 Hi, I'm Nicholas Brown. I'm head of the School of History at the ANU and this week is the Alan Martin week and we're really privileged to have Professor Joy De Moussey from the School of History and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne as the Alan Martin Lecturer. Joy, welcome to the ANU. Thank you, Nick. It's a pleasure to be here. Well, you're a graduate of the ANU, so I imagine it's kind of familiar territory, but you've covered a lot of space since then. I suppose the first question I wanted to ask you is you've covered a really huge range of topics in your historical research. Feminism, Socialism, Cultural History, Football, Sound and Elocution and most recently Immigration and Transnationalism. It's a huge field. Is there one kind of question or one kind of core issue that motivates you throughout that work? Thank you, Nick. That's a big question and it's an interesting and challenging one I think for any historian because we do often work across different topics and fields and areas. I think if I had to identify one theme, it would be around moments of change and how people have responded to those, be that to theories of the self through Freud and the coming of Freud and Freudian ideas or the conscription campaigns of the First World War and how people responded to that. So I'm interested in moments of change that transform people's lives and how they react to those, obviously around a gendered response as well, how men and women differently or in a similar way respond to historical change. But I think that would encompass probably most of the topics I've been interested in and led down to research in because I think once you look at those hotspots or points of tension in history, I think how people react to them, governments, what we call ordinary people, I think it can open up a whole new perspective on that event. But what's really striking about your work and it's becoming richer in a way as you go along, I suppose it's most evident recently in your work on Greek migration, is that focus on the interior life, on trauma, memory and so on. Where does that come from for you? Right. Okay. So that has been obviously a big theme in a lot of my work and that too is a response to violence, I suppose, and violent events of typically the First and the Second World War in my work. So I think to look at trauma and its historical expression has come out of my interest in particularly those two world wars and of course the Greek civil war. And where that has come from, I have to say, is probably an audible answer that autobiographically by probably reflecting on the fact that my parents were post-war migrants here after the Second World War from Greece and the stories I grew up with which were very much around the experience of my family, immediate and extended during the Second World War and the Greek civil war. And I think that's inspired a sort of interest in how people grapple with memory of war and whether consciously or unconsciously, I think that has informed so much of my research. Crisis, conflict, violence is so much, the memory, the inheritance of violence is so much a part of what kind of drives your inquiry it seems. But also sitting there really centrally to your work is political commitment. I mean it's been central to your work really going back to your graduate studies, women and socialism. Do you see a particular role for historical perspectives in dealing with questions of politics and political commitment? Oh I think so, Nick. I think that's very much a part of what I've been exploring since I was here as a PhD student and even before that as an honours student and a vacation scholar here when I looked at socialists during World War I. I think looking at the past and the way in which political mobilisations have emerged to challenge and critique existing orthodoxies and wisdom I think is really important to understanding how we get to where we are today around a whole host of issues. I mean my particular interest of course has been around women's issues, women's rights, women's position in society to put it in those terms and throughout the particular 20th century exploring how that's emerged and the issues that we face today. So it certainly I think dovetails into the contemporary world. That's driven your research but I know I mean you're really passionate teacher as well. I mean how does that inflect into your teaching that political commitment? Yeah I think that's really important. I think in terms of just trying to get students to reflect on and be critical of accepted orthodoxies and accepted views of the world I think are very very much a part of what we do as teachers to challenge them constantly about you know where they're coming from and to open themselves up to alternative views or other views that that might not be available to them. We've just been talking about the difference between our generations and a younger generation and do you see it as when you're talking now to a group of 18 20 year old students what do you think politics is for them? Is it any different to what politics was when it was really shaping your own interests? Oh I think so I think so Nick. I think I think when I was going through as a undergraduate in the you know early 80s um politics was far more if I can use the word ideological yes I think ideology has gone now we can argue whether that's a good or a bad thing but I think young people are less ideological these days there's less of anism that they're attached to and again that's I'm not putting a judgment on that I think that's an observation about change yeah exactly um and of course the other really radical departure from our generation is the digital age and what that means for politics and that means a lot about our exposure to ideas exposure to how they see the world at a scale and level we could only imagine when we were going through and how they see themselves in the world I think if that's self actualizing I can be whoever I like because I've got kind of a Facebook page and that that changes politics I think fundamentally quite significantly that's right and then why that connects to the other big theme I suppose that comes through your work and that is the engagement with gender and most recently your real commitment to exploring women in leadership um and in an Australian context how is historian as a historian do you see the current state of play in terms of women's leadership in Australia? Well I think it depends on where you look but if we take a broad helicopter view as they say it's looking pretty grim really I think almost we could say things have gone backwards when in say 20 years ago 15 years ago there was probably more of a sustained effort particularly in institutions like universities and so on to really try and target women and promote them and certainly there are efforts afoot and they continue but I don't know how much we've advanced actually and the the debate around targets and quotas encapsulates that I think there's a degree of frustration for people like myself who've been in the system for quite a while trying to push forward women's um equal representation so on and constantly not achieving those so the argument I think for quotas um is starting to emerge out of that space and I think there's a real um case to be made for that to be honest um because I think we've tried other forms and we're still here looking at poor representation in the political sphere on boards even at the level of um jail wait vice-chancellors there are more women of course as vice-chancellors but you find that still it is the case that in the more senior of those roles they are taken up by men so I think we're at a time now in the early 21st century when we really have to reflect on how we're going to go forward and so the next decade is not like the past decade where I think we have gone backwards this is kind of off script but it really just that last point touches on a really gripping aspect of your most recent book on Greek migration which is dealing with the question of motherhood and different ways in which you might understand the role of mothering both for children that are your biological children but given the depth of which you explore the removal of Greek children from their parents that's a very fine grained analysis you give of responsible motherhood in that in that in that in that discussion how does that motherhood the role of women the changing world in which we're living in how does that fit into perhaps where you might see your work as a historian contributing to thinking about issues of gender in the future well I think I mean I think I'd have to say from the outset that even writing about mothers has been a big shift in historical research I mean now it's much more acceptable obviously but I think politicizing motherhood is a role that I think historians can play in identifying the challenges and issues that mothers have had in the past in cataclysmic events like war which are so often the preserve of historians looking at the battlefield or other aspects of war in more conventional terms and spotlighting motherhood as an area where women obviously are central and the decisions they've had to make in terms of war so rewriting and politicizing motherhood but then rewriting our understanding of past events is the role historians can make I think in that and then moving forward appreciating that you know these events are more complex than simply taking one view which is often often a view the role of men in shaping those events it's a really challenging beautifully written part of your most recent book and I encourage any you know historians out there who are thinking about a new way of approaching what might seem to be fairly settled issues to look at that aspect of Joyce book because it really grips your attention it raises such complex ethical moral questions and it changes the way in which you see kind of the trauma and memory of all so thank you in particular for that oh thank you nick that's very kind of you but yeah I mean I guess it's bringing together the themes we identified earlier like my interest in memory and trauma feminism in a new way joining up those dots so that we can now look at history from a completely different perspective than we did beforehand and moving forward and building on those insights thank you joy joy will be giving the Alan Martin lecture this evening in Canberra the book the lecture is published as a booklet please if you're interested in gathering a hold of the lecture and you should be contact the school of history joy again thank you very much for your commitment to this big week of working with us working with early career researchers and graduate students here at the it's great to have you back great great to be back thank you very much thank you