Research candidate

Ella Birt

Research topic

Family Values? Families, Refugee policies and experiences in Australia 1990 to today

Ella’s research explores refugee and asylum seeker policy in Australia, and the lived experiences of refugee families resettling under these policies. With a focus on the period of 1989 to 2024, her research asks how we construct ideas of family, national identity, and race in Australia, and how these ideas impact families' experiences of resettlement in Australia. Her thesis also focuses on regional Victoria (specifically Ballarat), analysing how the “tyranny of distance” further impacts families' experiences. Her work looks at how policy constructs and reinforces gendered notions of family, motherhood, and fatherhood, and how immigration policy defines who is and isn't a family in modern Australia. 

Supervisory team

Principal supervisor: Dr Mary Tomsic
Associate supervisor (end-user): Susan Fayad - Goldfields World Heritage, City of Ballarat 

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