Flinders University of South Australia, with visiting lectureships at the University of Missouri (St Louis) and the Technische Universität (Berlin). She has an interdisciplinary research background in literary and historical studies, with a focus on colonial history and historical memory. Her scholarship with collaborator Robert Foster has centred on the history and memory of the Australian colonial frontier, the history of colonial policing, and the rule of law in the comparative histories of Australia's and Canada's settler frontiers. Her teaching background includes Australian studies, nineteenth century literary history, colonial culture, and the history of autobiography. She is a member of the International Australian Studies Association executive.

Mandy Paul

Mandy Paul is the Senior Curator, Exhibitions, Collections & Research, at History SA, where she manages a small team of curators based at the Migration Museum who are responsible for a range of programs which engage South Australians and visitors with South Australian history and promote research. Mandy's particular areas of interest and expertise include the history of Aboriginal and non-Aboriginal relations and relationships to land in South and Central Australia, and the social history of South Australia.

Eric Richards

Eric Richards was Professor of History for many years and was a specialist in the history of Australia, British and International Migration. As Professor Emeritus, Eric continued to research and write on the history of migration with a particular interest in the interplay between ‘big history’ and the individual migrant. In 2014, he was appointed Carnegie Trust Centenary Professor in Scotland and published his final book The Genesis of International Mass Emigration, in 2018, the year he sadly passed away.

Amanda Sentance

Amanda Sentance is Manager, Reference and Access at the State Records of South Australia. She has worked with information access regimes across Australia and in the United Kingdom, and holds a Graduate Diploma in Library and Information Management from the University of South Australia.