Special Guest Talk: Ghosts Beneath the Waves: WWII, Memory and the Sea

Some 2,000 war and merchant ships were sunk in Southeast Asia during the Second World War—around ten per cent of global wartime losses. Many of these wrecks—American, Dutch, British, Australian, and Japanese—still lie in the waters of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Timor-Leste. Unlike the land-based memorials of Europe, which enable formal commemoration through an established infrastructure of remembrance, wartime shipwrecks are a poignant reminder of how the ocean complicates efforts to memorialise those lost at sea. Instead, these wrecks are politically sensitive, environmentally unstable, and often neglected, due to the legal and diplomatic complexities of managing sovereign craft, unexploded ordnance, leaking oil and human remains in foreign waters.

Join Dr Natali Pearson, as we mark 80 years since the end of the Second World War, as she explores how these sunken sites invite us to rethink the legacy of war, not just on land, but in the shifting, contested seascapes of our region.

Natali will be in conversation with the Museum curator of Navy - Stirling Smith

About the Speaker

Dr Natali Pearson is a DECRA Fellow (2025-2027) and Senior Lecturer in Heritage Studies in the Discipline of Archaeology at the University of Sydney, where she teaches into the postgraduate Museum and Heritage Studies Program. Natali’s research fellowship focuses on sunken warships and maritime heritage diplomacy in Southeast Asia. Natali’s first book, Belitung: The Afterlives of a Shipwreck, is published by University of Hawai‘i Press and National University of Singapore Press. She is President of the Indonesia Council, a member of ICOMOS and a Councillor of the Australasian Institute for Maritime Archaeology. Prior to joining academia, she worked for the Australian Government’s Department of Defence in Canberra.

Dr Pearson is the recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Award (DE250100827) funded by the Australian Government.

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Image 1: HMAS Perth (I) through the palm trees off the coast of Tobago, 1939. Photo by George Hatfield, supplied courtesy George Hatfield Junior.

Image 2: Wreath laying during the 76th anniversary commemorations above the wreck of HMAS Perth (I) in Banten Bay. Photo courtesy George Hatfield Junior / Australian Embassy Jakarta.