Dr Fay Anderson is an Associate Professor and the Program Director of the Master of Journalism in the School of Media, Film and Journalism. Since her appointment at Monash University in 2012, Fay has been the Deputy Head of School, 2022 - 2023; Head of Journalism, 2018 - 2021; Acting Head of Journalism in 2017 and the Deputy Head of Journalism, 2016 – 2017; the Film Media Communication PhD Program Director, 2017; the PhD Journalism Convenor, 2014 - 2017 and 2022 onwards; and the Deputy Head of the School of Media, Film and Journalism (Education) 2014.

Fay is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. She has extensive experience in research and teaching in Journalism Studies, Australian Studies and History, having worked previously at the University of Melbourne from 2002 to 2011. From 2007 to 2009, Fay was the Director of the Australian Centre, and the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies Research Chair, 2010 and 2011.

She currently serves on the editorial board of the Australian Journal of Politics and History and is a member on the Centre for Media History's Advisory Board at Macquarie University.

Fay’s research focuses on media history. She has published widely in journalism history, war, oral history, press photography, biography, crime and the media, genocide, trauma, migration, and memory. 

Fay has authored and edited five books, including An Historian’s Life: Max Crawford and the Politics of Academic Freedom (MUP, 2005); her co-authored book with Richard Trembath Witnesses to War: The History of Australian Conflict Reporting (MUP, 2011); and Shooting the Picture: Press Photography in Australia, co-authored with Sally Young (MUP, 2016). Fay’s recent book, The Holocaust and Australian Journalism: Reporting and Reckoning, was published by Palgrave Macmillan in March 2024. You can find it here.

Previous significant projects have included the ARC Linkage Project on the history of Australian conflict reporting in partnership with the National Library of Australia and the Bean Foundation [LP0560359], and the ARC Linkage Project funded project on the history and significance of Australian press photography in partnership with the National Library of Australia and the Walkley Foundation [LP 120200458]. Visit the Research website for Press Photography in Australia.

One of the most important initiatives of the project is sixty oral history interviews with Australian newspaper and magazine photographers kept at the National Library of Australia’s Oral History and Folklore Collection.

Fay’s last ARC-funded project was ‘Envisaging Citizenship: Australian Histories and Global Connections’ [DP200100088]. The project, led by Professor Jane Lydon, with Professor Amanda Nettelbeck and Professor Melissa Miles, investigated how visual images have defined, contested and advanced ideas of Australian citizenship and rights from European settlement to the present. Responding to the lack of a shared mainstream understanding of Australian citizenship, the project looked beyond legal definitions to explore cultural and especially visual views of citizenship over time. You can find the project’s website here.

Fay’s new ARC-funded project is ‘Australian Journalism, Trauma and Community’ [DP240101293]. She is the Lead Chief Investigator with the project team encompassing Associate Professor Laura Jobson, Dr Stephanie Brookes, Dr Deb Anderson, and Associate Professor Alexandra Wake. The project, beginning in 2024, examines the professional and personal costs of reporting on trauma for Australian journalists and the communities they engage with by undertaking a groundbreaking historical study of journalists’ exposure to trauma over the past century. It seeks to generate new knowledge by transforming our understanding of the relationship between journalism and trauma and the broader implications for the profession and the public. Expected outcomes of this project include scholarly, educational and public resources in collaboration with media organisations, Everymind, and the DART Center for Journalism & Trauma. 

Fay has supervised 13 PhD and 4 MA candidates to completion, and would particularly welcome research degree supervisions in: 

• Media History
• Press Photography
• Journalism culture and trauma
• Genocide and the Media
• Media and Crime
• Media and Immigration
• The Media, Citizenship and Humanitarianism
• Gender and the Media
• Oral History
• War, Censorship and Trauma