“We are the sea, we are the ocean, we must wake up to this ancient truth and together use it to overturn all hegemonic views that aim ultimately to confine us again, physically and psychologically, in the tiny spaces which we have resisted accepting as our sole appointed place” (Hau’ofa 39).
Archipelagic Connections examines the literary and historical connections between island carceral sites: the plantation, the reserve, and the detention centre. By mapping these spaces together in literary form and political geography, the project to highlights specific literary and historical continuities between geographical sites represented as isolated.
Literature has always helped define the concepts of islands and prison, often in conjunction and association. This project focuses upon this overlap to remap the continental borderlines of Australian literature, analysing the use of archipelagic tropes to subjectively represent and unsettle applications of settler-colonial power, nationalism, and continentality.
By pursuing these connections, we may trace answers to the following questions:
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What is the purpose and impact of Aboriginal, Pasifika, and migrant authors' decisions to write in relation to one another’s experiences of isolation and enclosure?
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What new perspectives and spatial models of continents, nations, empires, and regions will an archipelagic method of reading between these discrete spaces provide?
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How does a writer’s sense of an archipelagic connection with the world inform the concepts of identity, affiliation, and relation that emerge in their work?
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How will Australia’s archipelagic connections reframe the continental borderlines of Australian literary and cultural production?
Project Personnel
The project is led by Dr. Dashiell Moore at the University of Sydney and is funded by a Discovery Early Career Researcher Award awarded by the Australian Research Council.
The dataset that underlies this website was prepared by Dashiell and a range of researchers:
- Kieren Kresevic Salazar
- Jerry Li
- Niamh Gallagher
- Yasir Elgamil
- Kristal Brown
Advisory Board and Ethics
Archipelagic Connections is subject to an ethics approval by the University of Sydney and has been funded by the Australian Research Council (2025-2028).
All participants who engaged in conversation were asked to join an advisory board who were contacted at stages of the projet development. Dashiell is indebted to this group for their time and dedication to history and truth telling. Those who have asked to be identified are listed below:
- Lionel Fogarty
- Graham Akhurst
- Glen Stasiuk
- Adam Thompson
- Emelda Davis, ASSIPJ President
- Doug Mooney
- Cristine Andrews
- Winnie Dunn
- Manisha Anjali
- Hani Abdile
- Iqbal Saki
Advisory Board:
- Professor Paul Giles, Australian Catholic University
- Professor Philip Mead, University of Western Australia
- Professor Elizabeth McMahon, University of New South Wales
- Professor Chadwick Allen, University of Washington
- Professor Rhonda Cobham-Sander, Amherst University
- Craig Santos-Perez, Independent scholar
- Former Head of Australian Indigenous Studies Philip Morrissey, University of Melbourne
- Emeritus Professor Stephen Muecke, University of New South Wales
- Associate Professor Ben Etherington, Western Sydney University
- Senior Lecturer Peter Minter, University of Sydney
- Associate Professor Isabelle Hesse, University of Sydney
- Lecturer Nienke Boer, University of Sydney
- Louis Klee, Fellow and Assistant Professor at Cambridge University
- Lecturer Lynda Ng, University of Melbourne
Copyright and Permissions
All original creative works (including artworks, photographs and poems) reproduced on this site remain the property of the makers and permission for reuse must be sought directly from them or their agents. In recirculating material, please take the time to consider how they relate to the history of island confinement in Australian and the Pacific, and the specific protocols of Indigenous groups across these regions for repeating material relating to those who have passed away. These materials relating to island confinement should be treated with care and responsibility.
If you wish to give feedback on the site, please click this link. You are welcome to do so anonymously. Alternatively, please contact Dashiell Moore at dashiell.moore@sydney.edu.au.