Dr Ebony Nilsson
Senior Lecturer
Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences
Areas of expertise:
refugee and migration history; transnational history; social history; Australian history; intelligence and surveillance history
ORCID ID: 0000-0001-6525-5555
Email:
ebony.nilsson@acu.edu.au
Location:
ACU Melbourne Campus
Ebony Nilsson is a senior lecturer and researcher within the Centre for Refugee, Migration, and Humanitarian Studies in the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences. She is a social historian whose work specialises in migrant communities’ experiences of politics and surveillance during the Cold War. She is interested in how certain groups of migrants are designated as ‘threats’ and potential enemies, and the ways that migrants themselves experience and respond to such state controls and public perceptions.
Ebony completed her PhD at the University of Sydney. Her award-winning first monograph, Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (2023), explores the transnational lives and experiences of Soviet ‘Displaced Persons’ who were resettled in Australia from Europe and China during the early Cold War and drew the attention of the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation with their political engagement.
Ebony has published on the Sydney Russian community, migrants and labour politics, ASIO’s surveillance of migrants, and the Australian government’s approach to migrants who wished to return to the Soviet Union. Her current projects include a social and cultural history of the Petrov Affair and a history of migrants designated ‘enemy aliens’ by the Australian government during the Cold War. She is a regular contributor to the Australian Book Review and has written for The Conversation, in addition to various radio and podcast interviews.
Ebony teaches courses on Australian history, migration history, global history, European history, and film and history. She also serves on the Australian Migration History Network’s Executive Committee.
Select publications
Books
- Displaced Comrades: Politics and Surveillance in the Lives of Soviet Refugees in the West (Bloomsbury Academic, 2023). Winner of the 2025 Marilyn Lake Prize for Australian Transnational History.
Journal Articles
Book Chapters
- ‘The Dossier on Both Sides of the Iron Curtain: Reputation, Denunciation, and the Surveillance of Soviet Migrants in Australia,’ in Cristina Plamadaela and Özgün Erdener Topak, eds., Surveillance and the Dossier: Record Keeping, Vulnerability, and Reputational Politics, University of Toronto Press, 2026.
- ‘Russian Migrants and Australian Intelligence Agencies,’ and ‘Lidia Janovska,’ in Phillip Deery and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., Russians in Cold War Australia, Lexington Books, 2024, p.65-80, p. 229-246.
- ‘Repatriation of Postwar Migrants from Australia to the Soviet Union: the Australian View,’ in Ruth Balint, Joy Damousi and Sheila Fitzpatrick, eds., When Migrants Fail to Stay: New Histories on Departures and Migration, Bloomsbury Academic, 2023, p. 67-84.
Accolades and awards
- Faculty of Education and Arts Excellence in Teaching Award, ACU, 2025
- Allan Martin Award, Australian Historical Association, 2024
- Laureate’s Fellow, Australian Book Review, 2023
- Visiting Fellow, Australian Studies Institute, Australian National University, 2023
Public engagement
- ‘“Congratulations Bob”: The Petrov Affair and the Australian public,’ Australian Book Review, March 2025
- Podcast Interview, ‘Displaced Comrades,’ New Books Network Podcast, July 2024
- Radio Interview, ‘How a Russian migrant became a Cold War ASIO spy,’ Late Night Live ABC Radio National, February 2024
- ‘The lives of “ordinary” people: From Siberia and Shanghai to Kings Cross,’ Australian Book Review, Jan-Feb 2024
- ‘“A happy white men’s club”: The Australian Labor Party’s uneasy history with immigration,’ Australian Book Review, July 2023
- Podcast Interview, ‘“It will be classified”: the remarkable story of Bill Marshall and ASIO’s operatives in Australia,’ Afternoon Light Podcast, April 2023
- ‘"The wilderness of mirrors": 70 years since the first James Bond book, spy stories are still blurring fact and fiction’, The Conversation, April 2023
- ‘Forget spy balloons, the world of surveillance has tried everything from schoolchildren to trained cats’, The Conversation, February 2023
