Knowing Effie Karageorgos and knowing her inquisitive nature, it would be hard to imagine her as an accountant. Effie’s unyielding curiosity, and her background as a second-generation Greek-Australian, has forged her path and sealed her destiny as a historian. “At first I wanted to do an accounting degree. But I was reading more about different wars that were going on and completely disagreed with them, and I wanted to find out why they happened and how they can be stopped.” Not only this, Effie says a curiosity into her family’s history sparked a burning desire to find out more.

“Greece is one of the oldest countries in the world; it would be unnatural not to be interested in the history.” Effie Karageorgos, historian.

“At the same time, all these things were coming up about my own family, about when the Germans went into Greece in World War II, and that interested me as well. And because Greece is one of the oldest countries in the world; it would be unnatural not to be interested in the history.” Effie’s Greek background has put her in good stead at Flinders University.

Part of the reason she got the role as an Academic Skills Advisor at the Student Learning Centre was her Greek background, which enables her to be culturally sensitive to immigrants and international students. She helps these students with their studies as many have English as a second language.

She is also a PhD researcher for the Department of History and is currently in the middle of writing her second thesis titled Soldiering: Current Theory and the Attitudes and Everyday Experiences of Australian Soldiers in the Second Boer War and the Vietnam War.

“I’m looking at the Vietnam War and the Boer War in South Africa. I’ve gone around Australia to all the libraries and archives and read all the letters and diaries of the Australian soldiers who fought in those wars. I am comparing their letters to theories that have come out about soldiers in the 20th and 21st century and seeing whether soldiers are always the same or different according to when the war is. Of course they are different but how different they are.”

Reading letters and diaries provides an amazing insight into what the soldiers were thinking and feeling, but also a human element to the soldiers. “During the Boer War soldiers would write letters to their male friends; and it won’t be about the war, it would be about how beautiful the women in South Africa are or about how ugly they are. They talk about how much they don’t like officers. I read about a solider that pretended he was really sick all the time so he wouldn’t have to fight but apparently he danced every night.”

Effie’s thesis has taken her to the United Kingdom. “I did some research in the Imperial War Museum in London, and gave a paper at a conference on Writing the empire: scribblings from below in Bristol.” And she was also the recipient of the James Miller Main Prize in History for best honors results.

After Effie finishes her thesis, she has a planned trip to Greece to look forward to. “I can’t wait to go to Greece,” she says, “sit there with my great-uncle drinking homemade wine.” She says that the visit will be a holiday but can that happen in a country as rich in history as Greece? “I am not going to do any research while I am there but I am going discover how much I can of Greece. The one thing I’ve always been interested in is during the Greek civil war, when all the communist kids were sent over to communist countries during this time. So I’d like to ask the questions while I am over in Greece.”

And it’s not just in Greece, Effie says her curious nature disallows her from ever taking off her hat as a historian. “You can never switch off with this kind of stuff, it’s impossible,” says Effie. “Every time I see my grandfather – he was a communist in Greece and left because his brother got killed – and whenever I talk to him, I try to get as much information out of him.”

Undeniably, Effie says the main focus in history is to learn from it. “Many people have said it many, many times that if you don’t know about what happened in the past and why it happened then you have no idea what’s going to happen in the future and how to stop the same things happening again.”