Gianfranco Cresciani papers

fonds

1840-2015

Textual Records, Graphic Materials, Photographs

9664488

2.88 metres of textual material (18 boxes)
185 photographic prints
138 negatives
8 slides

Gianfranco Cresciani, New South Wales Government advisor and Italo-Australian historian was born on 29 May 1940 at Trieste, Italy, son of Giovanni, businessman, and his wife Giovanna, nee Ambrosi. Educated at Trieste he migrated to Sydney, Australia in February 1962. He gained employment as a Transport Administrator with Electric Power Transmission Pty. Limited, a civil and structural engineering company, before moving into advisory roles in the public sector including with the Ethnic Affairs Commission. He graduated in 1971 from the University of Sydney, Bachelor of Arts (Hons) and in 1978, Master of Arts with first class honours. In 1989 and 1994 he was a member of the Australian Delegation renegotiating the Italo-Australian Cultural Agreement. In 2004, the Italian Government awarded him the honour of Cavaliere Ufficiale dell’Ordine al Merito, and in 2005 he was awarded an honorary doctorate from the University of New South Wales in recognition of “distinguished eminence in the field of history”. Cresciani has written many books and articles relating his familiarities of the Italian experience in Australia, most notably ‘Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945’.

Source: Compiled from the collection.

Comprises correspondence, notes, papers and photographs relating to the Italian community in Australia including the work of the Dante Alighieri Society. The collection has a strong emphasis on many aspects of the politics of the Italian community in Australia after the First World War, more specifically Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Communism. It contains historical papers of Italian-Australian activists Matteo Cristofaro and Luigi Stellato, and includes notes, research papers and drafts of Gianfranco Cresciani’s books including Fascism, Anti-Fascism and Italians in Australia, 1922-1945 (1980), The Italians (1985) and Migrants or Mates: Italian Life in Australia (1988)

Correspondence has been arranged chronologically except where Cresciani has numbered items of correspondence, where they are kept in numerical order

English, Italian

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