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Dr Alison Alexander

Tasmanian Honour Roll of Women logo
Alison Alexander

Awarded for service to cultural heritage; literature

Born: 23 September 1949

Entered on roll: 2023


"Recognises the important role of women in history"

Dr Alison Alexander is a seventh-generation Tasmanian and an award-winning author who has written 34 historical works about Tasmania.

While Alison was a University of Tasmania Honours student, her thesis about Australian children’s author Mary Grant Bruce was accepted by publishers Angus & Robertson. Billabong’s Author was published in 1979 and was the start of her writing career. Alison went on to complete a PhD at the University of Tasmania.

In 1998 Alison was employed by the Glenorchy City Council to write the history of the city. Glenorchy 1805-1964 was the first of her commissioned histories.

When Alison found information about Caroline Denison, the governor’s wife, starting a refuge for fallen women it led to an interest in governors’ wives and the book, Governors’ Ladies: the wives and mistresses of Van Diemen’s Land governors, published in 1986. The book The Ambitions of Lady Jane Franklin: Victorian Lady Adventurer won the Australian National Biography Award 2014.

Alison has also written numerous journal articles and edited publications including The Companion to Tasmanian History (2005).

In 2022, The Waking Dream of Art: Patricia Giles, Painter by Alison Alexander won the Dick and Joan Green Family Award for Tasmanian History. The award recognised the important role of women in Tasmanian history.

The discovery of Alison’s own convict ancestors led to her writing Tasmania’s Convicts, published in 2010 by Allen & Unwin.

Alison is the President of the Convict Women’s Press (CWP) a not-for-profit book publishing association. CWP publish books about female convicts, particularly those written by members of the Female Convicts Research Centre, of which Alison has been a long-term committee member, author, and editor of many of their publications.

Alison is a Life Member of the Tasmanian Historical Research Association and was awarded the Clive Lord Memorial Medal by the Royal Society of Tasmania for her research in Tasmanian history.

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