Founders & Survivors

University of Tasmania

Hamish Maxwell Stewart - Professor of History,

Hamish researches the impact of juvenile and adolescent circumstances on life course and intergenerational out comes and the history of workplace organisation. Hamish was initially interested in the history of slavery, but when he undertook his PhD at the University of Edinburgh he was persuaded by his Australian supervisor <embedded link to Adrian’s profile> to study convict transportation instead. Following the completion of his thesis <link> he worked first for the Wellcome Unit for the History of Medicine at the University of Glasgow before being transported to Tasmania in 1997. When he gets a chance he likes to abscond to hunt down wild brown trout and play complex board games over a glass of whisky.

Lucy Frost - Emeritus Professor of English,

Lucy's research focuses on convict women and their children, with a current project centred on the Orphan Schools. As an advocate for cross-disciplinary research, she was a Founding Director of the University’s Centre for Colonialism and its Aftermath. She has promoted connections between academics and the broader research community and was the founding President of the Female Convicts Research Centre. More recently she was a member of the project team responsible for the sculpture “Footsteps towards Freedom” (2017) commemorating the arrival of the convict women and their children.

Trudy Cowley - Database Manager

Trudy came to historical research through researching her family history which revealed at least twenty convict ancestors, her favourite of which was described by the Surgeon Superintendent as a most notorious strumpet and dangerous girl!

Extending her knowledge of female convict history through her involvement with the Female Convicts Research Centre and the Convict Women’s Press, Trudy published several articles and two books.

Trudy also works part-time as a data analyst at the Tasmanian Department of Education.

Martin Gibbs

Professor of Australian Archaeology

Martin's research focuses on Australian-Pacific historical and maritime archaeology. He is currently the lead Chief Investigator of the ARC-funded project ‘Landscapes of Production and Punishment: The Tasman Peninsula 1830-1877’ and has other convict related projects on Norfolk Island, NSW and Western Australia.

Associate Professor David Andrew Roberts

David teaches various Australian History subjects including ‘Convict Australia’ and is the editor (since 2003) of the UNE’s Journal of Australian Colonial History. His research interests range widely across the history of early colonial Australia, but he is particularly interested in the nature and legacies of the convict period.

His research has been funded by various Australian Research Council grants, including 'Liberty, Anti‑transportation and the Empire of Morality', ‘Landscapes of Production and Punishment: the Tasman Peninsula 1830–77’, and Enquiring into Empire: remaking the British World after 1815.

Dr Richard Tuffin Postdoctoral Fellow

Richard's primary area of interest is in the history and archaeology of the colonisation of Australia, in addition to having worked as an archaeologist in the UK and Solomon Islands. He was attached as a Research Fellow to the ARC-funded Landscapes of Production and Punishment (2017-19) and is currently running a project examining the archaeological and historical signatures of convict labour at the Port Arthur penal station (Tasmania).

Barry Godfrey University of Liverpool

Professor of Social History at the University of Liverpool, UK. He has published fourteen books on crime history, life-course offending, and longitudinal studies of sentencing. His latest book, Young Criminal Lives: Life Courses and Life Chances from 1850 (2017), was co-authored with Heather Shore, Pamela Cox and Zoe Alker. He has edited three collections on international and comparative crime history and is the editor of the History of Crime in the UK and Ireland book series.

Barry began his academic career at Keele University, joining in 1995 as a junior lecturer and leaving as Professor of Criminology in 2011. Since joining Liverpool University he has continued his research within the Risk, Security and Crime Research Cluster; and he enjoys supervising theses on sentencing and resistance, long-term trends in criminal justice policy, criminal justice history, and the management of risk in society.

Chris Gallagher

Chris is an arts leader, curator and manager having lead several national arts organisations and state-based writers' centres. Her work is multi-disciplinary working across art forms as well as history. From 2008-17 she directed the Tasmanian Writers Centre and the Tasmanian Writers and Readers Festival . In 2014 she travelled to India on an Asialink residency where she assisted to present the Jaipur Literature Festival co-directed by William Dalrymple and Namita Gokhale. Chris is the founding Director of the Australian Script Centre and is currently a peer advisor to the Australia Council. Her work with Founders and Survivors includes developing the new website, managing the DigiVol projects and working with Melissa as the co-ordinator for transcribing volunteers.

Dr Melissa Gibbs

Melissa is the newest member of the FAS transcription team, and joins us after six months of managing the UNE transcription volunteers as part of the Landscapes of Production and Punishment project. Her role is to assist with the management of FAS volunteers, to review completed transcriptions and maintain smooth operation of FAS transcription management processes. Although Melissa’s research background is in Australian and Melanesian prehistoric archaeology, in recent years she has increasingly applied her technical expertise to historical archaeology. This includes analysing historic shell assemblages, and regularly assisting with the cataloguing of historic artefact assemblages for Sydney-based heritage consultancy firms.

Alistair Scott - University of Tasmania

Alistair Scott is a former journalist, ministerial adviser and senior public servant. He was General Manager of Natural and Cultural Heritage with the Department of Primary Industries, Parks, Water and Environment until 2015, and previously Director of Local Government. He is currently based in Launceston and studying at the University of Tasmania.

Honey Dower - University of Tasmania

Honey is researching the impact of separate treatment on the health of Port Arthur convicts. Her work measures types of close confinement on prisoners' social, physical, and mental well-being, using new quantitative data derived from British and Australian colonial archival records. After completing her Bachelor of Arts (Honors), she undertook a Master of History at the Australian National University and graduated with commendation. She has presented internationally on her PhD research and is publishing further work in 2020. An active and engaged member of UTAS' History and Classics department, Dower is a strong advocate for digitising Tasmania's past and has engaged with the public on colonial, penal, and medical history on ABC radio, at public history events, and online.