Rate My Professor Alison Atkinson-Phillips

Alison Atkinson-Phillips is Senior Lecturer in Community Development in the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University, joining the teaching team in 2023. Previously, she worked for five years at Newcastle University in the United Kingdom as part of the Oral History Unit and Collective, where she served as Research Associate, helped develop and teach a Masters in Public History programme, and collaborated on community-based projects. Before Newcastle, she held casual teaching positions in Community Development and Professional Writing at Murdoch University's Faculty of Arts. Atkinson-Phillips earned her Doctor of Philosophy in Public History from the University of Technology Sydney between 2013 and 2017. She also holds a Bachelor of Arts from Curtin University in Perth, Australia, and a Graduate Diploma in Community Development from Murdoch University completed in 2012. Her academic background as a social and cultural historian informs her focus on how communities engage with their pasts.

Atkinson-Phillips's research centres on memory studies, oral history, activism, commemoration, and community archives. She investigates the ways ordinary people mobilise the past to negotiate their present, employing oral history methods alongside visual and other sources. Notable projects include an ongoing collaboration with Dwellbeing Shieldfield, a community co-operative in northeast England, exploring 'messy archiving', which produced a small print booklet. Her scholarship has significantly contributed to understanding public memorials and survivor commemorations in Australia. Key publications include the book Survivor Memorials: Remembering Trauma and Loss in Contemporary Australia (University of Western Australia Press, 2019); 'On being moved: art, affect and activation in public commemorations of trauma' (Continuum, 2018); 'Commemoration as Witnessing: 20 Years of Remembering the Stolen Generations at Colebrook Reconciliation Park'; 'Remembering experience: Public memorials are not just about the dead anymore'; 'The Power of Place: Monuments and Memory'; and 'The Communities and Change exhibition' (2025). At Murdoch, she teaches courses on storytelling and collaboration in community development and supervises placement students. Her work bridges academic research with community practice, emphasising participatory approaches to history and memory.