By Director: Dr Jeff Kildea

The Irish Anzacs Project aims to identify all the Irish-born men and women who served in the Australian Imperial Force (AIF) during the First World War and to provide a publicly accessible database containing information on each of them. The database includes the names of more than 5800 Irish Anzacs. It provides families with information on their Irish born family members who served in the AIF in the war as well as providing statistical data to assist researchers understand the contribution of the Irish to the Australian war effort.

The information in the database has been extracted from the service records held by the National Archives of Australia (NAA), and includes the following details: name, town and county of birth, religion, occupation, marital status, next of kin location, date and state of enlistment, declared age, the unit to which initially posted, and the soldier’s fate and the date thereof.

In addition, information has been added from sources maintained by the Australian War Memorial (AWM) such as the Roll of Honour (which records those who were killed or died as a result of their war service), the Embarkation Roll, the list of Honours and Awards, the Australian Red Cross’s files (which relate to wounded and missing soldiers and prisoners of war), and the Nominal Roll (the transcription of which is as yet incomplete).

Links to NAA and AWM websites enable searchers to view the original records of the Irish Anzacs they are researching. The database provides for each Irish-born soldier and nurse a comprehensive record of their service in the AIF. The Irish Anzacs Project began in 2011 as a research undertaking by Dr Jeff Kildea of the Global Irish Studies Centre at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), made possible by a grant in 2012 from the Irish government’s Emigrant Support Program administered by the Irish Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.

The database was launched in October 2014 by the Irish Minister for Foreign Affairs Charlie Flanagan TD. The database website was originally hosted by the UNSW Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Repository (FASS Repository), which ceased to operate in July 2020. Public access to the database was revived in 2026 through the website Irish Anzacs