Prof Alistair Thomson - Researcher Profile

Alistair Thomson

Address

School of Philosophical, Historical and International Studies
Faculty of Arts, Clayton

Biography

Speaker for the dead

Professor Alistair Thomson’s job, and joy, is to shine a light on our collective past. 

 

 

“As a historian at Monash University, it’s my role to create more historically informed citizens, and to challenge the mythical or partial versions of the past that politicians and popular culture puts forth,” Alistair says. 

His book Anzac Memories: living with the legend looked at the ways that the experiences of working-class soldiers differed from the Anzac legend. 

“It’s about the ways in which these guys dealt with this sort of ‘heroic’ national story which didn’t really represent parts of their lives.” 

The secrecy surrounding his grandfather’s return from World War I inspired his investigations: “He came back from the war and was basically pretty damaged.” 

Alistair’s family did not receive his early attempts to explore his grandfather’s experiences in public well. However, he quickly found that the silence around his grandfather’s postwar life was indicative of a national phenomenon. 

“Wars can create national legends but they also damage people, and create secrets and lies,” says Alistair. By talking about their stories, “individuals and family members can understand and accept them, and start the healing process not only in our own families, but also in Australian society.”

Alistair came to Monash from the University of Sussex, where he was a trustee of the Mass Observation Archive. The archive is “an invaluable anthropology of everyday life” set up in the 1930s in Great Britain. He continues to use the extraordinary archive for his teaching here at Monash, as much of it is digitally available online. 

His recent work has continued to involve listening to voices from the past. His newly released book Moving Stories: An intimate history of four women across two countries follows immigrants from Great Britain after World War II. 

Photographs and letters of four such migrants form the basis of his book. These women “wrote in extraordinary - and often intimate - detail about everyday life in Australia: about housework, child care, housing, their relationships and their kids.” 

The book examines the generation of women born in the 1920s and 1930s who came of age before the second wave of feminism. It looks at “how they lived with - and sometimes against - the expectations of domestic women and housewives.”

Alistair has just begun work on the Australian Generations project. 

“Basically, we want to record 300 life histories, with 50 from people born in each decade from the 1920s and 1930s, through to the 1980s.” 

He is the lead partner with other academics from Monash and Latrobe University, as well as with the National Library of Australia and ABC Radio National.

“With this project, you’ll be able to track the stories of someone born in the 1930s, and the changing ways, for example, in which they related to their family across their lives; you’ll also be able to compare someone born in the 1950s to someone born in the 1980s, and their different ways, for example, of bringing up kids.”

An Australian Research Council Linkage grant worth more than a million dollars funds this enormous undertaking, which will result in an ABC Radio National series of about 50 programs. 

“It’ll probably be the next five years plus of my working life, working on this project.”

 

Qualifications

PHD
Institution: University of Sussex
Year awarded: 1991
MASTERS BY RESEARCH
Institution: Unknown
Year awarded: 1985
Unknown
Institution: Unknown
Year awarded: 1982

Publications

Books

Thomson, A., 2011, Moving Stories: An Intimate History of Four Women Across Two Countries, UNSW Press, Sydney NSW Australia.

Freund, A., Thomson, A. (eds), 2011, Oral History and Photography, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA.

Perks, R., Thomson, A.S. (eds), 2006, The Oral History Reader, Routledge, London UK.

Hammerton, A.J.H., Thomson, A.S., 2005, Ten Pound Poms: Australia's Invisible Migrants, Manchester University Press, Manchester UK.

Book Chapters

Thomson, A.S., 2012, Life stories and historical analysis, in Research Methods for History, eds Simon Gunn, Lucy Faire, Edinburgh University Press, Edinburgh, UK, pp. 101-117.

Thomson, A.S., 2012, Oral history and life story research: Reconfiguring the questions, relationships and politics of history?, in Taking Stock: The Humanities in Australia, eds Mark Finnane and Ian Donaldson, UWA Publishing, Crawley WA Australia, pp. 243-251.

Thomson, A., 2011, Family photographs and migrant memories: representing women's lives, in Oral History and Photography, eds Alexander Freund and Alistair Thomson, Palgrave Macmillan, USA, pp. 169-185.

Freund, A., Thomson, A., 2011, Introduction: oral history and photography, in Oral History and Photography, eds Alexander Freund and Alistair Thomson, Palgrave Macmillan, New York, USA, pp. 1-23.

Thomson, A., 2011, Memory and remembering in oral history, in The Oxford Handbook of Oral History, eds Donald A. Ritchie, Oxford University Press, New York USA, pp. 77-95.

Thomson, A., 2010, Remembering in later life: some lessons from oral history, in Oral History and Ageing, eds Joanna Bornat and Josie Tetley, Centre for Policy on Ageing, London UK, pp. 26-42.

Thomson, A.S., 2008, 'I'm not a good mother': gender expectations and tensions in a migrant woman's life story, in Transnational ties: Australian lives in the world, eds Desley Deacon, Penny Russell and Angela Woollacott, ANU ePress, Canberra, pp. 149-164.

Thomson, A., 2006, Advocacy and Empowerment, in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, New York US, pp. 447-455.

Thomson, A., 2006, Critical Developments, in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, New York USA, pp. 1-13.

Thomson, A., 2006, Interpreting Memories, in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, New York USA, pp. 211-220.

Thomson, A., 2006, Interviewing, in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, New York US, pp. 115-122.

Thomson, A., 2006, Making Histories, in The Oral History Reader, eds Robert Perks and Alistair Thomson, Routledge, New York US, pp. 333-342.

Thomson, A.S., 2005, 'My wayward heart': homesickness, longing and the return of British post-war immigrants from Australia, in Emigrant homecomings: the return movement of emigrants, 1600-2000, eds Marjory Harper, Manchester University Press, Manchester UK, pp. 105-130.

Thomson, A.S., 2003, 'The Empire was a Bar of Soap': Life stories and race identity among British emigrants travelling to Australia, 1945-1971, in Cultural History in Australia, eds Hsu-Ming Teo and Richard White, University of New South Wales Press, Sydney, pp. 201-213.

Journal Articles

Thomson, A.S., 2012, "Tied to the kitchen sink"? Women's lives and women's history in mid-twentieth century Britain and Australia, Womens History Review [P], vol 22, issue 1, Taylor and Francis, http://www.tandfonline.com/toc/rwhr20/current, pp. 126-147.

Thomson, A., 2011, Moving stories, women's lives: sharing authority in oral history, Oral History [P], vol 39, issue 2, Oral History Society, Essex UK, pp. 73-82.

Thomson, A.S., 2008, 'Oral history and community history in Britain: Personal and critical reflections on twenty-five years of continuity and change', Oral History, vol 36, issue 1, University of Essex, United Kingdom, pp. 95-104.

Thomson, A.S., 2007, Dancing through the memory of our movement: four paradigmatic revolutions in oral history, BIOS, vol 20, Verlag Barbara Budrich, Germany, pp. 21-29.

Thomson, A.S., 2007, Four paradigm transformations in oral history, Oral History Review, vol 34, issue 1, University of California Press, Berkeley, USA, pp. 49-70.

Thomson, A.S., 2006, Anzac stories: using personal testimony in war history, War & Society, vol 25, issue 2, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of New South Wales, Canberra, ACT, Australia, pp. 1-21.

Thomson, A.S., 2005, 'What was really going on!' Illuminating migrant women's experience through the comparative study of contemporary and retrospective life stories [Le storie di vita nello studio dell'emigrazione femminile], Quaderni Storici, vol 2005, issue 3, Societa editrice il Mulino, Bologna, Italy, pp. 685-708.

Thomson, A., 2003, 'I live on my memories': British return migrants and the possession of the past, Oral History, vol 31, issue 2, Oral History Society, Colchester, United Kingdom, pp. 55-65.

Thomson, A., 2003, Sharing Authority: Oral History and the Collaborative Process, The Oral History Review, vol 30, issue 1, Oxford University, United States, pp. 23-26.

Thomson, A., 2002, Landscapes of memory, Meanjin, vol 61, issue 3, Meanjin Company Ltd, Carlton Melbounre, pp. 81-96.

Thomson, A., 2002, Voices we never hear: The unsettling histories of postwar 'ten Pound Poms' who returned to Britain, Voices of a 20th Century Nation: Oral History Association of Australia Journal, issue 24, Oral History Association of Australia, Australia, pp. 52-59.

Thomson, A., 2001, 'Good migration': Place, meaning and identity in Audio Letters from Australia, 1963-1965, Scatterlings of Empire, Journal of Australian Studies, issue 3, University of Queensland Press, St Lucia, Queensland, pp. 105-116.

Conference Proceedings

Thomson, A., 2010, Moving stories, women's lives: Sharing authority in collective biography, Proceedings of the XVI International Oral History Conference, 07 July 2010 - 11 July 2010, International Oral History Asociation, Czech Oral History Association, Prague, Czech Republic, pp. 1-13.

Postgraduate Research Supervisions

Current Supervision

Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Diaspora and identity. The Scots in 20th century Australia.
Supervisors:
O''Hanlon, S (Main), Thomson, A (Associate).
Program of Study:
(MASTER'S BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Men of legend: the social composition of the 3rd battalion first AIF.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Hau, M (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Mutton chops to chop suey? Australians and their food, 1932-1966.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), O''Hanlon, S (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Sexual violence as a weapon of genocide in the holocaust.
Supervisors:
Garrett, L (Joint-co), Thomson, A (Joint).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
The chook, the jack and the letter from the queen.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Attwood, B (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Vietnam memories: an interdisciplinary study of oral history, documentary-filmmaking and making the private, public.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Koh, E (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Wiradjuri elders: keeping our culture and history alive.
Supervisors:
Gunstone, A (Main), Thomson, A (Associate).
Program of Study:
(DOCTORATE BY RESEARCH).
Thesis Title:
Women, rurality and environmentalism..
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Anderson, D (Associate).

Completed Supervision

Student:
Andrews, M.
Program of Study:
Revisiting the Australian Assistance Plan. (Masters) 2011.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Gibson, K (Associate).
Student:
Armstrong-Grant, P.
Program of Study:
DAME JOAN HAMMOND DBE CMG 1912-1996 "A DIVA OF CIRCUMSTANCE". (Masters) 2009.
Supervisors:
Caine, B (Main), Thomson, A (Associate).
Student:
Bourke, V.
Program of Study:
Remembering the bombing of Darwin: making sense of war memories. (Masters) 2012.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Koh, E (Associate).
Student:
Dreyfus, F.
Program of Study:
Silences and secrets: the Australian experience of the Weintraub Syncopators. (PHD) 2010.
Supervisors:
Markus, A (Joint-Co), Thomson, A (Joint).
Student:
Smith, M.
Program of Study:
Edith Onians: A Biography. (Masters) 2010.
Supervisors:
Caine, B (Main), Thomson, A (Associate).
Student:
Wilkie, D.
Program of Study:
The Deconstruction of a Convict Past. (Masters) 2011.
Supervisors:
Thomson, A (Main), Koh, E (Associate).