Greek-Australian Joy Damousi, Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne, was awarded with the highest academic award in Australia, the ARC Laureate Fellowship. She joins only 15 other distinguished researchers around the country in receiving this award. In addition to the Laureate Fellowship, Professor Damousi received the Kathleen Fitzpatrick Award to undertake an ambassadorial role to promote women in humanities, arts and social sciences research.

The Australian Laureate Fellowship is the most prestigious individual fellowship the ARC awards. It attracts world-class researchers and research leaders to key positions, and creates new rewards and incentives for the application of their talents in Australia.

Her research project will look at the history of child refugees in Australia, and how the past can inform us about current and future approaches to humanitarian immigration.

She decided to deal with the issue of child immigration after an earlier research on the history of child removal to Australia during the Greek Civil War – the “paidomazoma”.