Dr Fay Anderson is an Associate Professor 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 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.

Fay’s research focuses on media history. She has published widely in the areas of 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 forthcoming book, The Holocaust and Australian Journalism: Reporting and Reckoning will be published by Palgrave Macmillan in 2023.

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 Press Photography in Australia research website.

One of its 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, https://catalogue.nla.gov.au/Record/6422095.  

Fay’s latest ARC-funded project is ‘Envisaging Citizenship: Australian Histories and Global Connections’ [DP200100088]. The project, led by Professor Jane Lydon, with Professor Amanda Nettelbeck and Professor Melissa Miles, aims to investigate the ways that 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, it looks beyond legal definitions to explore cultural and especially visual views of citizenship over time. Through collaboration with museum, media and education sectors, our project will provide a forward-looking and accessible public history, and utilise the potential of images to broaden contemporary debates about citizenship. You can find the project's website here: https://picturing-citizenship.org

Fay has supervised 11 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