The Director-General of the National Archives of Australia, Ross Gibbs, today announced that the winner of the National Archives Ian Maclean Award for 2005 is historian Dr Nikki Henningham.

Dr Henningham is currently a research fellow and Executive Officer of the Australian Women’s Archive Project.

Mr Gibbs said that the National Archives Ian Maclean Award was made annually to provide an individual with a paid opportunity to conduct research that would benefit the archival profession.

‘Dr Henningham intends to use her award to locate the whereabouts of records relating to the experience of migrant women in Australia, primarily from 1970,’ Mr Gibbs said.

‘To augment the existing holdings of official archival repositories, her project will entail some solid detective work to track down valuable records presently hidden away in back offices, garages or even under beds,’ he said.

‘Anyone who may have been involved in community programs to assist migrant women at the local, state or national level, may be able to advise Dr Henningham just where records of these community initiatives are now kept,’ he said.

Dr Henningham said that by increasing awareness of the availability of records to researchers and cultural historians, a more expansive story of Australian identity can be made public.

‘There are still gaps in the archival records relating to women, no matter what their ethnic background is. While women have had very active roles in public life, quite often this work has taken place through professional and private networks which are not always likely to capture the attention of official archival repositories,’ Dr Henningham said.

‘The records of women may also be embedded within the records of other male family members, and because existing databases of manuscripts are still not comprehensive I will need to do plenty of sifting, sorting and recording,’ she said.

The Australian Women’s Archive Project is a joint initiative of the National Foundation for Australian Women and the Department of History at the University of Melbourne and their website links researchers to information held in archival collections around Australia. The results of Dr Henningham’s Ian Maclean project will be published on the National Archives website at www.naa.gov.au and www.womenaustralia.info.

The Ian Maclean Award is named in memory of Ian Maclean (1919–2003) who worked passionately for the Archives profession both nationally and internationally for 50 years, starting as the first Commonwealth Archives Officer in October 1944.