Alison Atkinson-Phillips

Alison Atkinson-Phillips is a social and cultural historian based at Newcastle University, UK. Her research interests include ‘marginalised’ histories, how difficult pasts are dealt with in the present, public art and place-based memory work. Alison joined the newly formed Oral History Unit and Collective at Newcastle University in January 2018, having moved from Perth, Western Australia. Before coming to Newcastle, she worked as a casual tutor and lecturer in Community Development and Professional Writing at the Faculty of Arts at Murdoch University, and in History at the University of Western Australia. Alison spent a decade working as the Uniting Church in Western Australia’s communication manager before completing her PhD at the Australian Centre for Public History at the University of Technology, Sydney supervised by Professor Paula Hamilton. Outside of academia, Alison has had a long involvement in social justice advocacy at a community level. She is a former member of Bringing Them Home WA, an advocacy organisation working to support survivors of the Stolen Generations, and former chair of the Uniting Church Social Justice Board (WA).