Back to
Dr Kristen Alexander

Dr Kristen Alexander

Adjunct Associate Lecturer

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

Doctor of Philosophy, Canberra (2020).

Canberra
School of Humanities & Social Sciences

Dr Kristen Alexanderwas awarded a PhD by 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 .

Kristen is a Visiting Fellow at Canberra and currently works as an editorial assistant on War & Society Journal, .

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

Currently, Kristen is a research assistant toACR 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,
  • 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,
    Journal articles | 2023
    Alexander K, 2023, 'Missing in Action: An ace fighter pilot vanished while defending Darwin against the town's 53rd Japanese air raid', Wartime
    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, 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 , 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.