Dr Dave McDonald awarded National Library of Australia Fellowship

Dr Dave McDonald, Faculty of Arts Senior Lecturer in Criminology, has been awarded a 2024 National Library of Australia Fellowship for his research From Care to Carcerality: Understanding the Experiences of Forgotten Australians and Child Migrants.

One of twelve recipients of the prestigious prize, Dr McDonald will be invited to use the National Library of Australia's unique collections and access the Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants Oral History Project to conduct his research into historical experiences of institutional child abuse. This research will build on a broader project examining community situated truth projects in relation to child abuse and neglect.

“My hope is the project will help draw further attention to the experiences of children who have experienced ‘care’ and reinforce the value of cultural collections as a form of truth-telling more generally. From this, we can learn about the past, but the oral histories can also be instructive about the future as well, coupled with the role of activism to create social change,” Dr McDonald said.

Funded through generous philanthropic support, the National Library of Australia’s Fellowship programs have supported more than 270 emerging and established Australian and international scholars and artists since 1986, encouraging new and innovative research across a range of scholarly and creative disciplines.