The Oral Histories Project
This project is run by Dr Jordana Silverstein, a Senior Research Fellow in the Peter McMullin Centre on Statelessness.
Since 2022, Jordana has been conducting oral history interviews with people who were stateless when they arrived in Australia between 1933 and 2000. Working in part with the National Library of Australia, people who have been stateless and are now citizens in Australia participate in a life history interview in which they talk about their experiences of statelessness, their families, their migration journeys, and more.
Some of these interviews have been brought together in the podcast ‘Being Stateless: An Oral History Podcast’.
Jeanine Hourani provided expert guidance on the establishment of the project, and has acted as a consultant.
This project has University of Melbourne Ethics Approval, Project No. 22858.
It is funded in part by the Australian Research Council through DP210100929, Understanding Statelessness in Australian Law and Practice.
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Acknowledgement of Country
Interviews for this project have taken place across Aboriginal Countries, including on the lands of the Bunurong, Kaurna, Peramangk, Tugagal and Wurundjeri peoples. We pay our respects to all of their Elders, past and present. Sovereignty was never ceded: this always was, and always will be, Aboriginal land. We are grateful to First Nations people from across the continent from whom we continue to learn a great deal about matters of citizenship, forced migration, settler-colonialism, resistance, endurance, and creativity.