Cultural Historian
Born in Cyprus, I have lived in Australia since I was three. Over the past forty years, my research and writing has focussed on Australian material folk culture and the decorative arts – and particularly the way migrant traditions, place and innovation, have shaped our identity.
Some figures loom large, but to me, perhaps even more powerful were the ‘small folk’. Those ordinary people who tilled the soil, built the houses, and shaped the furniture and ceramic and metal and other material objects that were part of the tools and necessities of life; they too in their own way were powerful. These are the people I have especially researched and written about to make their voices heard, to tell their stories.