This morning we hear about an ambitious project called Founders and Survivors - one of the world's great studies into immigration following convicts and their descendents over five generations.

We're joined by two of the project leaders, convict historian Associate Professor Hamish Maxwell-Stewart from the University of Tasmania and Professor Janet McCalman from the University of Melbourne. She's especially interested in social and medical history.

Author and historian Babette Smith tells us about her convict ancestor, Susannah Watson and we hear how to verify your convict ancestry from Laurice Cross, herself a descendant of five convicts.

An mp3 is available for download.