Convict Ancestors

• • Orientation and introduction
  • Captured, tried and transported
  • Voyaging to the Australian penal colonies
  • Women, children and colonial domesticity
  • Convict life in the colonies

No eligibility requirements

Special requirements

No special requirements

Convict, prison and court records can provide rich, if sometimes disturbing evidence, of the lives led by past ancestors. This subject will draw upon the expertise of leading historians of crime, the law and convict transportation to guide students through the vast archival underbelly of the criminal justice system. Using large data sets assembled as part of the Founders and Survivors and Digital Panopticon projects you will be shown how to contextualise individual conviction and life course histories by comparing them with the records of others that shared similar experiences. This is a subject for those who want to get "forensic" about their past.

• Transcription (10%)
• Online quizzes (40%)
• Case study (50%)