The Resilient Humanitarianism team is pleased to welcome our first Honours student, Anna Wilkinson, to the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University.
Anna graduated from the University of Adelaide in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts (Advanced) and a Bachelor of International Relations. She is excited to join the Honours program at Flinders University and says, “One of the many wonderful things about my thesis topic and research into the broader Red Cross Movement is that I feel I have been able to utilise all areas of my undergraduate degree” – including History, Politics, and Anthropology. While returning to her first love, History, Anna is also keen to apply methodologies and models learnt in other disciplines to her Honours research where appropriate.
Anna explains, “One of the most defining aspects of my undergraduate degree was the good fortune to study at the University of Tokyo for 6 months. During this time, I was lucky enough to undertake research at the Tokyo Red Cross Archives for Professor Melanie Oppenheimer who was based in Tokyo as Visiting Chair in Australian Studies. This experience, alongside studying in an alternative learning environment, cemented my curiosity in researching humanitarianism and cross-cultural interactions”.
Anna’s Honours research is centred around the League’s Development Programme in South-East Asia and in particular, the first regional conference funded by the Programme after World War II. While she is yet to finalise her exact research question, Anna is working around the parameters of ‘The League of Red Cross Societies and the Implementation of the Development Programme: The 1964 Sydney Forum and its implications on the South-East Asian Pacific Region.’
“The Development Programmes of the League are an untapped goldmine of historical research”, according to Anna. “The limitations of an Honours thesis have, nevertheless, given me ample opportunity to establish a succinct understanding of the Development Programmes through a detailed case study of the 1964 Sydney Forum. I hope that this case study will create space for further research into the Development Programmes’ global impact in de-colonising countries, and allow researchers to gain a deeper and more meaningful understanding of how the Red Cross operated in South-East Asia”.
Anna travelled to Geneva in February, with the assistance of funding provided by the Resilient Humanitarianism project, to access documents held at the archive of the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies (IFRC). Working under the supervision of Grant Mitchell, a member of our Advisory Group and Manager, Library and Archive Services at the IFRC, Anna was able to source documents that have not yet been examined by other historians.
“My field-work in Geneva was a budding historians’ dream! I was lucky enough to go to Geneva in February and spend two weeks perusing the IFRC archives in order to find evidence of the Development Programmes. Having very little secondary literature to draw upon, Professor Oppenheimer and I decided that primary sources would greatly inform the basis of my research and allow me to contextualise the Programmes and the Forum. I found myself wading through almost a decade of documents from the formation of the Programme to illustrate different ways the League utilised the Development Programmes in South-East Asia. Despite my excitement, I narrowed down my scope to specifically the 1964 Forum and found proceeding notes, participation records, and outcome documentation”.
Anna’s work is being supervised by Professor Melanie Oppenheimer with assistance from other members of the team, Dr Romain Fathi and Professor Susanne Schech.
Are you interested in undertaking an Honours project on any aspect of the work of the League of Red Cross Societies between 1919 and 1991? A small stipend may be available to assist with your research. If you would like to join our team in 2021 or 2022, please contact Professor Melanie Oppenheimer via email: melanie.oppenheimer@flinders.edu.au
If you would like to make contact with Anna and learn more about her work, you can contact her at Flinders University via email: wilk0309@flinders.edu.au
