PhD students often find themselves too caught up in their studies to spend time with their friends, keep a diary or go to dancing classes.
But for Anna Makrenoglou, it’s all part of the research.
“I’m looking at understanding the lives and choices of third-generation Greek Australian women who live in Melbourne,” she says.
Makrenoglou herself is a third-generation Greek Australian woman living in Melbourne, as are many of her friends. So if she wants to learn more about her subject, she can’t really spend all her time in an academic ivory tower.
“It’s just the added bonus of being able to draw on your own experience,” she says.
“I will be conducting interviews, so I can draw on my own circle of friends.”
She’s interested in the kind of life choices young Greek Australian women are making, choices around relationships, jobs and families.
And while Generation Y usually gets a bad wrap for being disengaged from their history and culture, Anna says her Greek heritage is a very strong part of who she is.
“There’s always been a strong sense of being Greek in my family,” she says.
“We have taken part in the shared factors that bind the Greek community and the cultural practices – a shared language, religion, shared cultural practices, values and traditions.”
Makrenoglou is far from your stereotypical generation Y-er. She speaks fluent Greek – not just ‘yiasou’ and ‘baklava’ – and, rather than flitting from job to job, Anna says she’s always wanted to be an academic.
While studying criminology and behavioural studies in her undergraduate Arts degree, Anna was exposed to a lot of social theory, and she began to think about writing a PhD about theories of identity.
“I always knew I wanted to do a PhD,” she says, but adds that she was aware it was a big research commitment.
“I knew I wanted to do something I was really passionate about, and that I could sit down and research and talk to people about,” she says.
It’s difficult to talk to Anna without constantly coming back to her studies – after all, the girl and her research are intertwined.
So much so that part of her exploration involves keeping a diary. She is hoping that the personal side to her thesis will make it more readable than a lot of dry, technical writing in the academic world.
A year into the research, Makrenoglou has focused so far on the experiences of her parents’ generation.
“Second generation Greek Australians grew up in homes that insisted on preserving the national identity, the faith, the language that their parents had grown up with, and just maintaining the tradition of the homeland,” she says.
But she says these second-generation Greek Australians were essentially Australian: locally educated, fluent in English and “really at home in the mainstream culture”.
“Therefore they kind of experienced having to negotiate the tensions and the possibilities that emerged from the exchange between the two cultures.”
So Anna’s looking at third-generation Greek Australians, whose contact with Greek-born relatives may be limited to their grandparents.
She says the choices these young women will make are a lot freer of cultural obligation than the choices of their grandmothers.
“They are a part of the Australian mainstream and always have been, and they participate fully in its institutions and Australian popular culture,” she says.
“But having said that, they still feel the need to cultivate a hybrid identity, so it’s really fascinating.”
And as she delves deeper into her research, Makrenoglou isn’t sure her peers will be as involved with their heritage as she is.
“I know that everyone’s experiences are different and I do not anticipate that everyone will have had the same upbringing,” she says.
“That’s what I’m interested in hearing about: how the different upbringings have resulted in how they feel about being Greek Australian at this moment in their life.”
While many young women aren’t as Greek-oriented as Anna, she has been pleasantly surprised by the level of engagement among her peers.
“I recently started a Greek dancing class and it’s really opened my eyes to my whole project,” she says.
“There’s just this strong sense of enthusiasm and pride and a real passion for learning the various traditional dances of all the different regions and just the opportunity to feel a connection with their ancestors and their ethnicity.”
“I hadn’t anticipated that there’d be so much enthusiasm for taking part, because it doesn’t stop there – they perform and go to different events on the weekend and they go interstate, so it’s a big deal and it was a big shock.”
If you’re a third generation Greek Australian woman and are interested in being interviewed as part of Anna’s PhD, email anna.makrenoglouarts@monash.edu.au