Anisa Puri is an award-winning historian, author, and research project manager based in Melbourne, Australia.
I am a professional historian with particular expertise in historical research, oral history, heritage interpretation, and project management. I hold a Master of Public History and a PhD in Historical Studies from Monash University. My doctoral research used oral history interviews to examine youth migration to postwar Australia (1946–1973) and was awarded the John Rickard Prize in 2022. I am also a past President of Oral History NSW and a past Vice-President (Executive) of the Professional Historians Association (Vic and Tas).
I managed the Australian Generations Oral History Project at Monash University between 2011–2015. Since then, I have worked as a researcher and interviewer on several large-scale national oral history projects, including the HIV/AIDS Volunteers History Project at Macquarie University. I co-curated a digital exhibition (with Shirleene Robinson) titled A City Responds to Crisis, which won the Oral History Australia Media Award in 2019. My appointments in the heritage industry include GML Heritage, where I specialised in heritage interpretation and exhibition development. My first book Australian Lives: An Intimate History (with Alistair Thomson) was published by Monash University Publishing in 2017. I also recently worked as a researcher on the Mothering in Crisis Project at the University of Melbourne.
My current projects include working as an Oral History Interviewer for the National Library of Australia, and as a Research Associate at Australian Catholic University. I am on the Editorial Board of the open access journal Studies in Oral History.
Consultancy
I have over 12 years of experience working as a consulting historian, and have been involved with many collaborative and interdisciplinary projects. I am passionate about storytelling, and creating engaging histories that illuminate how the past shapes the present. I enjoy producing historical work that is designed for diverse public audiences.
My clients have included the National Library of Australia, NSW State Archives, and EJE Architecture. While working as a Historian and Heritage Consultant at GML Heritage, my clients included NSW National Parks and Wildlife Services, NSW Roads and Maritime Services, and Barangaroo Development Authority.
I have also run several tailor-made research data management seminars and oral history training workshops for academics, non-profit organisations, and the broader public.
For further information, or to request a quote, please contact me,
I specialise in:
Historical Research / Writing
Oral History
Exhibitions
Heritage Interpretation
Digital History
Project Management
Research Data Management
Training Workshops
Australian Lives
Australian Lives: An Intimate History (Monash University Publishing, 2017).
Australian Lives: An Intimate History illuminates Australian life across the 20th and into the 21st century: how Australian people have been shaped by the forces and expectations of contemporary history and how, in turn, they have made their lives and created Australian society. From oral history interviews with Australians born between 1920 and 1989, fifty narrators reflect on their diverse experiences as children and teenagers, in midlife and in old age, about faith, migration, work and play, aspiration and activism, memory and identity, pain and happiness.
Read an extract in the Sydney Morning Herald
Hear us discuss the book on ABC Radio National’s Life Matters
Read my blog post about the book, aurality, and opening up oral history archives on the Oral History Review blog
Read my responses to ‘5 Questions about Australian Lives’ on the Oral History Review blog
“‘Engaging, emotional but also academically rigorous in its production, Australian Lives deserves to reach a wide general audience, in Australia and far beyond.’”
Recent publications
Recent publications include:
Carla Pascoe Leahy and Anisa Puri, ‘Developing a Remote Interviewing Practice: Doing Oral History in Times of Crisis’, Studies in Oral History, 45, 2023. Freely available online.
Anisa Puri, ‘ “To be who I was, really, was to be different”: Memories of Youth Migration to Postwar Australia’, Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia, edited by Kate Darian-Smith and Paula Hamilton, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019.
Kevin Bradley and Anisa Puri, ‘Creating an Oral History Archive: Digital Opportunities and Ethical Issues’, Australian Historical Studies, 47 (1), 2016.