Studying the stories of our ancestors, whatever their background, is a deeply enriching experience.
Articles on Family history
Displaying 1 - 20 of 23 articles
In Raven Mother, Jane Messer writes of the grandmother she never knew: a woman who defied expectations but was undone by war, displacement, exile and separation.
Not all early 20th century Jewish immigrants to South Africa were commercially successful.
You can uncover the depths and hidden details of your own family’s unspoken narratives by thinking like an archival researcher writing an ‘investigative memoir.’
Women may be classed as high or low risk, and screened differently. But the path forward is not clear cut.
As the Holocaust passes out of living memory, such embodied memorialisation ensures people will still talk about what happened.
When Shauna Bostock began researching a book on her family, she thought it would be limited to her Aboriginal ancestry. But then a late-night phone call led her down a surprising path.
Researching family history is a popular hobby. But hobbyists can find themselves unearthing details of ancestors behaving badly or treated cruelly – or family secrets and trauma.
Pore over family documents such as birth certificates and old passports, photographs and heirlooms, however trinket-like they might seem. Family history requires research in its broadest sense.
If you skirt the small talk and dig a little deeper, you’ll be surprised at what you might learn.
There is not a single historian, publisher or archivist on the review panels whose feedback will help shape Australia’s new cultural policy
While tracing his own family’s journey from Ireland to Aotearoa New Zealand, Richard Shaw encountered how much ‘selective amnesia’ about the colonial past still shapes our lives today.
Understanding how our ancestors may have benefited from industrialisation and colonialism could help us become more climate-friendly citizens.
Census data is kept under seal for a century. The 1921 records will be the last we see until 2052.
My family is Mauritian, but when I take a DNA test, Mauritian didn’t even rank as an ethnicity. It can’t. Everyone from Mauritius is from somewhere else, or from many places at the same time.
We surveyed 1461 Australians and discovered many are museum regulars — but it’s family history that has broad appeal.
Rarely seen in the family album are photographs of funerals, burials and the suffering of those who are left to mourn.
DNA testing is helping reveal people’s unknown royal ancestry.
One cymbal manufacturer has survived 400 years, but most in-house companies fail to survive through the generations.
Regular controversies over breastfeeding might seem like a quirk of contemporary life. But 18th and 19th century clothing reveal that women have been handling the issue of visibility and practicality for centuries.
Top contributors
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University of Stirling
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Lecturer in Sociology, The University of Melbourne
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PhD Candidate, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor of Twentieth Century History, Goldsmiths, University of London
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Professor of Linguistics and Art History, Sam Houston State University
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Professor of English, Macalester College
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Professor of History, President, Australian Historical Association, Macquarie University
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Teaching Fellow, Department of Genealogical Studies, University of Strathclyde
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Associate Professor Visual Communication, University of Technology Sydney
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Professor of Politics, Te Kunenga ki Pūrehuroa – Massey University
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Aberystwyth University
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Professor in the Geographies of Heritage, Western Sydney University
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Professor of Clinical Epidemiology, Sydney School of Public Health, University of Sydney
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Professor of Humanities, University of Leeds
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ANU PhD, Australian National University