Dr David McDonald is a 2024 National Library of Australia Fellow.

About Dr David McDonald's Fellowship research

Dr David McDonald's research into the lives and experiences of Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants seeks to understand how they may be criminologically understood through a continuum of violence. In Australia, several public inquiries have highlighted the harmful experiences that generations of children have experienced in 'care'. This is particularly true of sexual abuse in institutional contexts. In comparison, more routine, day-to-day experiences are less well understood.

Through a deep engagement with the National Library of Australia's Forgotten Australian and Former Child Migrant Oral History Project, this presentation will consider the range of experiences documented by the collection, and reflect on what they reveal about the spectrum of harms children have experienced in these settings. Methodologically engaging with the interviews as 'cultural testimony', the project seeks to bring new attention to the experiences of Forgotten Australians and Former Child Migrants, and to enhance understandings of oral histories as a form of alternative justice.

About Dr David McDonald

Dr David McDonald is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at the University of Melbourne.

His research investigates recent transformations in understandings of child sexual abuse, and broader forms of abuse and cruelty across institutional contexts. He has examined the role of official state responses like public inquiries, and their impact on local communities that have been significantly impacted by institutional abuse.

His current work examines cultural responses as counter archives of abuse, encompassing examples that include museums, memorials, memoirs, artworks, images, film and community activism. This work seeks to offer new insights regarding harmful experiences of institutional care, and the role of cultural responses as alternative forms of justice.

About National Library of Australia Fellowships

The National Library of Australia Fellowships program offers researchers an opportunity to undertake a 12-week residency at the Library. This program is supported by generous donors and bequests.

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