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Dr Kristen Alexander

Dr Kristen Alexander

Adjunct Associate Lecturer

 

Graduate Certificate of Management, University of New England (1994).

Doctor of Philosophy, UNSW Canberra (2020).

UNSW Canberra
School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Dr Kristen Alexander was awarded a PhD by UNSW Canberra in 2020 for her thesis ‘Emotions of Captivity: Australian Airmen Prisoners of Stalag Luft III and their Families’. In March 2022, the Australian War Memorial awarded her the 2021 Bryan Gandevia Prize for Australian military–medical history. https://www.awm.gov.au/articles/blog/2021bryan-gandevia-prize

Specialising in Australian aviation history, she is published in Australia, Great Britain and Japan. She won the non-fiction category of the 2015 ACT Writing and Publishing Award and was highly commended in the 2014 and 2017 awards. Her second book, Jack Davenport: Beaufighter Leader, is on the RAAF Chief of Air Force’s 2010 reading list, and Australia’s Few and the Battle of Britain appears on the 2015 list. Further publication details at www.kristenalexander.com.au.

Kristen is a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Canberra and currently works as an editorial assistant on War & Society Journal, https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/ywar20.

Kristen is also  a partner in Alexander Fax Booksellers which specialises in Australian military history. http://www.alexanderfaxbooks.com.au/. 

Currently, Kristen is a research assistant to  ACR Decra Fellow, Dr Kate Ariotti, UQ (Between Death and Commemoration: An Australian History of the War Corpse, 1915-2015).

 

 
E-mail
Kristen.Alexander@adfa.edu.au
  • Book Chapters | 2023
    Alexander K, 2023, 'The Australian prisoner of war experience in Stalag Luft III, 1942–45 1', in Australian Perspectives on Global Air and Space Power, Routledge, pp. 23 - 33, http://dx.doi.org/10.4324/9781003230656-4
  • Journal articles | 2023
    Alexander K; Ariotti K, 2023, 'Mourning the Dead of the Great Escape: POWs, Grief, and the Memorial Vault of Stalag Luft III', Journal of War and Culture Studies, 16, pp. 332 - 353, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/17526272.2022.2097774
    Journal articles | 2022
    Alexander K, 2022, ''"Vilely Murdered": Five Australians were among the 50 killed in reprisals for the Great Escape from a Nazi prison camp.'', Wartime. Official Magazine of the Australian War Memorial, pp. 16 - 21
    Journal articles | 2022
    2022, ''"Vilely Murdered": Five Australians were among the 50 killed in reprisals for the Great Escape from a Nazi prison camp.'',
    Journal articles | 2021
    Alexander K, 2021, 'The Legacy of Captivity. When Australians were released from Stalag Luft III, somehow everything was different.', Wartime, Winter 2021, pp. 54 - 58
    Journal articles | 2020
    Alexander K, 2020, 'No worthwhile job to do', Wartime, 91, pp. 54 - 60
  • Conference Presentations | 2021
    Alexander K, 2021, '‘He “assaulted me at the matrimonial home”: domestic aggression, violence, and coercive behaviour in the lives of former prisoners of war.’', presented at HASS Conflict + society seminar, Online webinar, 28 September 2021 - 28 September 2021
    Theses / Dissertations | 2020
    Alexander K, 2020, Emotions of Captivity: Australian Airmen Prisoners of Stalag Luft III and their Families, UNSW Canberra

 

Awarded the Australian War Memorial's 2021 Bryan Gandevia Prize for Australian military–medical history, for PhD thesis “Emotions of Captivity: Australian Airmen Prisoners of Stalag Luft III and their Families”, completed at the UNSW, Canberra in 2020.

Kristen Alexander is interested in the emotions and moral dilemmas of warfare. She also has a long-standing fascination with the personal stories of Australian airmen. Her specific research interests include Australian Second World War airman, particularly of the RAAF; Australian prisoners of war in the European and Japanese theatres; the emotional responses to warfare of women on the Australian home front; and the moral dilemmas encountered by airmen during the Second World War. She is currently writing a book from her 2020 thesis, and revising her first biography, Clive Caldwell Air Ace.