This joint talk is a review of eighteen months of ethnographical research and reciprocal collaboration between an Iranian socio-cultural anthropologist and one of the only ex-internee survivors of the Australian WWII internment camps who has written a autobiography about her experiences. She was captured and detained with her German parents on Iranian soil in September 1941 after the British and Russian Armies invaded this neutral country.

In this talk, Helga Griffin (Girschik R36356) and Pedram Khosronejad (Curator of Persian Arts, Powerhouse Museum, Sydney / Adjunct Professor, Western Sydney University) will discuss applied anthropological research methods and challenges that they faced during their close collaborations regarding Helga’s childhood memory, family immigrant archives and material culture (family photo albums, letters, etc.).

This talk presents a unique opportunity for research students in the field of Iranian and Middle Eastern Studies to examine the suitability of such interdisciplinary studies in their own work, how we presenters could have improved ours and how we might now extend our project.

(The prefix “R” indicates “apprehended by the British Forces in Iran” and the number is an assigned detainee's ID number for each internee.)