2026 Female Convicts Research Centre Seminar/Webinar

The Female Convicts Research Centrewill be presenting its annual Female Convicts Research Centre Seminar on Sunday 3 May 2026 at the University of Tasmania’s Sandy Bay Campus in Hobart. We would be most grateful if you could share this information with your members and networks.

The theme for the 2026 seminar is:

Compliance or Defiance: Working the System – How did convict women cope with the convict system in Van Diemen’s Land?

This seminar explores the ways in which convict women navigated the rules and expectations of the convict system. Did they submit, resist, or negotiate a path somewhere in between? Were these choices deliberate, or shaped by circumstance? And how were their actions recorded and interpreted within the official convict conduct records?

The seminar will feature a range of speakers presenting new research into the lives of transported women, their experiences within the convict system, and the traces they left in historical records. Speakers include Alison Alexander, Dr Dennis Dodd, Ann-Maree Seymour, Pip Duncan, Felicity Hickman, Judith Oke, Maureen Mann, Karen Penn and others. Topics range from individual life stories and family reconstructions to broader explorations of the convict system and the ways women responded to it. Presentations will include studies of convict servants, probation station unrest, illegitimate pregnancies, and the experiences of young Irish women transported to Van Diemen’s Land.

Seminar details

Sunday 3 May 2026
9.00 am – 3.00 pm
Stanley Burbury Theatre
University of Tasmania, Sandy Bay Campus

The seminar will also be available online via webinar, enabling participants from across Australia and overseas to attend. Registration and program details are on our website:

This event is always of particular interest to family historians and researchers working with Australian convict records, and we warmly invite your members to attend either in person or online. Thank you for helping us share this event with the wider family history community.