annual report - 2012–13 - Australian Academy of the Humanities

THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE HUMANITIES

ANNUAL REP ORT2012–13

CONTACT DETAILS

SECRETARIAT

Executive Director Dr Christina Parolin

Office Manager Christine Barnicoat

Policy and Projects Manager Dr Kylie Brass

Fellowship Officer Gabriela Cabral

Publications and Gillian Cosgrove – from July 2013 Communications Coordinator

International Coordinator Dr Meredith Wilson

Administration Officer Michelle Nagle

Postal Address GPO Box 93 Canberra ACT 2601 Australia

Street Address 3 Liversidge Street Acton ACT 0200

Email Address [email protected]

For staff members use [email protected]

President [email protected]

Website www.humanities.org.au

Telephone +61 [0]2 6125 9860

Fax +61 [0]2 6248 6287

© 2013 Australian Academy of the HumanitiesAll images © Australian Academy of the Humanities unless otherwise indicated.Editor: Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby am FahaDesigner: Noel WendtmanLayout artist: Gillian CosgrovePrinter: New Millenium Print

T H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S

A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 3

This document is a true and accurate account of the activities and abridged financial report of the Australian Academy of the Humanities for the financial year 2012–13, in accordance with the reporting requirements of the Academy’s Royal Charter and By-Laws, and for the conditions of grants made by the Australian Government under the Higher Education Support Act 2003 (Cth).

CONTENTS

From the President 2

From the Executive Director 4

Council 5

Strategic Plan 6

The Fellowship 7

Events 12

Policy and Research 15

Publications and Communications 18

Grants and Awards 19

International Activities 22

Obituaries 24

Treasurer’s Statement 42

Abridged Financial Report 43

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

Funding for the production of this report, and a number of activities described herein, has been provided by the Australian Government through the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (referred to throughout as ‘the Department’ or DIICCSRTE).

The views expressed in this report do not necessarily reflect the views of the Department.

T H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 32

F R O M T H E P R E S I D E N T

The 2012–13 year has been one of considerable activity for the Academy, guided by the key priorities identified in our 2011–15 Strategic Plan, as detailed in the following pages. I take this opportunity to share some highlights from an extraordinarily busy year.

Leadership in the Humanities Community

One of the most significant developments for the year 2012–13 was the Academy’s success in securing funding for an important new project to examine the health of the humanities and social sciences disciplines in Australia. The Mapping the Humanities and Social Sciences in Australia project will develop a comprehensive understanding of student enrolment trends and teaching and research activity, and will examine current and future capacity in these disciplines.

The project is being undertaken by the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, and is co-funded by the two Academies, the Office of the Chief Scientist and the (then) Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education. The Academy acknowledges the strong support for the project from the Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb Ac, and former Minister for Science and Education, Senator the Hon Chris Evans. The project leader is Professor Graeme Turner FAHA.

The final report, due June 2014, will be a signal achievement for the Academy. It will provide an empirical base for decision-making by the research community, policy makers and institutions, particularly in light of concerns that have been expressed for a number of years about the health of our disciplines.

Engaging with Policy Makers

An important role of the Academy is to provide independent and expert advice to improve public policy. In February 2013, the Academy staged a large public forum focused on the research impact agenda and the implications for the humanities disciplines of its potential introduction as a policy measure. The forum drew together more than 100 participants from across the policy, research, and research funding sectors. Convened by Professor Mark Finnane FAHA, the forum provided an occasion for the humanities community in Australia to gain a better understanding of the policy drivers around research impact, and an important opportunity to convey to policy makers some of the specificities relating to the humanities disciplines in attempting to measure research benefit.

Connecting with the Humanities Community

The Academy’s annual Symposium encourages collegiality within the Fellowship and affords an opportunity to engage with the wider humanities community. Challenging (the) Humanities, the 2012 Annual Symposium convened by Professor Tony Bennett FAHA AcSS, proved an effective theme to explore the changing nature of scholarship in the humanities in response to many societal challenges, the specific challenges facing our disciplines, and the exciting and innovative responses from humanities researchers to these challenges.

The Discipline Panel Meetings were again held in conjunction with the Symposium, providing members of the disciplinary sections and colleagues from outside the Fellowship to explore issues ranging from the application of linguistics in the legal process and archaeology’s engagement with the resources industry, to the status of undergraduate education in Classical Studies and pedagogical innovation in English and literary studies.

Promoting Excellence in the Humanities

I was delighted to present two outstanding young scholars with the Academy’s early career medals in a ceremony at the 2012 Annual Fellows’ Dinner: Dr Michael Ondaatje, winner of the Max Crawford Medal; and Dr Michael Hooper, winner of the McCredie Musicological Award. Joint winner of the 2012 Max Crawford Medal, Dr Lisa Ford, will receive her medal at the 2013 Annual Fellows’ Dinner.

The Academy is delighted to support these awards which celebrate the achievement of the remarkable young scholars who constitute the next generation of leaders and thinkers in the humanities. The awards are made possible by the generous bequests from Fellows – in this instance, the late Emeritus Professor R.M. Crawford FAHA and the late Professor Andrew McCredie FAHA.

Supporting the Dissemination of Humanities Research

A key priority for the Academy is demonstrating the value of the humanities to the social, economic and cultural wellbeing of the nation, and supporting the dissemination of humanities research is one means to help achieve this. The Academy’s Publication Subsidies Scheme continues to provide vital funds to researchers in an increasingly difficult environment for scholarly monograph publishing.

This year, the Academy produced the fourth issue of our very successful journal, which continues to showcase the work of the Fellows and the richness of research in the humanities in Australia. It is distributed to libraries, in Qantas Club lounges and to Australian Embassies around the world.

3T H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 3

Collaborations with Allied Organisations

The Academy works with a variety of allied organisations throughout the year as detailed throughout this report. Three particular collaborations of note demonstrate the breadth of these connections.

The Academy is delighted to announce a new partnership with the National Library of Australia to undertake a series of interviews with Fellows of the Academy to enhance the library’s oral history collection. The interviews will be undertaken over the next two years, and will enrich our understanding of the development of the humanities disciplines and the life the Academy since 1969.

A collaboration of a different size and scope is the work being undertaken with our colleagues in the other three Learned Academies under the $10 million Securing Australia’s Future research programme. The Academy is represented by Fellows on the Programme Steering Committee, and on the Expert Working Groups of each of the six initial projects. Our Academy is supporting one project, Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond, led by Professor Ien Ang FAHA.

In January 2013, the annual rotation of the Presidency of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) fell to our Academy. In addition to my role as President for 2013, our Executive Director, Dr Christina Parolin, became Chair of the ACOLA Secretariat Board. ACOLA provides an opportunity for the four Learned Academies to engage on matters of mutual interest, and to undertake collaborative research projects which require multidisciplinary perspectives, including, but not limited to, those under the Securing Australia’s Future programme.

International

The appointment of a part-time International Coordinator to help implement the Academy’s International Strategy has seen a significant increase in activity around international engagement and collaboration. The 2012–13 year included a number of very successful bilateral workshops outlined in more detail in the following pages; on ‘Valuing the Humanities’ undertaken with our colleagues from the British Academy; on cultural heritage management with researchers from the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences; and with European research community representatives to discuss ways to further increase research collaborations between Australian and European researchers. The Academy fosters these international relationships to fulfil its mandate of engaging with the international humanities community and to facilitate greater collaborative opportunities for Australian humanities researchers across institutions and disciplines, and at all stages of their careers.

Closing Words

The last word ought be saved for the important gesture of thanking all of those who contributed to the Academy’s important achievements outlined in this report. My thanks firstly to my colleagues on Council, including those who have taken on roles additional to the general stewardship of the Academy – to Emeritus Professor Graeme Clarke AO FAHA FSA, Honorary Secretary; Professor Gillian Whitlock FAHA, International Secretary; Professor Pam Sharpe FAHA, Treasurer; and Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby AM FAHA, Editor.

I particularly wish to thank Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson FAHA FBA FRSE, who finished his term on Council at the November 2012 meeting. Professor Donaldson has made an outstanding contribution to the Academy over many years, and in many roles, particularly his time as President. My thanks also to outgoing Council member, Professor Stephanie Trigg FAHA, for her valuable contribution both to Council and to the Academy’s Awards Committee for the last three years. Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA was warmly welcomed back to Council as Immediate Past President following his sabbatical in Rome in 2012, as was our newest Council member, Professor Deirdre Coleman FAHA, who fills the position vacated by Professor Trigg.

I am deeply grateful to the Fellows named above who convened our various activities, and have joined Committees and working groups, including those working on the Securing Australia’s Future programme – too many in number to thank individually here. I also sincerely thank the many other Fellows who have given their time to support Academy activities during the 2012–13 year; the Heads of Section, members of the Academy’s various Committees, and to those who provide the expert input in our many policy submissions. The Academy cannot operate without the immense good will and dedication to the organisation – and the humanities more generally – of the Fellows.

My warmest thanks also to the Secretariat whose staunch commitment to the organisation and the values it represents ensures that the Academy is a very effective, well-run and outwardly-focused organisation.

EMERITUS PROFESSOR LESLEY JOHNSON AM FAHA

PRESIDENT


F R O M T H E E X E C U T I V E D I R E C T O R

For the Secretariat of the Academy, the year 2012–13 has been one of renewal and rebuilding. With the uncertainty of proposed funding cuts now largely alleviated following the outcomes of the 2012 Commonwealth Review of the Learned Academies, the Academy looked to reinvigorate the Secretariat to enable the key priorities identified by Council in the 2011–15 Strategic Plan to be implemented.

We welcomed three new part-time Secretariat members to our small team during 2012–13, taking the total staff numbers to 5.9 FTE. Mrs Michelle Nagle provides much needed administrative support, assisting across a wide range of administrative tasks undertaken by the Secretariat. Dr Meredith Wilson joined the office as International Coordinator in July 2012, greatly assisting the Secretariat to better service its international obligations, respond to opportunities for engagement and collaboration, and to implement the International Strategy adopted by Council in 2012. In July 2013, we made another much anticipated appointment in Ms Gillian Cosgrove, as Publications and Communications Coordinator. Working within budget has meant all our new positions have been part-time appointments, but despite their reduced hours, these new staff members have already made a significant contribution to the operations of the Academy.

In our efforts to handle increasing workloads, we regularly review our administrative procedures to ensure we are working as efficiently as possible. Administering a rigorous and thorough electoral process is one of the most important tasks undertaken in the Secretariat, though to date it has been one of the more labour intensive. In late 2012, the Council and the Heads of Section approved a plan to move to an electronic voting system, to be implemented for the 2013 elections. Work on establishing the structure, liaising with our new service provider, and undergoing rigorous testing of the new system has occurred over the first six months of 2013. At the end of the 2012–13 year, we are confident that the new process will prove a boon for the Fellows, in providing a seamless and accessible format for voting. The time-consuming establishment work undertaken this year will also stand us in good stead for a much-improved administrative process for the years ahead.

As we work to implement the Academy’s Strategic Plan, a significant degree of the Secretariat’s work is also outwardly focused, ensuring that the Academy is well connected with the broader humanities community, with stakeholders and allied organisations. This ranges from the various officials of various government departments and agencies, science and education attaché and staff at international embassies located in Canberra, staff of the national and state-based cultural institutions and other organisations who represent the interests of the humanities. These connections are important ways of fulfilling the Academy’s mandate of advancing interest in, and understanding of, the humanities, and acting as an advisory body in matters relating to the humanities.

As Chair of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) Secretariat Board for 2013, I have worked closely throughout the year with my counterparts in the three other Learned Academies. The ACOLA structure allows the Academies not only to undertake joint research projects and other activities which benefit from multidisciplinary perspectives, such as the Securing Australia’s Future programme, but to exchange ideas about administrative processes, protocols and structures that are common to the four organisations.

The activities outlined in the 2012–13 Annual Report reflect what has been a very busy year for the Secretariat right across the core functions of our organisation; from international, policy and advocacy, and fellowship; to grants and awards, communications and publications and operations management. The Secretariat staff continue to work ‘above and beyond’ to ensure that all our activities are managed and delivered in a professional manner, and always with good cheer. I am deeply grateful to, and unreservedly proud of, the Secretariat team who I have the pleasure and honour to lead.

DR CHRISTINA PAROLINEXECUTIVE DIRECTOR


C O U N C I L

The Academy is governed by a Council, elected from among its Fellows, which provides strategic direction, policy guidance and management oversight.

COUNCIL TO 17 NOVEMBER 2012

PresidentEmeritus Professor Lesley Johnson AM FAHA

Honorary SecretaryEmeritus Professor Graeme Clarke AO FAHA FSA

TreasurerProfessor Pamela Sharpe FAHA

EditorEmeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby AM FAHA

Past PresidentEmeritus Professor Ian Donaldson FAHA FBA FRSE

Vice-President and International SecretaryProfessor Gillian Whitlock FAHA

Vice-PresidentProfessor Anna Haebich FAHA FASSA

Council MembersProfessor Matthew Spriggs FAHA FSA GSM (VAnuAtu)Professor Stephanie Trigg FAHAEmeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FAHA FASSADr Robert Young FAHA

COUNCIL FROM 17 NOVEMBER 2012

PresidentEmeritus Professor Lesley Johnson AM FAHA

Honorary SecretaryEmeritus Professor Graeme Clarke AO FAHA FSA

TreasurerProfessor Pamela Sharpe FAHA

EditorEmeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby AM FAHA

Immediate Past PresidentProfessor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA

Vice-President and International SecretaryProfessor Gillian Whitlock FAHA

Vice-PresidentProfessor Anna Haebich FAHA FASSA

Council MembersProfessor Deirdre Coleman FAHAProfessor Matthew Spriggs FAHA FSA GSM (VAnuAtu)Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FAHA FASSADr Robert Young FAHA

Members of the Academy Council at the University of Sydney, 2013. l to r: Graeme Clarke, Richard Waterhouse, Anna Haebich, Elizabeth Webby, Robert Young, Deirdre Coleman, Matthew Spriggs, Gillian Whitlock, Lesley Johnson, Joseph Lo Bianco, Pamela Sharpe. photo: aah


COUNCIL MEETINGS

Council met on four occasions in the reporting period: 6 September 2012, 14 November 2012, 18 February 2013 and 30 May 2013.

HEADS OF SECTION

The Academy has ten disciplinary Sections representing the range of scholarly expertise of Fellows. The Council and Secretariat draw upon the expertise vested in the Sections when preparing policy responses to government, participating in international initiatives and developing annual Symposium themes. These Sections also form the Academy’s ten Electoral Sections.

ArchaeologyProfessor Tim Murray FAHA

The ArtsProfessor Jaynie Anderson FAHA

Asian StudiesProfessor Robert Cribb FAHA (to 17 Nov 2012)Associate Professor Helen Creese FAHA (from 17 Nov 2012)

Classical StudiesEmeritus Professor Roger Scott FAHA

Cultural and Communication StudiesProfessor John Sinclair FAHA (to 17 Nov 2012)Professor Tim Rowse FAHA FASSA (from 17 Nov 2012)

EnglishEmeritus Professor Graham Tulloch FAHA

European Languages and CulturesProfessor Stathis Gauntlett FAHA

HistoryProfessor John Gascoigne FAHA

LinguisticsProfessor Jim Martin FAHA (to 17 Nov 2012)Dr Diana Eades FAHA (from 17 Nov 2012)

Philosophy, Religion and the History of IdeasProfessor Majella Franzmann FAHA

S T R AT E G I C P L A N

In 2010 the Council adopted a Strategic Plan for 2011–15 to guide the activities and programmes of the Academy. Each strategy in the Strategic Plan relates to the mission and core objectives of the Academy, and sets out the proposed activities through which the achievement of the objectives will be measured. An implementation plan is considered annually by the Council.

VISION

A tolerant, vibrant and innovative public culture in Australia enriched and enabled by a thriving humanities sector.

MISSION

The Australian Academy of the Humanities exists to advance knowledge of, and the pursuit of excellence in, the humanities in Australia for the benefit of the nation.

OBJECTIVES

1. To promote and develop excellence in the humanities in Australia and abroad.

2. To foster collegiality within the Fellowship and provide a focal point for the wider humanities community in the Australia.

3. To support the dissemination of humanities research to demonstrate the value of the humanities to the social, economic and cultural wellbeing of the nation.

4. To provide independent and expert advice to improve public debate and public policy.

5. To provide leadership in the humanities community in Australia.

6. To advance national cultural prosperity through collaborations with allied Australian organisations and other bodies.

7. To strengthen the humanities in Australia and abroad through collaborations with allied organisations overseas.

8. To support excellent teaching of the humanities at all levels of education in Australia.


T H E F E L L O W S H I P

FELLOWS

As of 30 June 2013 the total number of Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities was 553, including 78 Honorary Fellows and 42 Overseas Fellows.

Foundation FellowsDavid ArmstrongAlexander CambitoglouJames R. LawlerFrancis WestGerald Wilkes

FellowsMichael AcklandAlexander AdelaarAlexandra AikhenvaldRobert AldrichChristine AlexanderPeter AlexanderKeith AllanCynthia AllenPauline AllenPhilip AlmondAtholl AndersonJaynie AndersonWarwick AndersonIen AngEdward AspinallAlan AtkinsonValerie AttenbrowBain AttwoodPhilip AyresGregory BaileyHan BaltussenDirk BaltzlyJoan Barclay-LloydIvan BarkoGeremie BarméGeraldine BarnesAlison BashfordPeter Bellwood

Andrew BenjaminRoger BenjaminMichael BennettTony BennettAlison BettsJohn BigelowVirginia BlainGeoffrey BlaineyBarry BlakeGeoffrey BoltonTim BonyhadyBrian BosworthPenny BoumelhaJames BowlerClare BradfordDavid BradleyRoss BradyRichard BroomeSusan BroomhallTrevor BryceKathryn BurridgeJohn BurrowsJohn ButcherBrendan ByrneBarbara CaineKeith CampbellStewart CandlishHilary CareyDavid CarterAlan ChalmersDavid ChalmersDavid ChandlerRichard CharterisDavid ChristianWilliam ChristieJohn Clark

Graeme ClarkeInga ClendinnenMargaret Clunies RossTony CoadyWilliam CoaldrakeDeirdre ColemanConal CondrenGraham ConnahIan CoplandAlan CorkhillAnthony CousinsRoger CovellPhilip CoxBarbara CreedHelen CreeseRobert CribbPeter CryleGarrett CullityStuart CunninghamAnn CurthoysFrederick D’AgostinoJoy DamousiIain DavidsonPeter DavisRichard DavisGraeme DavisonRafe de CrespignyIgor de RachewiltzFranz-Josef DeitersAlan DenchDonald DenoonJean-Paul DescoeudresAnthony DillerRobert DixonR. M. W. DixonChristine Dobbin

John DockerJames DonaldIan DonaldsonHelen DunstanMark DurieSimon DuringEdward DuykerDiana EadesRifaat EbiedPaul EggertBrian EllisRobert ElsonNicholas EvansMichael EwansDorottya FabianTrevor FennellAntonia FinnaneMark FinnaneGerhard FischerJohn FitzgeraldBrian FletcherJosephine FloodSusan FoleyWilliam FoleyJean FornasieroPeter ForrestRichard FotheringhamDavid FrankelMajella FranzmannAnne FreadmanRichard FreadmanJohn FrodshamAlan FrostJohn FrowEdmund FungRaimond Gaita


Ann GalballyRegina GanterIain GardnerDavid GarriochStephen GartonJohn GascoigneMoira GatensStephen GaukrogerStathis GauntlettPenelope GayAnthony GibbsRoss GibsonPaul GilesPhilip GoadCliff GoddardJack GolsonNanette GottliebJeremy GreenKaren GreenBridget Griffen-FoleyGareth GriffithsJohn GriffithsPaul GriffithsTom GriffithsPatricia GrimshawSasha GrishinColin GrovesRainer GrünAnna HaebichGhassan HageAlan HajekJohn HajekSylvia HallamMichael HallidayPeter HamblyJane HardieMargaret HarrisJohn HartleyGay HawkinsRoslynn HaynesLesley HeadLuise HercusLaurence HergenhanStephen HetheringtonRoger HillmanPeter HiscockPeng HoRobert HodgeRoderick HomeClifford HookerVirginia HookerGregory HorsleyRodney HuddlestonLloyd HumberstoneIan HunterDuncan Ivison

Liz JackaFrank JacksonAlan JamesRobin JeffreyAnthony JohnsLesley JohnsonVivien JohnsonTrevor JohnstonBrian JonesPhilip JonesJohn JoryNaguib KanawatiDaniel KaneGrace KarskensMargaret KartomiJamie KasslerVeronica KellyDavid KennedyJeanette KennettDale KentJohn KinderDiane KirkbyWallace KirsopJohn KleinigStephen KnightStephen KolskyLeonie KramerAnn KumarMarilyn LakeBrij LalMichael LattkeSusan LawrenceJohn LeeDavid LemmingsAlison LewisMiles LewisSamuel LieuIan LilleyGenevieve LloydRosemary LloydJoseph Lo BiancoWilliam LoaderAnthony LowMartyn LyonsStuart MacintyreColin MackerrasRoy MacLeodJohn MakehamRichard MaltbyMargaret ManionGyorgy MarkusDavid MarrDavid MarshallAngus MartinJames MartinLynn Martin

Alfredo Martínez ExpósitoJim MasselosPeter MathewsBrian MatthewsIsabel McBrydeIain McCalmanJanet McCalmanGavan McCormackJock McCullochBrian McFarlaneWilliam McGregorAnne McLarenBrian McMullinAndrew McNamaraTimothy McNamaraPeter McPheePhilip MeadBetty MeehanVincent MegawTimothy MehiganJohn Melville-JonesPeter MenziesFrancesca MerlanConstant MewsDavid MillerMargaret MillerElizabeth MinchinTimothy MinchinVijay MishraFrancis MoloneyClive MooreJohn MoorheadAlbert MoranPeter MorganHoward MorphyMeaghan MorrisTeresa Morris-SuzukiChris MortensenRaoul MortleyMichael MorwoodFrances MueckeStephen MueckeJohn MulvaneyKerry MurphyTim MurrayBronwen NeilBrian NelsonGraham NerlichColin NettelbeckJ. V. NeustupnýNerida NewbiginBrenda NiallSusan O’ConnorDavid OldroydGraham OppyTom O’Regan

Michael OsbornePeter OttoSamantha OwensJohn PainterNikos PapastergiadisPaul PattonMarko PavlyshynAndrew PawleyMichael PearsonElizabeth PembertonHetti PerkinsRoslyn PesmanPam PetersMargaret PlantLorenzo PolizzottoDaniel PottsJohn PoynterWilfrid PrestGraham PriestRobin PriorClive ProbynElspeth ProbynJohn PryorPaul ReddingPeter ReevesAnthony ReidGreg RestallCraig ReynoldsHenry ReynoldsEric RichardsJohn RickardMerle RicklefsRonald RidleyCatherine RigbyDavid RobertsMichael RoeRobert RoseMalcolm RossTimothy RowseAlan RumseyDavid RuniaGillian RussellPenny RussellPierre RyckmansAbdullah SaeedAntonio SagonaPaul SalzmanMargaret SankeyDeryck SchreuderGerhard SchulzJohn ScottRoger ScottPeter SculthorpeFrank SearKrishna SenPamela Sharpe


Kenneth SheedySusan SheridanThomas SheridanAnna SilvasJohn SinclairLarry SitskyGlenda SlugaRoger SmalleyBarry SmithMichael SmithTerence SmithVivian SmithCharles SowerwineVirginia SpateJim SpechtMatthew SpriggsAnn StephenAnthony StephensJanice StockigtDaniel StoljarMargaret StoljarMartin Stuart-FoxYoshio SugimotoSharon SullivanPaul TaçonHarold TarrantChin Liew TenPaul ThomJanna ThompsonPhilip ThomsonRodney ThomsonRodney TiffenHelen TiffinRobin TorrenceMartin TraversStephanie TriggCarl TrockiGarry TrompfGraham TullochDavid TunleyGraeme TurnerIan TyrrellJonathan UngerTheodoor van LeeuwenGerard VaughanPeter VethDavid WalkerChristopher Wallace-CrabbeJohn WardJames WarrenRichard WaterhouseLindsay WatsonJennifer WebbElizabeth WebbyMarshall WeislerPeter White

Robert WhiteShane WhiteJohn WhitehorneGillian WhitlockAnna WierzbickaStephen WildPeter WilsonTrevor WilsonJohn WongRichard YeoRobert YoungCharles Zika

Honorary FellowsJames AdamsPhillip AdamsHarry AllenPenelope AllisonHugh AndersonDavid ArmitageJohn BellRosina BraidottiPeter CareyDawn CaseyDipesh ChakrabartyMaxwell CharlesworthRay ChoateBetty ChurcherChristopher ClarkPatricia ClarkeJohn CoetzeePeter ConradAnne CutlerTerrence CutlerRoger DeanRobert EdwardsSheila FitzpatrickJan FullertonCarrillo GantnerPeter GarnseyKate GrenvilleRanajit GuhaJohn HayShirley HazzardHarry HeseltineRobyn HolmesJanet Holmes à CourtJacqueline HugginsRichard HunterClive JamesBarry JonesEdwin JudgeThomas KeneallyMichael KirbyPatrick KirchDavid Konstan

Geoffrey LancasterSylvia LawsonMabel LeeJohn LeggeGerhard LeitnerWilliam LycanJohn LynchDavid MaloufBruce MansfieldPatrick McCaugheyShirley McKechnieRoss McKibbinMichael McRobbieHugh MellorFergus MillarAlex MillerAnn MoyalGlenn MurcuttLes MurrayJames O’ConnellPatrick O’KeefeLyndel ProttLyndal RoperLionel SawkinsJulianne SchultzKim ScottJames SimpsonBruce SteeleColin SteeleNinian StephenMichael StoneIan TemplemanJohn TranterRoyall TylerTerri-ann WhiteGough Whitlam

Overseas FellowsRobert ArcherRichard BosworthGiovanni CarsanigaLeigh ChambersSean CubittGregory CurrieMartin DaviesMichael DevittLouise EdwardsMark ElvinHilary FraserMalcolm GilliesPeter HarrisonKevin HartAlan HenryElizabeth JeffreysMichael JeffreysBill Jenner

Benedict KerkvlietRandy LaPollaDavid LawtonLi LiuKam LouieJiri MarvanAudrey MeaneyRobert MerrilleesNigel MorganTakamitsu MuraokaPhilip PettitHuw PriceStephen PrickettMargaret RoseWilliam RubinsteinPeter SingerMichael SmithMichael StockerNeil TennantNicholas ThomasMichael TooleyGungwu WangAlan WatchmanDouglas Yen

T H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 31 0

DEATHS

The Academy notes with deep regret the deaths of the following Fellows during this reporting period. We extend our sincere sympathies to their families and friends.

John (Jack) Smart ac (Foundation), 6 October 2012

Elisabeth Murdoch ac dbe (2009), 5 December 2012

Elliott Forsyth (1973), 20 December 2012

Jeffrey Smart ao (2008), 20 June 2013

John Alexander Salmond (1993), 30 June 2013

Obituaries for these Fellows are included in this report, as well as those for Ralph Elliott AM, Peter Steele and Robert K. Webb, all of which did not appear in the 2011–12 Annual Report.

FELLOWS ELECTED IN 2012

Professor Warwick Anderson, Department of History, University of Sydney.

Professor Susan Broomhall, History, University of Western Australia.

Professor Hilary Carey, School of Humanities and Social Science, University of Newcastle.

Professor Jean Fornasiero, School of Humanities, University of Adelaide.

Professor Paul Giles, Department of English, University of Sydney.

Professor Gay Hawkins, Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies, University of Queensland.

Professor Daniel Kane, Chinese Studies, Macquarie University.

Emeritus Professor Veronica Kelly, School of English, Media Studies and Art History, University of Queensland.

Associate Professor Andrew McNamara, School of Media, Entertainment and Creative Arts, Queensland University of Technology.

Professor Philip Mead, English and Cultural Studies, University of Western Australia.

Professor Peter Morgan, School of Languages and Cultures, University of Sydney.

President Lesley Johnson presents Professor David Miller with his Fellowship Certificate at the 2012 Annual General Meeting in Sydney. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

Professor Gillian Russell signs the Charter Book at the 2012 Annual General Meeting in Sydney. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

Professor David Armitage signs the Charter Book at the Secretariat offices in Canberra, July 2012. photo: aah

1 1T H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 3

Dr Bronwen Neil, Centre for Early Christian Studies, Australian Catholic University.

Dr Samantha Owens, School of Music, University of Queensland.

Emeritus Professor Pam Peters, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University.

Professor Penny Russell, Department of History, University of Sydney.

Professor John Wong Fassa FRhists, Department of History, University of Sydney.

HONORARY FELLOWS ELECTED IN 2012

Associate Professor Harry Allen oNZM Fsa, Department of Anthropology, University of Auckland.

Professor David Konstan, Department of Classics, New York University.

Professor William Lycan, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill.

Professor Patrick McCaughey, Fairhaven, Connecticut.

Professor Kim Scott, School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts, Curtin University.

Professor Terri-ann White, UWA Publishing, University of Western Australia.

ACADEMY FELLOWS HONOURED

The Academy warmly congratulates the following Fellows who received honours during 2013.

Australia Day 2013 Honours

Mr Clive James ao cBE FAHA, for distinguished service to literature through contributions to cultural and intellectual heritage, particularly as a writer and poet.

Professor Malcolm Gillies aM FAHA FAcE FLcM, for significant service to tertiary education through leadership roles and to the humanities, particularly as a scholar of musicology.

Professor Abdullah Saeed aM FAHA, for significant service to tertiary education in the field of Islamic Studies and to the community, particularly through the promotion of interfaith dialogue.

Dr Michael Smith aM FAHA FSA, for significant service to archaeological scholarship, particularly of the Australian desert regions.

Queen’s Birthday 2013 Honours

Professor Shirley McKechnie ao FAHA, for distinguished service to the performing arts, particularly dance, to the education and development of dancers and choreographers, and to research.

Professor Antonio Sagona aM FAHA FSA, for significant service to tertiary education in the field of archaeology.

Australian Research Council Australian Laureate Fellowships 2012

Professor Alexandra Aikhenvald FAHA, to expand her work in the area of and correlations between languages and cultures, and analysing endangered languages in tropical areas (especially Papua New Guinea).

Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki FAHA, to develop a new framework for observing emerging and significant, but little understood, forms of political activity in rapidly changing areas of Asia.

Professor Susan O’Connor FAHA, to focus on the earliest colonisation of Island Southeast Asia and investigate modern human dispersal, adaptations and behaviour along the maritime route to Australia.

Professor O’Connor was the recipient of the prestigious Kathleen Fitzpatrick Fellowship which recognises her leadership role and provides her with additional funding to help mentor women in the humanities. Fittingly, the award is named after historian Kathleen Fitzpatrick, who was a Foundation Fellow of the Academy of the Humanities.


E V E N T S

ANNUAL MEETINGS AND EVENTS

The 2012 Annual Symposium, Challenging (the) Humanities, was convened by Professor Tony Bennett FAHA AcSS. Held at the University of Western Sydney’s Parramatta campus on 15–16 November 2012, the Symposium was attended by approximately 120 Fellows, humanities scholars and teachers, and featured 17 local and international speakers, among them Professor Chris Otter from The Ohio State University and Professor Laikwan Pang from The Chinese University of Hong Kong.

The Symposium debated the contemporary challenges that face the humanities, including changing policy environments and priorities, and the issues posed by debates concerning climate change, sustainable development and the financial crisis. More general changes in the prevailing intellectual environment were examined, with an increasing emphasis on the role played by material forces – technologies and infrastructures, as well as the continuing importance of the relations between Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives.

Symposium speakers considered how these challenges have proved a stimulus to intellectual innovation in many humanities disciplines, together with new conceptions of their relations to other disciplines, presenting alternatives to purely scientific, technocratic or economistic framings of policy problems and solutions. The increasingly prominent role of Indigenous perspectives in Australian intellectual life has also prompted widespread recognition of the relevance of Indigenous knowledges to contemporary social, cultural and political questions. Humanities scholarship has brought new light to bear on the ways in which the human is always shaped by its relations to the non-human whether in environmental, technical or animal forms.

The Academy deeply appreciates the support of the University of Western Sydney, and of its Vice-Chancellor, Professor Janice Reid AM FASSA, who hosted the event and the symposium reception. The Academy is also grateful for the support of our other sponsors, Macquarie University, the University of New South Wales, the University of Sydney, the University of Technology, Sydney and SAGE Publications.

For a second year the Academy staged a series of discipline panel meetings on the second day of the Symposium, attracting approximately 150 Fellows and guest panellists. These roundtables, convened by Heads of Section, are designed to involve a range of other participants in the

Ian Donaldson, Deryck Schreuder, Tony Bennett and President Lesley Johnson at the 2012 Symposium, Challenging (the) Humanities. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

Professor Christopher Otter of the Ohio State University, keynote speaker at the 2012 Symposium. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

Keynote speaker at the 2012 Symposium, Professor Laikwan Pang of The Chinese University of Hong Kong, with Deryck Schreuder. photo: olga nebot/designed photography


work of the Academy. A number of panels focused on methodological training issues, while others took up questions of disciplinary priority.

The Archaeology roundtable featured a discussion on the role of the profession in the resources development industry, focusing particularly on relationships with Indigenous communities. Asian Studies led a discussion on the recently released Australia in the Asian Century White Paper.

The Arts roundtable focused on challenges facing musicology, art history and museums in Australia. Classical Studies discussed the place of reception studies within the field, and reviewed the status of undergraduate studies.

Cultural and Communications Studies discussed approaches to multiculturalism, space and place, and environmental sustainability. The English panel focused on questions of pedagogical innovation, featuring a presentation on an Australian Learning and Teaching Council-funded study ‘Building Reading Resilience: Developing a Skill-Based Approach to Literary Studies’, and examined teaching and research relationships between Creative Writing and English.

The European Languages and Cultures panel focused on the content of postgraduate coursework and the role of translation studies. The Linguistics panel brought together eminent legal practitioners and researchers to examine the application of linguistics in the legal process.

The History panel discussed the future of the history honours programme and also featured Sam Grunhard, Director of Excellence in Research for Australia, Evaluation and Outreach, Australian Research Council. The Philosophy, Religion and the History of Ideas panel took up the subject of research impact and how to account for it in assessment processes.

The Academy again hosted drinks prior to the Fellows’ Dinner for new Fellows elected in 2011, providing an opportunity for Council members to meet with new Fellows and to welcome them to the Academy in a relaxed setting prior to the formal signing of the Charter Book at the Annual General Meeting.

The Fellows’ Dinner was held at Lachlan’s Restaurant at historic Old Government House in Parramatta. It provided an excellent venue for a most enjoyable evening for Fellows and their guests. The night was also memorable for the presentation of two of the Academy’s most prestigious awards. Dr Michael Ondaatje was presented with the Crawford Medal, recognising outstanding achievement in the humanities by a young Australian scholar, and Dr Michael Hooper with the McCredie Musicological Award, presented to an Australia-based, early-career musicology scholar who has contributed to the enrichment of the cultural life of Australia.

The 2012 Annual General Meeting took place at the University of Western Sydney on Saturday 17 November, during which sixteen new Fellows and six new Honorary Fellows were elected to the Academy.

Academy President Lesley Johnson presents Dr Michael Ondaatje with the Crawford Medal at the 2012 Fellows’ Dinner, Old Government House, Parramatta. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

Dr Michael Hooper receives the McCredie Musicological Award from Ms Caroline Bushby, daughter of Professor Andrew McCredie, at the 2012 Fellows’ Dinner, Old Government House, Parramatta. photo: olga nebot/designed photography

The 2012 Fellows’ Dinner, Old Government House, Parramatta. photo: olga nebot/designed photography


VALUING THE HUMANITIES

In February 2013 the Academy hosted a large public forum on the research impact agenda and what is means for the humanities, convened by Professor Mark Finnane FAHA. The forum took place at the National Library of Australia in Canberra, and was attended by more than 100 participants from across the policy, research, and research funding sectors. Speakers included Professor Aidan Byrne, CEO of the Australian Research Council; Lisa Schofield, General Manager, Research Outcomes and Policy Branch, Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education; Professor Stephen Knight FAHA, University of Melbourne; Professor Tony Bennett FAHA AcSS, University of Western Sydney; Professor Stuart Cunningham FAHA, Queensland University of Technology; Associate Professor Anna Johnston, University of Tasmania; and Professor Andrew Mowbray, University of Technology, Sydney. At the close of the forum an Academy working group developed a short position paper on assessing the benefits of research in the humanities. The forum was funded through the Academy’s Australian Research Council – Learned Academies Special Project (ARC–LASP), Humanities Connections.

TRENDALL LECTURE

The Trendall Lecture was inaugurated in 1997 and is funded through a bequest made by Professor A. D. Trendall, a Foundation Fellow of the Academy. Professor Trendall envisaged the lecture series as ‘an annual lecture or lectures by a distinguished scholar on some theme associated with Classical Studies’. The speaker alternates between an Australian and an international scholar.

This year Professor Andrew Stewart, Nicholas C. Petris Professor in Greek Studies and Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, presented the 2013 Trendall Lecture entitled Individuality and Innovation in Greek Sculpture. The event was hosted by Macquarie University and held on 18 January 2013 at Sydney Grammar School. The lecture was held in conjunction with the annual meeting of the Australasian Society for Classical Studies and a special one-day conference entitled ‘Alexander the Great and his Successors: The Art of King and Court’, associated with an exhibition of items from the Hermitage at the Australian Museum in Sydney. These events and the lecture were organised by Dr Ken Sheedy FAHA. The lecture was very well attended, with an estimated 180 people present on the night, and will be published in the 2014 issue of Humanities Australia.

HISTORY OF THE ACADEMY INITIATIVE

The Academy celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2019. In the lead up to this event, Council is considering ways to honour the achievements of the Academy and its Fellows. As a first step, the Academy has formed a partnership with the National Library of Australia to enhance its oral history collection of interviews with Fellows of the Academy, with new interviews to be undertaken over the next two years. The Academy is grateful to the Fellows who have agreed to join the President on the Steering Committee for the project: Emeritus Professor Graeme Davison FAHA FASSA, Professor Anna Haebich FAHA FASSA, Professor Iain McCalman AO FAHA FASSA FRHistS and Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson FAHA FBA FRSE.

Professor Aidan Byrne, CEO of the Australian Research Council, giving a presentation at the ‘Valuing the Humanities’ Forum, Canberra, February 2013. photo: daniela vÁvrovÁ

Professor Mark Finnane welcoming delegates to the ‘Valuing the Humanities’ Forum, Canberra, February 2013. photo: daniela vÁvrovÁ

Professor Andrew Stewart, Nicholas C. Petris Professor in Greek Studies and Professor of Art History and Classics at the University of California, Berkeley, presents the 2013 Trendall Lecture in Sydney in January. photo: courtesy of ken sheedy faha


P O L I C Y A N D R E S E A R C H

The development of the new Strategic Research Priorities took place in early 2013, effectively replacing the review of the National Research Priorities undertaken in March 2012. The Academy played a key role in informing this earlier review, and in January 2013 was asked by the Australian Research Committee to nominate humanities representatives to serve on expert working groups to develop the new Strategic Research Priorities. Our representatives were among many others from across the research sector, as well as from government departments and agencies.

The Government established a Book Industry Collaborative Council in June 2012 to examine and advise on the changes in the publishing industry in Australia. Industry-based expert working groups were formed around key areas for reform, such as copyright, data, distribution and scholarly book publishing. The Academy was represented on the Scholarly Book Publishing Expert Reference Group by Emeritus Professor Elizabeth Webby AM FAHA. Colin Steele FAHA represented the National Scholarly Communications Forum. The group conducted a survey of stakeholders and prepared a report on guiding principles and practical solutions for sustainable models for humanities, arts and social sciences scholarly book publications in Australia. A final consolidated report is expected in the second half of 2013.

The Academy has been actively engaged in the policy domain, focusing on research infrastructure needs of the humanities, opportunities for strategic investment to foster international collaboration, and developments in open access. The Academy provided expert advice and responded to a range of consultation papers, reviews and enquiries, including the following:

• Office of the Chief Scientist, National Strategy for the Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) disciplines (May 2013)

• Australian Research Council, Excellence in Research for Australia 2012 Review (April 2013)

• Book Industry Collaborative Council (Scholarly Book Publishing Expert Reference Group), Future of Scholarly Book Publishing Survey (February 2013)

• Office of the Chief Scientist, Top Ten Breakthrough Actions for Innovation (September 2012)

• Australian Research Council, Open Access Policy (September 2012)

A key role of the Academy is to provide independent expert advice to government and policy makers, promoting the social significance of humanities scholarship and its vital importance in shaping effective public policy.

GOVERNMENT INTERACTIONS

The Academy held meetings over 2012–13 with Senator the Hon Chris Evans, Minister for Science, Research and Tertiary Education, the Office of the Chief Scientist, the Australian Research Council, departmental representatives, and Ministerial advisors. There were several Ministerial changes during the reporting period, with Senator the Hon Chris Evans, the Hon Chris Bowen MP, the Hon Dr Craig Emerson MP, and Senator the Hon Kim Carr all holding the post of Minister for Science, Research and Tertiary Education at different times.

In August 2012 the Academy held discussions with the then Minister, Senator the Hon Chris Evans, and the Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb Ac, about the Academy’s proposal for a survey of the humanities to complement the study undertaken by his office – the Health of Australian Science report. Both the Minister and the Chief Scientist were supportive of the proposal, agreeing that there was a need for wider disciplinary mapping beyond the sciences. The aim of the project is to provide a sound evidence base to inform decisions about research and teaching in humanities and social science disciplines. The project is reported on in detail below.

In early October 2012 the Academy was advised of an organisational restructure of the Department, which sees the four Academies and the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA) now reporting to the Science Policy and Agencies Division alongside research organisations such as CSIRO.

The Academy again provided advice to the Cooperative Research Centre programme in identifying independent experts to participate on panels for the fifteenth selection round.

New Strategic Research Priorities were announced in June 2012. The new priorities are not discipline-specific, but are organised around five societal challenges. Humanities research will be central to contributing vital understanding about human choices, cultures and behaviour, which underpin each of the challenges.


• Australian Workforce and Productivity Agency, Future Focus: Australia’s Skills and Workforce Development Needs Discussion Paper (August 2012)

• Australian Research Committee National Research Investment Plan consultation paper (August 2012)

ACADEMY RESEARCH PROJECTS

Securing Australia’s Future Programme

The Academy is currently collaborating on a series of multidisciplinary research projects with the three other Learned Academies, in consultation with the Office of the Chief Scientist, to advise the Prime Minister’s Science, Engineering and Innovation Council on long-term challenges facing the nation.

The first six projects are:

• Australia’s Comparative Advantage

• STEM: Country Comparisons

• Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond

• The Role of Science, Research and Technology in Lifting Australia’s Productivity

• New Technologies and their Role in our Security, Cultural, Democratic, Social and Economic System

• Engineering Energy: Unconventional Gas Production

The Academy’s current representatives on the Programme Steering Committee are Professor Mark Finnane FAHA, Professor Iain McCalman AO FAHA FASSA FRHistS, and Professor Peter McPhee AM FAHA FASSA. The Academy records its thanks to the outgoing members of the Committee, Professor Julianne Schultz AM FAHA and Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FAHA FASSA. Professor Ien Ang FAHA chairs the Expert Working Group for the Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond project, and the Academy has representation on each of the other Expert Working Groups.

The official launch of the reports of the first two projects to complete their work, STEM: Country Comparisons and Engineering Energy: Unconventional Gas Production, took place on 5 June 2013 at Parliament House in Canberra. The event was led by Emeritus Professor Lesley Johnson AM FAHA in her capacity as ACOLA President and the reports were launched by the Chief Scientist. Copies of the report are available from ACOLA’s website.

Mapping the Humanities and Social Sciences in Australia

The Academy is leading an important new project which will chart Australia’s current capacity in the humanities and social sciences and identify gaps and opportunities for the future by developing a comprehensive understanding of student enrolment trends and teaching and research activity.

The project is funded jointly by the Academy, the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, the Office of the Chief Scientist, and the Department of Innovation, Industry, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education.

The project is led by a Steering Committee comprised of Fellows of both Academies: Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner FAHA (Chair), Professor Mark Western FASSA (Deputy Chair), Professor Joy Damousi FAHA FASSA, Professor Stephen Garton FAHA FASSA FRHistS and Professor Sue Richardson FASSA.

We are grateful for the support of the former Minister, Senator the Hon Chris Evans, who approved funding for the project in late 2012, of Senator the Hon Kim Carr, of the Department, and of the Chief Scientist, Professor Ian Chubb Ac, who has been a strong supporter of the project.


Learned Academies Special Projects: Humanities Connections (2010–12)

The Humanities Connections project focuses on improving connections for the benefit of the Australian humanities research community. Activities this year have supported new connections within academe through efforts to develop national disciplinary and interdisciplinary networks and to encourage links between emerging scholars and senior figures. The project also fostered connections between research policy experts and those responsible for humanities development, and with counterparts in other disciplines, in government, and in industry.

One of the aims of the Humanities Connections project is to improve discipline-based advice mechanisms and networks. To that end this year the project funded a series of discipline panel meetings at the 2012 Symposium (reported earlier). It also supported a strategic meeting of English representatives to progress the formation of a peak body, attended by over 40 people from 22 universities across Australia. The meeting resolved to establish a group called the Australian Universities Heads of English, which will act to share information about the discipline among universities, including curricula, benchmarking, and interactions between secondary and tertiary level English.

COLLABORATIONS AND CONNECTIONS

Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA)

From January 2013 Academy President Lesley Johnson AM FAHA added to her responsibilities the Presidency of ACOLA for a term of twelve months. With the rotation of the Presidency to the Academy the Executive Director, Dr Christina Parolin, assumed the role of Chair of the ACOLA Secretariat. The Academy takes on the Presidency at an important and busy time for ACOLA, with the new collaborative research programme, Securing Australia’s Future, delivering two reports early in the year and with additional projects to be added over the course of 2013.

In addition, ACOLA continues work on its ARC–LASP, Making Interdisciplinary Research Work. The Academy is represented on the project by Emeritus Professor Cliff Hooker FAHA and Professor Elspeth Probyn FAHA FASSA.

ACOLA’s report on research workforce development, Career Support for Researchers: Understanding Needs and Developing a Best Practice Approach, was released in November 2012.

This year also saw the completion of the Australia’s Progress in the 21st Century pilot project run by ACOLA and VicHealth for the Australian National Development Index. The Index aims to develop a holistic measure of progress

which reflects the views of Australians in an ongoing participatory process. The pilot project conducted focus groups with community members in New South Wales and Victoria and a national online survey to evaluate public perceptions of progress and wellbeing, and identify key priorities and values. Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA was the Academy’s representative on the project’s steering group. A report will be launched in the second half of 2013.

National Scholarly Communications Forum

The Academy supported a National Scholarly Communications Forum on 3 May in Canberra on open access research issues in the humanities and social sciences. Convened by Colin Steele FAHA, the forum examined how open access policies can be implemented and supported, as well as business models for sustainable open access infrastructures that take into account the specificities of the humanities and the social sciences in relation to serials, monographs and data.

This forum brought together journal editors, policy makers from the Australian Research Council and the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education, representatives of higher education peak bodies, experts in open access publishing, licensing and copyright, and humanities and social science researchers. Presentations from the day are available on the Academy’s website.

Research Alliance

In June 2013 the Academy became a signatory to a new Research Alliance formed in the lead up to the Federal election to urge non-partisan support for all forms of research. The alliance brings together peak research organisations in Australia for the first time in order to call on politicians to take a coordinated approach to research investment and development in accordance with six fundamental principles. Those principles are:

1. Investing strategically and sustainably

2. Building our research workforce – getting and keeping the best

3. Building a productive system and getting the most out of it

4. Being among and working with the world’s best

5. Bringing industry and academia together

6. Expanding industry research


P U B L I C AT I O N S A N D C O M M U N I C AT I O N S

H UM A N I T I E S AU ST R A L I A

The fourth issue of Humanities Australia was produced and distributed in 2013 and featured contributions by Professor Julianne Schultz AM FAHA, Professor Kevin Hart FAHA, Professor Ross Gibson FAHA, Professor Anne Freadman FAHA, Emeritus Professor Brian Nelson FAHA and Associate Professor Rita Wilson, Professor Margaret Kartomi FAHA, Alex Miller FAHA, Professor Barbara Creed FAHA, and Emeritus Professor David Frankel FAHA FSA.

In the opening essay Julianne Schultz shared her insights into the development of Australian cultural policy, while the other contributions featured in this issue focused on cultural products of various kinds, from a wide range of periods and places: twentieth-century France and North America; Bronze Age Cyprus; Aceh from the sixteenth century to the present. Many articles also had a material focus on the roles cultural products – whether films, dances, pots or high fashion – play in particular societies at particular times. We were delighted to include two new poems by Kevin Hart and a short story by one of Australia’s leading novelists, Alex Miller. We were also delighted to feature the artwork of Kristin Headlam, an award-winning Australian artist based in Melbourne, on the cover and to illustrate Hart’s poems, which greatly enhanced the issue.

This issue of Humanities Australia had the largest distribution list to date, and was sent out to Fellows, friends of the Academy, government departments, cultural institutions, media outlets, the university community, university and state libraries, and allied overseas organisations. We are grateful for the continuing support of the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade which distributes the journal to Australian Embassies and High Commissions, and to Qantas for displaying the journal in Qantas Club Lounges throughout Australia. An electronic version of the journal is available on the Academy’s website.


G R A N T S A N D AWA R D S

McCREDIE MUSICOLOGICAL AWARD

The McCredie Musicological Award celebrates the outstanding career of the late Professor Andrew McCredie FAHA, Fellow of the Academy and eminent musicologist, who greatly influenced the teaching of music in Australian universities and schools. The award is funded through the proceeds of a bequest to the Academy by Professor McCredie, and the Medal is presented every four years by the Academy to an Australian-based, early-career musicology scholar, who has contributed to the enrichment of the cultural life of Australia. The award recognises high-quality academic research that contributes towards a deeper understanding of an aspect of the humanities by a general audience.

The Academy congratulates the 2012 recipient, Dr Michael Hooper from the University of New South Wales. Dr Michael Hooper’s research of the music of David Lumsdaine is the first analytical study of this composer to be published, and possibly the first monograph on any Australian composer devoted to the analysis of their music. His work, The Music of David Lumsdaine: Kelly Ground to Cambewarra (Ashgate, 2012), provides new detail of music that is significant not just to Lumsdaine studies, but to everyone with an interest in contemporary Australian music.

The Academy welcomed two new members to its Awards Committee in 2013. Professor Joy Damousi FAHA FASSA and Professor John Sinclair FAHA joined existing member Dr Robert Young FAHA. The Academy is indebted to outgoing members Professor Stephanie Trigg FAHA and Professor Kate Burridge FAHA for their contributions to the Committee.

The Awards Committee met in late 2012 and in 2013, to consider applications for the Max Crawford Medal and the McCredie Musicological Award (in 2012) and applications for the Humanities Travelling Fellowship and Publication Subsidy schemes (in 2013).

MAX CRAWFORD MEDAL

The Max Crawford Medal recognises outstanding achievement in the humanities by young Australian scholars currently engaged in research, and whose publications contribute towards an understanding of their discipline by the general public. The award is funded from a major bequest to the Academy by Emeritus Professor R. M. Crawford and is presented biennially. In late 2012, for the first time, the Academy awarded the Crawford Medal jointly to two candidates, Dr Michael Ondaatje and Dr Lisa Ford.

Dr Ondaatje is Senior Lecturer, Head of History and Director of International Operations in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle. His first book, Black Conservative Intellectuals in Modern America (University of Pennsylvania Press, 2010) became a Top 20 International Bestseller in US history, was recognised with the University of Newcastle Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Research Excellence, and was shortlisted for the Australian Historical Association’s W. K. Hancock Prize.

Dr Ford, Senior Lecturer in History at the University of New South Wales, has established herself as a leading scholar, working on the socio-legal history of late eighteenth- and nineteenth-century anglophone settler societies, Australia among them. Dr Ford’s path-breaking book Settler Sovereignty: Jurisdiction and Indigenous People in America and Australia, 1788–1836 (Harvard University Press, 2010), has significantly advanced our understanding of colonialism and state formation.

Award certificates and medals at the awards ceremony at the 2012 Fellows’ Dinner. photo: olga nebot/designed photography


PUBLICATION SUBSIDY SCHEME

The Academy’s Publication Subsidy Scheme provides support of up to $3,000 for the publication of scholarly work of high quality in the humanities. The Awards Committee granted seven subsidies in 2013.

HUMANITIES TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIPS

The Humanities Travelling Fellowships enable early-career researchers to undertake research overseas, including accessing archives and other research materials and connecting with international researchers and networks. Fellowships of up to $4,000 are available to permanent resident scholars in Australia working in the humanities. The Humanities Travelling Fellowships also incorporate

RECIPIENT AMOUNT PROJECT

DAVID PHILIPS TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIP

Dr Ben Silverstein $4,000 Governing Settlers: Race and Labour in Colonial Kenya

ERNST KELLER EUROPEAN TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIPS

Dr Matthew Chrulew $4,000 The History and Philosophy of Zoology and Ethology

Dr Christina Clarke $4,000 Metal Vessels in the Eastern Mediterranean and the Near East from the Chalcolithic to the End of the Bronze Age: Local Innovations and Inter-Regional Influences

HUMANITIES TRAVELLING FELLOWSHIPS

Dr Amir Ahmadi $4,000 Sacrifice and Eschatology in the Zoroastrianism

Dr Christine Barry $2,500 The Artist as Ethnographer: A Discourse Between Art and Anthropology

Dr Catherine Grant $3,800 Pathways to Sustainability: Assessing the Vitality of Music Genres in Contemporary Cambodia

Dr Ruth Morgan $3,500 Engineers of Empire: British Engineering Expertise in Asia, Australia and Africa

RECIPIENT AMOUNT TITLE PUBLISHER

Professor Geraldine Barnes Faha $2,000 The Bookish Riddarasögur: Writing Romance in Late Medieval Iceland

The University Press of Southern Denmark

Professor James Donald Faha $2,000 Black Stars: European Modernisms: African-American Culture in 20th Century Europe

Oxford University Press

Dr Leah Gerber $2,000 Tracing a Tradition: The Translation of Australian Children’s Fiction into German from 1945 to Present

Röhrig Universitätsverlag

Dr Cameron Muir $3,000 Broken Country: The Forgotten Promise of Modern Agriculture Routledge – Earthscan

Associate Professor Mary Roberts $3,000 Istanbul Exchanges: Ottomans, Orientalists and Nineteenth-Century Visual Culture

University of California Press

Dr Celeste Rodriguez Louro $2,000 Perspectivas Teoricas Y Experimantales Sobre el Espanol de la Argentina

Iberoamericana Editorial Vervuert

Dr Matthew Stavros $3,000 Kyoto: An Urban History of Japan’s Premodern Capital University of Hawai’i Press

the Ernst Keller European Travelling Fellowships, made possible by a generous bequest to the Academy from the estate of Professor Ernst Keller FAHA, and the David Philips Travelling Fellowship, provided thanks to a generous bequest to the Academy from David’s mother, Mrs Joan Philips. The Awards Committee granted seven Humanities Travelling Fellowships in 2013.


BILATERAL EXCHANGE PROGRAMMES

The first recipient of the exchange fellowship between the Academy and the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei (Italy) awarded in 2012 was Katherine Aigner (National Centre for Indigenous Studies, Australian National University). The aim of Katherine’s research project was to study Australian Indigenous collections held by the Vatican Museums and other cultural institutions in Italy, exploring the history and context of the collections and the biographies of the collectors. Katherine’s research led to some remarkable discoveries about the role of these collections in the development of palaeoethnology in Italy. In the long-term Katherine’s research will be used to assist in re-connecting Aboriginal source communities with the meanings and interpretations of objects held in the collecting institutions overseas.

In 2012–13 the Academy undertook an audit of its international activities, including its bilateral exchange agreements, informed by its new International Strategy (see over page). Due in part to ongoing budgetary constraints, Council agreed that the Academy should place less emphasis on individual exchange agreements that fund just one scholar to undertake short-term research projects overseas. Instead, efforts are being channelled into establishing targeted workshop programmes and research networks with a small number of international organisations. We anticipate that this new approach will provide an opportunity for a greater number of Australian humanities researchers to participate in, and benefit from, collaborative research overseas. In light of this new strategy, the Visiting Scholars Programme and the Swedish Exchange Programme – which have attracted fewer applicants for a number of years – have been discontinued.

ACADEMY SUPP ORT

The Academy supported a symposium in honour of Bernard Smith FAHA, Foundation Fellow and former President of the Academy. The Legacies of Bernard Smith discussed Bernard’s pioneering work in art history and his profound influence on the disciplines of history, anthropology, art history and art criticism in Australia. Co-convened by Professor Jaynie Anderson FAHA, Professor Mark Ledbury and Dr Chris Marshall, the symposium was staged over four days at the Universities of Melbourne and Sydney in September and December 2012.

In October 2012 Katherine Aigner (centre) met with the President of the Accademia Nazionale dei Lincei, Marco Zeppa, and International Relations Coordinator Pina Moliterno at their offices in Rome. photo: courtesy of katherine aigner

Part of the Australian collection on display at the Museum of Natural History, Florence. photo: courtesy of katherine aigner

Australian film director Warwick Thornton and Professor Marcia Langton am give a presentation at the Legacies of Bernard Smith symposium at the Australian Institute of Art History, University of Melbourne in 2012. photo: kit haselden/sdp media, courtesy of the australian institute of art history, university of melbourne


I N T E R N AT I O N A L A C T I V I T I E S

Tim Murray FAHA), archaeological heritage management, communities and conservation in Australia (Dr Tracy Ireland), preparing graduates for professional careers in cultural heritage management (Dr Sean Ulm), integrating heritage and tourism management at Angkor, Cambodia (Professor Richard Mackay), and the social significance of heritage sites (Associate Professor Heather Bourke).

INTERNATIONAL STRATEGY

Following last year’s adoption of the new International Strategy to guide the Academy’s international engagement over the coming years, a part-time International Coordinator, Dr Meredith Wilson, was appointed to the Secretariat in August 2012.

As recommended in the International Strategy, one of the principal tasks of the International Coordinator is to begin to map the international activities of Fellows. This exercise will allow us to update the Fellows’ database and to gather information that can be used to tailor the Academy’s international programmes (international grant schemes, funding for international activities, and bilateral partnerships). An online survey of international activities will be undertaken later in 2013 to gain a more detailed understanding of existing collaborations with specific countries and organisations across the humanities disciplines.

INTERNATIONAL COLLABORATION

Building on international partnerships developed over a number of years, and in particular through the International Science Linkages Programme funded by the Australian Government, several activities involving international collaboration took place in 2012–13.

In September 2012 the Academy partnered with the British Academy to convene a bilateral workshop in Melbourne to facilitate international policy collaboration in the areas of research excellence and impact in the humanities. The ‘Valuing the Humanities’ joint workshop was convened by Emeritus Professor Ian Donaldson FAHA FBA FRSE. This very successful workshop was attended by members of Council, Heads of Section and several Fellows. Attending from the British Academy were Dr Robin Jackson, Chief Executive and Secretary, and Professor Jonathan Bate cBE FBA FRSL, Vice President (Humanities). The workshop also discussed future collaborations between our two organisations.

In October 2012 the International Secretary Professor Gillian Whitlock FAHA led a successful delegation to Beijing for a cultural heritage workshop hosted by the Institute of Archaeology (Chinese Academy of Social Sciences). Discussions at the workshop focused on a broad range of cultural heritage work currently being undertaken by Australian and Chinese scholars and practitioners. Topics discussed by the Australian delegation included: ‘hidden’ histories and sustainable societies (Professor

Participants at the Sino-Australian Cultural Heritage Forum at the Institute of Archaeology, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Beijing, October 2012. photo: courtesy of tim murray faha

During the visit Professor Whitlock advanced discussions with counterparts at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences regarding the development of a Memorandum of Understanding between our two Academies. The Memorandum will facilitate an annual series of joint workshops over the next three years, commencing with a history symposium to be convened by Professor Antonia Finnane FAHA at the University of Melbourne in October 2013.

In December 2012 the final report for the International Science Linkages (ISL)–Humanities and Creative Arts Programme was submitted to the Department. The programme provided vital financial support for exchanges between Australian Humanities and Creative Arts scholars and international researchers. More than 1,300 Australian researchers and over 180 international collaborators were directly involved in activities supported by the programme.

In March 2013 the final activities funded under the ISL–Europe Research Collaboration Fund took place. This programme was designed to facilitate strategic discussions between Australian and European researchers in the humanities and social sciences and to identify areas for future cooperation. An Academy delegation


including Professor Iain McCalman AO FAHA FASSA FRHistS, Professor Joy Damousi FAHA FASSA, Associate Professor Frank Bongiorno and the Executive Director of the Academy participated in a series of workshops and meetings with UK and European colleagues to discuss open access policy developments, the measurement of impact in the UK’s Research Excellence Framework, and humanities and social science contributions to policy and research development under the European Commission’s Horizon 2020 funding programme.

In April 2013 the final report for the ISL–Europe Research Collaboration Fund programme was submitted to the Department. With modest funding, the Academy facilitated five activities involving 13 Australian humanities and social science researchers from six institutions, and 59 European researchers from 19 institutions. The report provided a series of recommendations to the Government on how best to further strengthen international collaboration for Australian humanities and social science researchers.

The Academy has been extending its links with the Royal Society of New Zealand, whose mandate now covers the humanities disciplines. On 15 February 2013, the Academy sent a letter to the President of the Union Académique Internationale (UAI) endorsing the application of the Royal Society of New Zealand to become a member of the UAI. The Royal Society of New Zealand was admitted to membership of the Union at its General Assembly in Mainz in May 2013.

In May 2013 the President Professor Lesley Johnson AM FAHA and Dr Christina Parolin held an introductory meeting at the Academy offices in Canberra with the new President of the Royal Society of New Zealand, Professor Sir David Skegg KnZM OBE FRSnZ and Chief Executive Dr Di McCarthy OnZM, to discuss matters of mutual interest and possible future collaborations.

In March 2013, during a visit to the UK funded by the ISL-Europe project, the Executive Director visited the Royal Society of Edinburgh to discuss various aspects of their operations, including the Young Academy, the bequests and legacies programme and their international engagement.

Over the course of the year a number of productive meetings were held with diplomatic staff at several Embassies in Canberra, including Professor Oscar Moze, Science Attaché at the Embassy of Italy; and Laura de la Cruz and Dr Anne Braun, Officers of Scientific

Affairs, Embassy of the Federal Republic of Germany. Ms Catherine Hodeir, Higher Education Attaché of the French Embassy in Canberra, met with the President, Emeritus Professor Lesley Johnson AM FAHA, Professor Anna Haebich FAHA FASSA, Professor Gillian Whitlock FAHA, Professor Majella Franzmann FAHA, and Dr Christina Parolin at the 2012 Academy Symposium in Sydney. These contacts are essential for maintaining the Academy’s connections with global humanities and social sciences networks, understanding country-specific research landscapes and opportunities, and exploring possibilities for international collaboration.

UNION ACADÉMIQUE INTERNATIONALE (UAI)

The Academy warmly congratulates Professor Samuel N. C. Lieu FAHA FRAS FRHistS FSA, our current delegate to the UAI, for his election to the Union’s Bureau (Council) at the 87th General Assembly in Mainz (12–17 May 2013). Professor Lieu will serve on the Bureau for a term of four years.

This year the General Assembly gave its assent to a number of changes to its statutes, the most important of which is that the General Assembly will from 2013 onwards meet only once every two years. The next General Assembly will be held in Brussels in 2015.

The Union has published a handbook titled Towards a Century of Support to Major Intellectual Achievements, listing all the current major projects as well short chapters on a selection of them.

One project co-sponsored by the Academy of the Humanities was included in the five-year evaluations this year: Corpus Vasorum Antiquorum (Project 1). The project was awarded ‘congratulations’, and a detailed report was presented by Professor Margaret Miller FAHA detailing the achievements of the Australian contributors.

Three projects either sponsored or co-sponsored by the Academy were included in the Annual Evaluations this year: Sylloge Nummorum Graecorum (Project 26); Corpus Fontium Manichaeorum (Project 59); Skaldic Poetry of the Scandinavian Middle Ages (Project 60). All were awarded ‘congratulations’. Project 59 published two volumes in 2012–13, and Project 60 produced a highly impressive volume that was displayed at the meeting.


OBITUARIES

RALPH WARREN VICTOR ELLIOTT am1921–2012

He often wrote about the defining events and people in his life, and they were of great importance to him. He remembered what happened when, where and to whom; the coincidences and dissonances of life struck him keenly, and one can see the same kind of ability to draw meaning from the particularities of place and specific texts in many of his scholarly writings. His charming autobiography and family history, A Kilted Kraut: The Recollections of Rudolf Ehrenberg, narrated by Ralph Elliott (2006), was published in a collection of his essays, Chaucer’s Landscapes and Other Essays, in 2010 and gives a marvellous insight into what made Ralph tick. A shorter autobiography, ‘One Life, Two Languages’ was published in 2005 in a Japanese collection of autobiographies of scholars of medieval English.

Ralph Elliott’s university career began when he enrolled at the University of St Andrews in 1939. However, his tertiary education was disrupted by war and he did not graduate MA until 1949. At St Andrews he specialised in English Language and Medieval Literature, and came under the influence of J. P. Oakden, whose major work was a study of Middle English alliterative poetry and whose interests also included the study of place-names, especially those of Northern England and Scotland. These interests, and Oakden’s personal friendship, were undoubtedly what contributed most to Ralph’s own academic development, as he began his career as a lecturer in English at St Andrews from 1949–52.

In 1952 Ralph accepted an offer of appointment to a lectureship in medieval English language and literature at the recently founded University College of North Staffordshire, later named the University of Keele, where he spent the next seven years. He published a number of articles during his Keele years, and became fascinated by the local landscape, which he linked, by means of exhaustive studies of its topographic vocabulary, to the Middle English poem Sir Gawain and the Green Knight and the other poems of the fourteenth-century manuscript BL Cotton Nero A. xv. He returned to this strand of literary detective work in the late 1970s and the early 1980s.

Towards the end of his Keele years, for both personal and professional reasons, Ralph began to look for another position, and serendipity played its part when he found himself sitting on a bus during a conference next to Colin Horne, then Jury Professor of English at the University

alph Elliott was born Rudolf Ehrenberg in Berlin on14 August 1921 and died on 24 June 2012 in Canberra.

He was a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and at various times served as its Treasurer and Deputy Secretary. On both sides of his German and Jewish family Elliott could, and frequently did, enumerate famous ancestors and relatives, academic, professional and more recently in the creative arts, a list that was topped by the name of Martin Luther. Ralph himself had a long, distinguished and eventful life, being caught up as a young man in the turmoils of Nazi Germany and the events of the Second World War. His parents sent him to the United Kingdom in 1936, where he attended school and began his university studies. During the war, he was interned on the Isle of Man and in Canada but returned, was trained as an officer (during which time he won the Sword of Honour, an achievement he always described in self-deprecating fashion), and fought on the British side against the Germans in 1945, nearly losing his own life. Later still, in 1959, he moved to Australia and lived, first in Adelaide and then in Canberra, until his death. He deposited the medal that he was awarded for his military service in the Australian War Memorial.1

1. See http://cas.awm.gov.au/item/REL34675.002.

photo: aah archive


of Adelaide and later a Fellow of the Academy (elected 1972). An offer of a Senior Lectureship at the University of Adelaide followed and Ralph came to Adelaide in what was to prove a permanent move to Australia. With him came his second wife Margaret Robinson, who was amongst other things a talented musician, and his two children by his first marriage; Ralph and Margaret subsequently had two children of their own. Ralph’s very happy marriage to Margaret, whom he called, in a characteristic and deeply felt echo of the words of his ancestor Martin Luther, ‘a good and precious wife’, lasted until his death more than fifty years later.

The English Department at the University of Adelaide in the late 1950s and early 1960s was a marvellous and dynamic place, peopled by exceptionally talented staff and (one likes to think) excellent students. This was a period of expansion in the Australian university system, supported by new government money that came in as a result of the Murray Report (1957), and Ralph Elliott was one of the new faces made possible in this expansion. He brought with him knowledge of Old and Middle English and several of the related Germanic languages, Old Norse, Old High German and Gothic. Suddenly the doors to the study of all these languages and their medieval literatures were opened to students of English, as they had not been before, and one of the present writers well remembers her excitement on beginning Old and Middle English with Ralph and a small number of fellow students. His own enthusiasm for medieval English was infectious. We had great fun and learnt in ideal circumstances of small classes and expert teaching. Later Ralph offered Old Norse as an extra (it was not on the formal curriculum) and he, one of the present writers and a then tutor, John Anderson, who later took a position at the University of Manchester, used to meet in the lunch hour to study the Icelandic language and read extracts from sagas of Icelanders.

Ralph was promoted to Reader in English in 1961, but spent only four years at the University of Adelaide before being appointed Foundation Professor of English and Head of the School of Language and Literature, later the School of Humanities, at the University of Adelaide at Bedford Park which in 1966 became Flinders University. He always liked to joke, with typical linguistic playfulness, that he was one of the ‘foundering fathers’ of the University. (Though already appointed to the new university, he continued before it opened to teach at Adelaide University where the other of the present writers first encountered him, with lifelong effect, as a fascinating and engaging lecturer on the history of the English language.) Under his benign but forward-looking leadership, and with his appointment of some outstanding staff members, the English discipline rapidly established a high reputation, including in two new areas: Flinders was the first university (as opposed to teachers’ college) in the British Commonwealth to teach

Children’s Literature, a subject in which Ralph himself retained a strong interest over the years, and the University also became a leading centre of the study of the New Literatures in English. In the meantime Ralph continued to inspire honours students in Old and Middle English and Old Norse as well as supervising postgraduates in a range of topics. Beyond English he also made a huge contribution to the development of a vibrant School of Humanities of which he was twice chairman.

It must have been about this time that Ralph began one of his most endearing habits – that of always having a small teddy bear in the pocket of his jacket. One of the great pleasures on meeting him, especially in the company of children, was to ask this distinguished scholar which of his collection of bears he was carrying that day. Always a tiny teddy would appear from his pocket – generally not one seen before, usually carefully wrapped to avoid its being damaged. There must be very few men of such eminence who can be remembered in this way.

Ralph remained at Flinders until 1974, when he became the third Master of University House at the Australian National University in Canberra, a position he held for thirteen years until 1987, when he retired. He once said, half jokingly, to one of the present writers that he had always wanted to do two things, teach in a university and run a hotel, and that being Master would allow him to combine the two roles. The position certainly suited Ralph’s gregarious and generous character, and it is generally acknowledged that he invigorated University House and brought it into the centre of Canberra life, academic, political and artistic. He remained vigorous after his retirement, and was appointed an Honorary Professor in the English Department at the Australian National University, where he taught classes in Old and Middle English and supervised postgraduate students for some years to the point where he was able to boast that he had been teaching for fifty years. He also played an important role at the Humanities Research Centre, where he was Honorary Librarian from 1990–2005 at what is now known as the Ralph Elliott Library. Typical of his practical bent in bringing knowledge of the English language to the general public, Ralph ran a very popular fortnightly talkback linguistics session on local Canberra radio for ten years from 1990. Honours and recognition of his contribution to Australian cultural life came through several awards, notably his membership of the Order of Australia (1990) and a Centenary Medal (2001).

Although Ralph Elliott was thoroughly at home in the whole field of English literature, his contribution to scholarship in the form of publications was made in three major areas, the study of Middle English poetry, specially alliterative poetry, and in particular Sir Gawain and the Green Knight, in which he followed his mentor Oakden;


runology, in which he was a pioneer, at least in the English language; and the writings of Thomas Hardy, especially their debt to the Middle Ages. It is unusual among contemporary humanities academics to find such a breadth of competence, and to some extent Ralph’s expertise reflects the situation of English Studies in the first half of the twentieth century rather more than the specialisations of the present time. To some extent also his thorough grounding in English and Germanic philology allowed him to cover an immense amount of ground with assurance and skill, something that also shone through in his teaching and was of enduring benefit to his students.

One thing that is striking in Ralph’s writings on both Middle English poetry and the works of Thomas Hardy is his interest in and sensitivity to these literary works’ sense of place, something that also comes through, as remarked earlier, in his accounts of his own life as a displaced person making a new home for himself several times over. Landscape and the representation of landscape dominate his writings and he approaches these subjects through a detailed study of English words, not just any words, but medieval words, often dialectal words, for various features of the landscape. It is easy to see why he was so fond of Hardy, his poetry and his novels set in rural Dorset, easy also to see why the Gawain poet fascinated him and why he was always intrigued by place names, old and new.

The third of Ralph’s contributions to scholarship, in the field of runology, cannot be accounted for in the same way. It came about initially for purely practical reasons: as a young lecturer at St Andrews, he was asked to give an Honours course on runes, but discovered there was no introduction to this subject he could recommend to his students. So, typical of him, he wrote one and it became something of a best seller. The first edition of Runes: An Introduction came out in 1959, and was reprinted in 1963, 1971 and 1980, the third time being issued in paperback. He published a second edition in 1989, bringing the book up to date with augmented chapters, especially on the new and exciting discoveries from the old Hanseatic quarter of Bergen in Norway and other archaeological finds that were unknown when he wrote the first edition.

There was no introductory book on runes in the English language when the first edition of Runes was published, and it also predated the advent of a more general interest in the subject during the 1960s and later that came about largely through the influence of Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings and other works of modern, medievalist fantasy literature and film. Several of Ralph’s more recent lectures and writings on runes address the reception of runes and runology in modern times and show how attuned he was to the burgeoning public interest in this field. Although now his Runes: An Introduction competes with more specialist writings, it still holds its own as a general survey of the subject, and is particularly good on runic inscriptions from the British Isles.

Ralph Elliott was an exceptionally fine scholar, a gifted teacher, and an inspiring and effective administrator, but those who knew him will perhaps best remember him as a man of extraordinary generosity of spirit. This quality showed itself in all his roles, as father and husband, teacher and supervisor, academic leader and researcher, administrator and host. Chaucer’s Host was one of his favourite literary characters and the role of host suited his love of conviviality, laughter, good food and good wine and his generosity in sharing it with others. However throughout the part of his academic life known to us, and presumably in the years before, nothing apparently gave Ralph more pleasure than encouraging others, urging them on to achieve at their best, mentoring, supporting, contacting other people on their behalf, not just enjoining them to do well, but actively helping them. One of the two present writers owes the publication of his first book to Ralph’s active intervention and encouragement: ‘I have written to the editor of the series. He’s expecting a book proposal from you.’ He extended this generous help, not just to family and friends, not just to students and colleagues, but to anyone who swam into his ken and seemed to him to deserve encouragement. The many people who remember Ralph Elliott for the help, support and advice he gave to them will ensure that this great and good man of ample and generous spirit is not forgotten.

MARGARET CLUNIES ROSS FahaGRAHAM TULLOCH Faha


ELLIOTT CHRISTOPHER FORSYTH1924–2012

Elliott Forsyth was one of the most respected French scholars of his generation. To his academic virtues he

added those of a man of thorough decency and profound humanity. His death occurred a few days before Christmas 2012, the second in an unprecedented series of deaths within a few weeks of French scholars in the Australian academic community, and one which deprived the Australian Academy of the Humanities of one of its long-standing Fellows.

Elliott Christopher Forsyth was born on 1 February 1924 at Mt Gambier, South Australia, the son of the Northern Irish-born Reverend Samuel Forsyth OBE and Australian-born Ida Muriel née Brummitt, both prominent personalities in their State and both renowned for their contribution to humanitarian causes.

In 1929 Elliott’s parents went to the UK for a year and the five-year old was left in the care of his mother’s family, including his uncle Elliott. With two Elliotts in the household, Elliott Junior chose to be known as Christopher, after Christopher Robin, his then favourite literary character. Christopher was then abbreviated to

Christie and that was the name by which Elliott was known within the extended family from then on.

Elliott was educated at Prince Alfred College in Adelaide. The seeds of his Christian faith were sown during his upbringing in a Methodist manse, surrounded by a culture of caring and humanitarian concern. These values were subsequently nurtured and fortified by his involvement during his university years in the Australian Student Christian Movement. It was here that he was exposed to ardent discussions on religious matters. He owed both the blossoming of his faith and the development of his critical faculties to these debates. His inclusive and generous approach to Christianity was an integral part of both his private life and his academic interests: an important proportion, although not all, of his research was to be on topics connected with Christianity and biblical themes.

A student of the charismatic J. G. Cornell, foundation professor of French at the University of Adelaide, himself a disciple of Melbourne’s A. R. Chisholm, Elliott Forsyth was awarded the degree of Bachelor of Arts with Honours in French in 1947. He completed his teacher training at the same time, although the Diploma of Education was not conferred until 1950. A teacher by vocation, he chose to move to Hobart where he was attracted by the progressive educational philosophy of the Friends’ School, under headmaster Bill Oates’ leadership. His three years in Tasmania marked him profoundly, introducing him to a deeper understanding of the environment and encouraging him to engage in a variety of activities which would stand him in good stead for the rest of his life: botany, the love of Australian plants, bushwalking, photography and further involvement and indeed leadership roles in the Australian Student Christian Movement and the Methodist Church. He also continued to pursue his long-standing interest in music (he sang and played both the piano and the organ) which would enrich his life to the end. During his years in Tasmania, Elliott was known to send his family and friends duplicated Christmas circulars addressed to ‘Dear Mainlanders’, containing an account of his activities during the year: he was a pioneering forerunner of a custom that has spread widely since the introduction of desktop printers.

photo: courtesy of ivan barko


After Hobart and a short period in Adelaide, Elliott Forsyth embarked for postgraduate studies in France. He spent the early ’fifties in Paris as a holder of a French Government postgraduate scholarship. During his years in France, he continued to nurture his church connections, including an involvement in the Reformed Church in Passy were he sat at the feet of one of the great men of the French Reformed Church, Pastor Marc Boegner. At the Sorbonne, his mentors were the eminent Renaissance scholars Raymond Lebègue and V. L. Saulnier. His doctoral research, devoted to the study of French Revenge Tragedy in the second half of the sixteenth and the first half of the seventeenth centuries, led to the award in 1954 of a doctorate of the University of Paris, with the very high grade of ‘mention très honorable, avec les félicitations du jury’. In 1962, a completely recast version of this thesis appeared in book form: La Tragédie française de Jodelle à Corneille (1553–1640): le thème de la vengeance, Paris, Nizet. This was a major 516-page contribution to French literary history by a young master of the art, rather than the outcome of a research training exercise, as so many doctoral theses are. A monument of scholarship, it has become a standard reference work, as was demonstrated by the publication of a second, updated, edition of the book by another distinguished Paris publishing house, Honoré Champion, in 1994.

Elliott Forsyth’s 1968 critical edition of two sixteenth-century biblical tragedies (Saül le furieux and La Famine ou les Gabeonites) by Huguenot author Jean de La Taille would also be reprinted thirty years later, when it was selected as a set text for the French Agrégation des Lettres, a national competitive examination. A similar distinction would befall his 1975 article on Ronsard’s poetic inspiration (‘Le Concept de l’inspiration poétique chez Ronsard’, Revue d’histoire littéraire de la France), reprinted in 1997 in a volume of collected essays on Ronsard’s Les Amours.

In the meantime, Elliott Forsyth was appointed to a lectureship in French – and later promoted to a senior lectureship – at the University of Adelaide (1955–66), although he spent some of this period (1963–65) at the University of Wisconsin in the US, thus broadening his academic experience. During the same Adelaide period, he undertook an impressive number of professional duties in the South Australian educational system, as well as other cultural activities such as the presidency of the Alliance Française in South Australia, an ideal preparation for his future professorial responsibilities.

Elliott Forsyth was appointed to the Foundation Chair of French at La Trobe University in 1966, the year before the first students enrolled. He was one of the pioneering founders of a new university, and took an active role in shaping its future.

It was in the second year of his tenure of the La Trobe Chair, in May 1967, that Elliott Forsyth, then aged forty-three, married. His wife Rona Lynette née Williams was an Educational Psychologist who later specialised in teaching English as a second language. This professional involvement in education was just one of the many interests Rona and Elliott shared during a long and harmonious life: these included music, international travel, bushwalking, hiking and mountaineering. One of their common passions was the creation of a wonderful architect-designed house on the banks of the Yarra at Eltham (the celebrated bush suburb), complete with holes in the roof for the trees to grow through, surrounded by two acres of gum trees and wattles. Elliott’s love of native plants went with them to their following residence in North Balwyn, where family legend has it that some South African proteas planted by Rona were ‘accidentally’ left to die as they failed to meet Elliott’s criterion of ‘nothing but Australian flora’…

Elliott and Rona started a family in the early seventies. Their two daughters, Alison and Fiona, shared with their parents the enriching experience of travel and study leave, mainly in France. Both now live in Melbourne with their families. Elliott’s love of teaching extended to the family context where he became heavily involved in nurturing his daughters’ musical and academic pursuits. Alison and Fiona remember with affection not only their father’s wonderful personal and scholarly qualities but also his idiosyncrasies, such as his long explanations during family meals, his obsession with complicated cameras and lenses, and his unending preparations to catch the perfect light to take the perfect photo.

Elliott Forsyth held the La Trobe Chair with distinction for over two decades, from 1966 to 1987, a period during which he was actively engaged not only in teaching and research but also in university building and in the fostering of the teaching of French both nationally and in the State of Victoria. Already decorated by the French Government with the insignia of Officer of the Order of the Academic Palms (1971) and subsequently promoted Commander in the same order (1983), he was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1973 and was Convenor of the Academy’s Committee on Foreign Languages from 1974 to 1991, also serving as Vice-President of the Academy from 1975 to 1977. A Fellow of the Australian College of Education from 1977, he was awarded the Centenary Medal in 2001.

After his retirement from La Trobe University in 1988, Elliott Forsyth accepted an advisory brief from the University of Melbourne to help run its French Department during a particularly difficult period. This included a term as a Visiting Professor, and subsequently, in 1999, he was appointed an Honorary Professorial Fellow.


This happy and mutually beneficial association continued to the end of his life.

In retirement Elliott Forsyth’s love of teaching found a ready expression in his courses on French culture at the Centre for Adult Education, Melbourne, and, later, at the University of the Third Age. He also conducted a series of cultural tours of different regions of France for the Centre for Adult Education, as well as for a private organisation, Bronz Discovery Tours. These tours extended over a decade: they only ceased when Elliott reached the age of eighty and the insurance company would no longer cover him for further international tours. The organisers at the French end had the profoundest admiration for his in-depth knowledge of the great range of topics and regions chosen over the years, and his ‘totally infectious’ enthusiasm: his tours were always ‘thoroughly researched, presented in an extremely lively way, and always appropriately adapted for groups of intelligent people who were curious about everything’.

These comments echo the memories of his former students: they remember Elliott’s seriousness of purpose, his total commitment to learning, his intensity, his rigorous standards but also his unfailing courtesy towards his students.

He remained an active researcher during his tenure of the La Trobe Chair, and was particularly productive after his retirement.

In the 1980s, shortly before the Australian Bicentenary, he became involved in a new research area, covering a period two centuries younger than his original interests: French exploration in the Pacific. With Jacqueline Bonnemains of the Museum of Natural History in Le Havre, France, and his colleague from the Academy, Bernard Smith, Elliott Forsyth became the co-author, as well as the coordinating editor and principal translator, of the thoroughly researched and superbly produced Baudin in Australian Waters: The Artwork of the French Voyage of Discovery to the Southern Lands 1800–1804 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1988). Again the frequently recurring words ‘rigorous standards’ are associated with his work, in the words of Jacqueline Bonnemains. His daughters recall that during the preparation of Baudin in Australian Waters ‘he immersed himself in this research so much that as a family we lived and breathed Baudin for about three years. In fact, we invented the term “baudinising”, which meant going on long journeys to explore places that had a connection with the French explorer’.

In retirement, Elliott Forsyth’s research concentrated once more on the French sixteenth century, or more precisely on the French Reformation. Pursuing his long-standing interest in the poet Agrippa d’Aubigné, and returning to his earlier concordance (1984) of d’Aubigné’s religious poem, Les Tragiques, he spent several years working on a major study of this poem and its background. This research led to the publication, in Paris, by Honoré Champion, in 2005, of a substantial book (substantial both in content and in length), La Justice de Dieu: Les Tragiques d’Agrippa d’Aubigné et la Réforme protestante en France au XVIème siècle. One of the major contributions of this work is the painstaking identification and analysis of d’Aubigné’s biblical sources. The book’s central theme is divine justice and its interpretation in the light of the persecution of the Protestants in sixteenth-century France. There is no doubt that La Justice de Dieu was the crowning of a distinguished research career, bringing together the main threads of Elliott’s life and work. This was recognised by his alma mater, the University of Adelaide, when in 2006 it awarded him the degree of Doctor of Letters for his publications on the literature of the French Protestant Reformation.

This account of his life would be incomplete without a mention of his deep commitment to the educational aspects of the mission of the Church, as well as to human rights issues and the support of Indigenous Australians and asylum seekers. In the later years of his retirement Elliott spent an extraordinary amount of his time and energy on the promotion of such causes, writing countless letters to editors and members of parliament as well as formal submissions, some listing concrete practical proposals on how to handle the influx of asylum seekers.

Elliott Forsyth never enjoyed good health. He did not inherit his parents’ physical robustness and was never interested in competitive sport. He frequently suffered from pneumonia and late in life had a heart condition. However he never gave in to illness, and was known to give classes at home when he was not fit to go to the University. In many ways his frail appearance was misleading: he was an enthusiastic hiker and mountaineer with whom more athletic-looking friends found it difficult to keep up. It was no doubt the triumph of his inner strength, as well as his love of nature and his family, together with his belief in our power to make this world a better place, that sustained him, and allowed him to reach the impressive age of eighty-eight years.

IVAN BARKO Faha


DAME ELISABETH JOY MURDOCH ac dbe1909–2012

Dame Elisabeth Murdoch, legendary philanthropist and friend to the humanities, died at her home outside

Melbourne on 5 December 2012 at the age of 103. She had been elected to an Honorary Fellowship of the Academy in 2009, establishing a new record, unlikely soon to be broken, as the most senior new Fellow ever to be recruited to the ranks of the Academy.

Newly-admitted Fellows, as Dame Elisabeth was aware, are customarily obliged to sign the Academy’s Charter Book at the first General Meeting after their election or at their next visit to the Academy offices in Canberra. In Dame Elisabeth’s case it was however proposed that, in recognition of her status, the Charter Book might instead be brought to her directly for signing. ‘Oh, yes please!’ she exclaimed with delight. ‘Do come to lunch!’ Three days after Dame Elisabeth’s 101st birthday in February 2010, a small group of Council members accordingly travelled to Cruden Farm, Langwarrin, with its famous gardens, the home which her late husband, the newspaper journalist and proprietor Sir Keith Murdoch, had purchased for her as a wedding gift in 1928. She welcomed the party warmly and took the Charter Book with a sense of due reverence immediately to the sofa, where she proceeded to read

carefully, from the first page to the last, the signatures of all Fellows elected to the Academy since its foundation in 1969. She chuckled with pleasure as she deciphered the names, and paused to report some fact or anecdote about each Fellow – there were a great many of them – whom she remembered personally, before signing her own name on the final page with a firm and clear hand. She’d taken her daily swim that morning and was in good spirits. There was wine from the family vineyard on the lunch table which she urged us to enjoy, as she did herself. When the time for her siesta arrived she sent us off for a tour of the gardens with a cheerful wave.

Dame Elisabeth was a great benefactress not only (of course) to the humanities but to any cause that she considered worthy of her attention. Asked a few years ago if the number of charities she supported was around a hundred, she replied with modest vagueness that ‘That would be rather conservative’ as an estimate. She was deeply committed throughout much of her life to the work of the Children’s Hospital, of which she was President for twelve years, and of the Murdoch Children’s Research Institute, and the Murdoch Institute for Research into Birth Defects. She was a Life Governor of the Royal Women’s Hospital, a member of the Deafness Foundation of Victoria, a patron of the Epilepsy Foundation, a member of the E. W. Tipping Foundation, dedicated to assisting those with physical disabilities. She was devoted to botany, and aspects of science: a newly evolved rose and a newly discovered star were both most appropriately named after her.

But it was Dame Elisabeth’s commitment to the humanities that was most astonishing in its scope, scale, and duration. At the conclusion of a conference on Philanthropy and the Humanities held in Melbourne in 2009 (organised by the Academy of the Humanities in collaboration with the University of Melbourne and Trinity College) a small book of essays celebrating her extraordinary contribution and that of her family to the cultural and artistic life of Australia was presented to her. Si monumentum requiris, circumspice are the famous words on the tomb of Christopher Wren: if you seek a monument, look around. At the University of Melbourne, two buildings had been named after her, together with a superbly equipped art library; the Herald Chair of Fine Arts had been established there thanks in large measure

photo: aah archive


to the efforts of her late husband, Sir Keith Murdoch; the Elisabeth Murdoch Chair of Landscape Architecture had been substantially funded through the generosity in particular of her son Rupert, who asked that the Chair be named in his mother’s honour. At Trinity College, which elected Dame Elisabeth to a Fellowship in 2000, she made provision for a quartet of young musicians to reside in the College and travel internationally, and for the College choir to tour in the United Kingdom, the United States, and Southeast Asia. At the National Gallery of Victoria, which has received many superlative bequests in its day, ‘no individual’ (in the words of its former Director, Gerard Vaughan) ‘has consistently contributed more through active personal involvement than Dame Elisabeth Murdoch’. The Victorian College of the Arts, now part of the University of Melbourne, owed its foundation in 1972 chiefly to her generosity, and its survival during harsh financial times to her intervention, when she called the then-Director offering simply to provide ‘whatever is most needed’. The Victorian Tapestry Workshop, which she enthusiastically supported, on her hundredth birthday commissioned a new work in her honour for display in the Melbourne Recital Centre, whose main auditorium was appropriately christened, with a celebratory concert, Elisabeth Murdoch Hall. She gave shrewdly and generously to Opera Australia, to the Australian Ballet and the Australian Ballet School, to the Royal Botanic Gardens both in Melbourne and at Cranbourne, to the State Library of Victoria, to the National Herbarium, to the McClelland

Gallery and Sculpture Park near her home in Langwarrin, and to many other institutions, both large and small.

Dame Elisabeth never gave without careful research into the precise needs of the organisations she supported, and without continuing personal engagement with their activities. It was a constant pleasure for members of the Bell Shakespeare Company, which she regularly assisted, to know that she would travel to Melbourne for each of their opening nights; for members of Somebody’s Daughter Theatre Company, founded to help women recently released from prison or otherwise marginalised in society, to feel the warmth of her interest in their work, and her endorsement of its value. To possess significant wealth was not in itself, as she well knew, a great achievement. To possess the power to disburse that wealth, however, was another matter. To do so judiciously, with heart and mind, was always for her a supreme privilege, worth living, if you were lucky enough to do so, a very long life to enjoy.

A State Memorial Service for Dame Elisabeth Murdoch was held on 18 December 2012 at St Paul’s Cathedral, Melbourne. Carved in stone at a high spot on the spire of the Cathedral, her benign face continues to overlook the city she graced and cultivated. ‘Look, don’t go and make too much of it’, she remarked when the sculpture was set in place a few years ago. ‘It’s not that important.’

IAN DONALDSON faha fba frse


JOHN ALEXANDER SALMOND1937–2013

John Alexander Salmond was born in Dunedin, New Zealand, on 28 September 1937, into a numerous family

whose principals had migrated from Scotland towards the end of the nineteenth century, to establish themselves in farming, business and academic and religious pursuits.

John’s educational career was punctuated between high school and university by spells as a slaughterman and reporter. He graduated BA from the University of Otago in 1959, and MA in 1961. In this year, he accepted a scholarship to join the Commonwealth Studies postgraduate programme at Duke University, in Durham, NC. He obtained his PhD in 1964, but having become interested in Franklin D. Roosevelt’s New Deal, instead of a British Commonwealth topic, his dissertation was on the Civilian Conservation Corps. Returning to New Zealand, Salmond took up a lectureship in History at Victoria University, Wellington. In 1968, he was appointed to the History Department in the fledgling La Trobe University, and promoted to professor in 1970. While he spent repeated intervals overseas on fellowships and sabbaticals, La Trobe remained John’s academic home until his retirement in 2002.

Though he began his academic career as a student of Commonwealth history (his first task at Wellington was to lecture on British India), Salmond’s scholarly focus soon changed markedly. He was in the forefront of that notable post-Second World War development in tertiary education in Australia and New Zealand, which saw significant numbers of intending academics attend North American institutions to obtain higher qualifications, in preference to following traditional pathways to Britain and Europe.

Salmond’s doctoral study of the Civilian Conservation Corps was to prove a prelude to a passionate career-long interest in Southern Liberalism and the Civil Rights movement. A number of factors contributed to this interest. By the time he was an adolescent, he had developed a strong commitment to an egalitarian society with liberal values. His experiences of segregation in the American South powerfully reinforced this sense – as he reminisced in his last essay: ‘It was living in Durham … during the early 1960s, the Kennedy years, the King years, the years of the widening struggle to end the Southern caste system, to overthrow white supremacy that pushed me towards southern history.’ He was deeply moved by John F. Kennedy’s June 1963 speech exhorting the nation to affirm the rights of all its citizens; and he participated in the massive Civil Rights march in Washington that late August day in 1963, when Martin Luther King delivered his ‘I have a dream’ speech. The Civil Rights Act followed in 1964. Salmond knew these events to be turning points in modern American history. He also understood them to be defining moments in his own history, for he viewed them in a Wordsworthian light: ‘Bliss was it in that dawn to be alive, but to be young was very heaven!’

In a very active scholarly life, as well as many articles and essays, Salmond produced a long series of monographs and edited collections of essays dealing with labour and civil rights topics, including A Southern Rebel: The Life and Times of Aubrey Willis Williams, 1890–1965 (1983); (with Bruce Clayton) The South Is Another Land (1987); Miss Lucy of the CIO (1988); The Conscience of a Lawyer: Clifford J. Durr and American Civil Liberties, 1899–1975 (1990); Gastonia 1929 (1995); My Mind Set on Freedom (1997); The General Textile Strike of 1934 (2002); Southern Struggles (2004); and (with Timothy Minchin) After the Dream: Black and White Southerners since 1965 (2011).

photo: courtesy of the salmond family


At La Trobe University, Salmond oversaw the expansion of the History Department. He guided generations of students through the intricacies of United States history; he supervised many postgraduate students; and he saw that the library acquired unusually good resources for the study of North American history and culture. (He had a vast knowledge of film, and was well-read in contemporary fiction.) He encouraged the faculty to introduce an ‘Early Leavers’ scheme, to enable people who had not matriculated to enter university, which was subsequently adopted by other institutions. At the same time, he was active in the Australian and New Zealand American Studies Association, and served as chair of the Victorian Fulbright Selection Committee. Together with his ever-growing reputation as an historian of the modern American South, this work contributed largely to the national and international reputation of La Trobe’s History Department in the 1980s and 1990s.

Salmond also played a leading role in the university’s administrative work. As well a serving on numerous committees, he was at various times Head of the History Department, Dean of the Faculty, Deputy-Chair of the Academic Board, Pro-Vice-Chancellor and Acting Vice-Chancellor.

John Salmond’s academic achievements were recognised by a series of awards and prizes, including American Council of Learned Societies fellowships; the Gustavus Myers Centre for the Study of Human Rights in the United States Award in 1990; election to the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1993; and D.Litt. (honoris causa) from La Trobe University.

As well as in history, John Salmond was keenly interested in travel, cricket, rugby, AFL football, the spring Racing Carnival and conviviality. In order to renew links with distant cousins, he visited Scotland repeatedly; and he meandered about the United States, as interested in Elvis and spare ribs as in old textile mills. His acquaintance with New Zealanders, both notable and obscure, was legendary. (One of his favourite memories was having known Ray Robinson in the slaughter works, whom Bradman said was a better cricketer than he.)

John Salmond was a wonderful story-teller, whether of the American South or of the vagaries of the life he loved so hugely. He is sadly missed by his children, grandchildren and many friends.

ALAN FROST Faha FRh istS


JOHN JAMIESON CARSWELL (JACK ) SMART ac1920–2012

John Jamieson Carswell (Jack) Smart was born on 16 September 1920, in Cambridge, England. He studied

philosophy and mathematics at the University of Glasgow, graduating with the MA in 1948. His career as an undergraduate was interrupted by service in the British Army, 1940–1945, serving mainly in India and Burma. He took the BPhil at the University of Oxford in 1948, was a Junior Research Fellow at Corpus Christi College, Oxford, 1948–1950, before being appointed Hughes Professor of Philosophy at the University of Adelaide. He was very young (29) for a chair and his appointment was part of Adelaide’s policy of making bold appointments of early-career scholars to chairs. This is a high risk policy but it paid off in more than spades in Smart’s case. During his time at Adelaide (1950–72), he made enormously influential contributions in four areas of philosophy: the philosophy of time, the philosophy of science, normative ethics and the philosophy of mind. The impact of his contributions can be gauged by the fact that during this time he accepted visiting professorships at Princeton (1957), Harvard (1963) and Yale (1964), and later at Stanford (1982). Despite a great affection for Adelaide – the city and the university – in 1972 he felt it was time to move on and he took a

Readership at La Trobe University, 1972–76, before moving to the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University, in 1976, where he was Professor of philosophy and the Chair of the Department. He retired in 1985. He was a Visiting Fellow in the Research School of Social Sciences from 1986 to 1999. He moved to Melbourne in October 1999, where he was an Honorary Research Fellow in philosophy at Monash University and regularly attended philosophy seminars there for many years. Among his many distinctions were honorary doctorates from the University of St Andrews, Glasgow and La Trobe, the giving of the Gavin David Young Lectures at Adelaide in 1987, being a Foundation Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, and being made a Companion in the General Division in the Order of Australia in 1990.

Although born in England and educated in Scotland, Smart very quickly became identified with Australia and Australian philosophy. The directness and informality of Australia and Australian philosophy appealed to him and when the Philosophy Programme (formerly department) in the Research School of Social Sciences decided to name an annual lecture in his honour, he asked the Programme to change the title from the ‘J. J. C. Smart Lecture’ to the ‘Jack Smart Lecture’. His publications were marked by great clarity and an unusual lack of pretension for someone of his eminence, but it was the kind of clarity and lack of pretension that is only possible for someone with a deep understanding of difficult issues. He had a remarkable ability to cut straight to the core of a philosophical problem and make a seminal contribution in surprisingly few words.

His most famous article, ‘Sensations and Brain Processes’, first published in 1959, reshaped the philosophy of mind and is one of the most reprinted articles in analytical philosophy. In it he defended and developed the view that sensations are brain processes. Later he extended the view to encompass intentional states like belief and desire and mental states in general. Nowadays some form of materialism is a very widely accepted position, but in the 1960s and 70s the view was extremely controversial and was known in some quarters as the ‘Australian heresy’. (David Armstrong at Sydney also played a very important role in developing the view and together they influenced a generation of Australian philosophers.)

photo: aah archive


In the philosophy of science Smart was one of the most influential supporters of realism about the sub-microscopic particles of physics. Electron theory is not merely a device for predicting experimental results, rather electrons are the causes of the results; otherwise, Smart argued, the results would be some kind of enduring miracle. Smart viewed time as a fourth dimension akin to the three spatial ones – objects are extended in time as well as in space. He saw this view as the only one to hold in the light of relativity theory and was impatient with those philosophers who think that one can sensibly philosophise about time without due deference to what physics has to say. In normative ethics he defended act utilitarianism: the right act is that act out of those available to the agent that would produce the most happiness (or, better, has the greatest expectation of doing so). His criticism of rule utilitarianism – the view that the right act is the act in accord with the rule the following of which would produce the most happiness – as involving a kind of ‘rule worship’ inconsistent with

utilitarianism’s guiding focus on outcomes, set the agenda for much of the debate over utilitarianism and more generally consequentialist views in ethics.

Philosophy for Smart was much more than something he was quite unusually good at; it structured his life. But it was never all his life. He had a great affection for family and friends – and then there was cricket. He was known to check the Test score (discreetly, on a small radio held to his ear) during philosophy seminars, and he remarked that he realised he had become an Australian when he found himself barracking for Australia against England in cricket. (He became an Australian citizen in 1976.)

His first wife Janet Paine died in 1967. He married Elizabeth Warner in 1968. He is survived by Elizabeth, and his children Helen and Robert from his first marriage.

FRANK JACKSON Ao Faha Fassa fba i ip


JEFFREY EDSON SMART ao1921–2013

The death of Jeffrey Smart on 20 June 2013, a month short of his 92nd birthday, marks the end of an epoch

in Australian art.

His was a unique talent – he made memorable, enigmatic pictures about an urban reality which was common to the experience of most Australians. As an artist, Jeffrey Smart is difficult to locate within either an Australian or an international tradition of art. While parallels may be drawn with both Edward Hopper and Balthus, two artists whom he admired, he was an artist of a very different temperament. His pictures are unmistakably and unforgettably his, they do not remind you of someone else’s work, they maintain a certain autonomy within our imagination. His art champions a modern urban iconography – autostradas, road signs, factory facades, deserted airports, taxis ranks – motifs which recur throughout his oeuvre.

Smart’s selection of his subjects was not a postmodernist act of aesthetic indifference but rather the opposite, the result of inspiration or, in his words, an act of enchantment. Commenting on his process of work, he noted a few years ago:

Many of my paintings have their origin in a passing glance. Something I have seen catches my eye, and I cautiously rejoice because it might be the beginning of a painting. Sometimes it is impossible to stop and sketch there because it was seen from a train or from a fast moving car on the autostrada. And it does happen that when I get back to the place, I wonder what on earth it could have been that enchanted me – it wasn’t there. Enchantment is the word for it.

Many of Smart’s paintings can be traced back to tiny lucid and spontaneous sketches, little visual notes made by the artist while sitting in the front seat of his car. Frequently these jottings capture the kernel of the flash of inspiration, that initial sense of enchantment with the scene, later they become the aide-memoire from which the larger drawings and painted studies develop. In this, Smart is an old fashioned sort of artist, where draughtsmanship is the basis of his art, the spontaneous sketch is rigorously developed into a formal drawing which then may serve as a basis for a series of oil studies. It is only when the compositional structure has been satisfactorily resolved that he moves to a final composition on a full scale canvas, where the battle with glazes and intensities of light is fought out. The process of paring down the structure of the painting until it functions through its basic formal elements is central to his practice.

Smart’s selection of imagery remains striking and remarkable. This exceptionally well travelled artist, who spent the past several decades living in a tranquil Tuscan valley, about thirty kilometres outside of Arezzo, in a villa opening up to a vista of panoramic splendour, found inspiration in light on a concrete factory wall, peeling posters on building site hoardings, expressways, airport runways and bus depots. One could argue that Jeffrey Smart invented a new iconography of urban decay through which to convey, in an effective and subtle manner, his commentary on the human condition.

photo: courtesy of sasha grishin


Jeffrey Smart was born in Adelaide, where he received his training at the Adelaide Teachers College and the South Australian School of Art and Crafts. He subsequently taught in schools in South Australia and commenced his long exhibiting career. In the late 1940s in Europe he studied at La Grand Chaumière and later the Académie Montmartre under Fernand Léger, returning to Australia in 1951. He was to remain in Sydney until 1965 where he taught and exhibited and contributed to the Australian Broadcasting Corporation children’s radio programme The Argonauts, under the name of Phidias.

He was first taken to Italy as a child by his parents and subsequently visited Europe on many occasions before settling permanently in Tuscany in 1971. He once famously observed: ‘I am a European with an Australian passport.’ Smart was a staunchly figurative artist who viewed the path to abstraction as a path to artistic suicide. However he was equally opposed to artists who simply copied picturesque scenes and engaged in a reproduction of nature in their art. There is a particularly apt aphorism by Goethe that to me explains Smart’s approach to art. Goethe wrote: ‘The beginning and end of all literary activity is the reproduction of the world that surrounds me by the means of the world that is in me.’

Objects in Smart’s paintings appear more like props or visual metaphors, rather than constituting the content of the work. Light as a mystical, spiritual and physical force is a key concern in his art, as are questions of irony and ambiguity. A recurring problem is how to express extreme individuality through abstracted generality and the impersonality of type and how to express intense emotion, yet contain it within a severe geometric structure. None of

these concerns in itself is unique to the practice of Smart, but in combination they are not encountered in the work of any other contemporary artist, and this gives his work a certain solitary existence.

Jeffrey Smart was a man of enormous generosity of spirit, humanity, humour and subtlety. Once when staying with him and his partner, Ermes De Zan, in Tuscany, he asked me to accompany him to the Arezzo industrial estate where he wanted to sketch a large and rather bleak wall of a factory seen from behind a roadway. He asked me to take a few photographs of the scene that he could use as an aide-memoire from which his tiny sketches could be developed into larger drawings, then into oil studies and the final painting. Later, when he examined my photographs, in exaggerated desperation he puffed out his cheeks, like those of the pet pugs which kept him company, and solemnly announced that I had missed the main point – the effects of light on the factory wall. His comment was well made; what he painted, no photograph can ever capture, it was his timeless, distilled vision of modern existence bathed in an eternal light.

Smart was the subject of numerous monographs and of a number of retrospective exhibitions, the most recent, Master of Stillness: Jeffrey Smart Paintings 1940–2011, completed its national tour earlier this year. He was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia in 2001 for his service to the visual arts, and elected as an Honorary Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2008.

SASHA GRISHIN am Faha


PETER DANIEL STEELE1939–2012

My dear friend Peter Steele died on Wednesday 27 June 2012, after a long battle with cancer. Remaining

strong until very close to the end, he managed to attend the launch of his last book, Braiding the Voices: Essays in Poetry, just sixteen days before his death. There was a deep satisfaction in this.

Steele grew up in Perth. Born on 22 August 1939, he went to a Christian Brothers school, and had felt the religious calling by the age of fifteen. He confesses himself to have been a boyhood bookworm, early into the way ‘romance is the stage at which we are intrigued by anything presented for learning’. His ‘romance’ included the local libraries in Perth. Such avid reading laid the ground for his becoming one of Australia’s most brilliant poets and critics: as verbally dazzling as he was modest.

He entered the Society of Jesus in 1957. As his brother Jack was to say much later, Peter had always been ‘a man with a plan’. Coming east, he began to train with the Jesuits who, in his phrase ‘knew what they were about’. Among the experiences of his novitiate, he always remembered long hikes around Melbourne’s north-east in hobnailed boots. During these years he completed a First Class degree in

English at the University of Melbourne, becoming a Tutor in the English Department from 1966 to 1971. In 1972 he was appointed to the lecturer position of Lockie Fellow in Australian Literature and Creative Writing. He did not teach the latter craft, however.

Peter Steele was ordained as a priest in December 1970, while continuing his graduate research and his University teaching, with great originality, wit and distinction. At the same time he was writing the poems which were to become his first collection, Word from Lilliput (1973).

At once brilliant, industrious and extremely self-effacing, Steele pressed ahead to write his doctoral thesis on Swift, and the subsequent book, Jonathan Swift: Preacher and Jester (1978). Published by Clarendon Press, this critical study reaches deep into the creative divisions in the mind of that passionate satirist. It is a book of great empathetic distinction.

Steele went on teaching in the English Department at Melbourne, ultimately coming to hold a Personal Chair. Except for six years as Provincial of the Jesuit Order in Australia, he remained a member of this Department until very recently. In his acknowledgements for the Swift book he gave particular thanks to Vincent Buckley and Evan Jones, fellow poets, who were also his closest friends in the Department at the time.

However, the eighteenth century did not hold him long in its toils: of his next two prose books, one is a study of poetry, especially that of the Americans, while the other is The Autobiographical Passion: Studies of the Self on Show (1989). Show is the key word here, given Steele’s longstanding fascination with the performative, the ostensible, the ludic; he has even written that ‘God’s folly is to be where fools are’. The author of a monograph on Steele’s work points to his focus on the jester, whether that japing figure be wise or intriguingly foolish.

But Steele was a committed poet, one whose style, at once dense and light, resembles nobody else’s. From his early Word from Lilliput through at least five more volumes these poems took modernist allusion and passionate irony in new directions, presided over by his Christian belief, of course, but also by the genial spirits of Montaigne and Cervantes. His last two collections, however, would offer

photo: courtesy of chris wallace-crabbe


rather less ludic elasticity, more direct engagement with faith and with the Biblical text; both A Local Habitation: Poems and Homilies and The Gossip and the Wine were published in 2010.

Steele had been Rector of Campion House in Kew since 1973, but his pastoral administration came to involve him far more deeply when he was appointed Provincial Superior of the Society of Jesus in Australia. He filled this demanding role from 1985 to 2000. On the academic side, he held Visiting Professorships at the Universities of Alberta, Loyola, Chicago and Fordham, New York; his lasting overseas connection was with Georgetown University, where he taught in 1994 and again from 2006 to 2008.

In Expatriates: Reflections on Modern Poetry (1985) Steele had been obliged to share the reflections with his burden of responsibilities as Provincial. It consists of twelve essays on single poems, eight of them American; one of the other poets was Scottish, one Argentine and one Polish, the great Zbigniew Herbert. The remaining poet, represented by his ‘Quixotic Sestina’, was one Michael Kent, who turned out to be Steele himself, that quixotic thinker, up to his tricks.

Among the subjects he taught at Melbourne, Steele invented a wide-ranging course on cities, one on travel writing, and shared with Chris Wallace-Crabbe a ‘Studies in Autobiography’ seminar; it ranged from St Augustine’s confessions to such disparate folk as Hal Porter and Jean-Paul Sartre. This proved to be the prelude to a new critical work, The Autobiographical Passion: Studies in the Self on Show (1989), an archipelago of fertile chapters on various writers’ ‘fascination with the grit and rondure of experience’. The book begins with Boswell, ‘The Autobiographer as Scapegrace’, branching out to the writings of many self-writers and free spirits.

Steele’s creative work fed constantly back into his innovative teaching, much as his recent volume of homilies interwove with his continuing life as a priest. He taught sparkling new courses, amid much else. Every kind of

discourse he touched bears his own ardent, uniquely playful stamp; his depth finds itself in intellectual speed, in a whole archipelago of analogies. It seems apt to say that he was an intellectual diagonalist, yet devout at the same time. As colleague and friend, he was invaluable: a strong, courteous gentleman, ever fond of a pizza at Papa Gino’s in Carlton.

Returning to his poems, the beautiful 2003 collection, Plenty, draws its readers into the tantalizing realm of ekphrastic poetry, a country whose poems have their origins in works of visual art. This kind of parallel, or metaphorical, cousinage occupied him deeply in his latter years, so that Plenty was followed by a second gorgeous book in the same vein. The Whispering Gallery: Art into Poetry was published in 2006, as the result of observation and speculation in the National Gallery of Victoria collections. Rembrandt and Poussin, Senbergs and Cossington Smith, William Blake and Walter Burley Griffin, are some of the fifty-five artists shown here in colour plates, with fresh poems beside them. What is more, these poems display the very height of Steele’s invention.

White Knight with Bee Box: New and Selected Poems proved to be a resting point aligned with the onset of Steele’s final illness, but two years later, in The Gossip and the Wine, he turned to lyrics that were springing directly from the gospel story: directly yes but, as ever, diagonally. As suggested earlier, he wrote prose and poetry to almost the very end. I think sadly of the valedictory poem which begins ‘Monday is Day Oncology…’.

The reputation of Peter Steele burgeoned gradually, given such versatility combined with innate modesty, but his writing changed many expectations about what Australian literature has to offer. In this country, but also in the United States and elsewhere, his influence flourishes in many corners, on many campuses. Moreover, his creative energy was unabating. He was, in my judgment, the most original of men.

CHRIS WALLACE- CRABBE Faha


ROBERT K. WEBB1922–2012

Robert K. Webb was an American historian who developed strong associations with Australia. His election citation gives some insight into the strength of these connections:

We commend to the Council of the Academy Robert Kiefer Webb (b. 1922) for an Honorary Fellowship. He succeeds our late Honorary Fellow, John Clive, as the leading ally of Australian historians and the main proponent of Australian historical scholarship in the United States and, indeed, in Great Britain. His authority, integrity, great personal charm and wide acquaintance make him a powerful advocate for Australia in American and British scholarly circles.

[…] He knows more, as John Clive did, than most Australians about Australian literature and films. Webb is a frequent visitor to Australia. He was a member of the committee which scrutinised the Australian Research Council’s support for research in European History in Australia. He duly visited most of the pre-Dawkins universities and helped produce a courageous, sustaining report. He has participated in seminars and conferences on topics ranging from the history of philosophy, history of law to the history of medicine at, to my knowledge at least, the universities of Western Australia, Melbourne and

ANU. He is a creative and diligent adviser and contributor to the Australian-based Oxford Companion to the Age of Romanticism and Revolution, Webb was a reviewer of the ANU Law School and he is to chair the Humanities/Social Science review panel for the Research School of Social Sciences in the Institute of Advanced Studies.

In a letter to the Academy accepting his appointment as an Honorary Fellow in 1995, he wrote ‘I hope that my future work, in or out of Australia, will continue to justify the confidence the Academy has so unexpectedly placed in me. It is certainly true that my experiences in Australia over the past decade have been central in shaping most of what I have done in that period.’

The Academy is pleased to be able to reproduce an obituary written by one of Professor Webb’s American colleagues, Professor Sandra Herbert of the University of Maryland, Baltimore County. Professor Herbert relates that ‘…through Bob I was able to attend an academic meeting in Australia where I met David Oldroyd, an Australian scholar who, with Bob, was very helpful to me as I wrote my book on Charles Darwin as a geologist.’

obert Kiefer Webb, Professor Emeritus of History at theUniversity of Maryland, Baltimore County, was

born in Toledo, Ohio, on 23 November 1922, and died in Washington, D.C., on 15 February 2012. In a long life he contributed in major ways not only to his own field of British history but also to the integrity and vigor of the academic profession as a whole.

Recognised from his youth for his academic brilliance, Bob Webb enrolled as an undergraduate at Oberlin College. As for so many young men of his generation, his studies were interrupted by war. Bob served in the U.S. Army Artillery from 1943 to 1946, rising to the rank of master sergeant. He said later that he learned in the army that he was good at deploying people and resources. In May 1945 while stationed in the Philippines, he wrote to Howard Robinson at Oberlin College contemplating his own future as an historian, speculating that, while he then knew U.S. history best, he might end up at Harvard studying 19th-century Great Britain, possibly something to do with church history. At war’s end Bob returned to Oberlin and took his AB summa cum laude in 1947. For graduate school,

photo: courtesy of the american historical association


he chose Columbia over Harvard, prompting his Oberlin professor Frederick Artz, a Harvard alumnus, to quip that ‘I feel like a Baptist preacher whose daughter has gone on the stage.’ (It is worth noting that Bob’s family background was Baptist.) Bob Webb received his PhD from Columbia in 1951, having spent two years at the University of London partly assisted by a Fulbright Fellowship.

Robert Webb concentrated on British history from the 1780s through the end of the 19th century. One overriding problem that engaged him was explaining the relative stability of the British state during a period of revolutions in France. In his first book, The British Working Class Reader, 1790–1848: Literacy and Social Tension (1955), Webb sought to understand ‘the challenge which a literate working class presented to its betters.’

In Webb’s subsequent work he explored the British tradition of religious dissent. He was interested in studying the British non-conformists on their own terms. He also saw their movement as providing a safety valve for releasing social tensions. In this Webb’s work was congruent with that of the French historian Élie Halévy. As an indication of his high regard for Halévy, Webb translated his Era of Tyrannies: Essays on Socialism and War into English (1966). Among the English nonconformists Bob Webb settled on the Unitarians for his own work. He was drawn to them by a shared sense of the value of rational enquiry and because he noted the prominence of Unitarians among social reformers in 19th-century Britain, as, for example, in the Martineau family.

Webb’s biography of one of the members of that family is still a standard work on the subject: Harriet Martineau: A Radical Victorian (1960). Over the course of the next 40 years, Bob published extensively on the English Unitarians, including numerous individual contributions to the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography. Bob’s last public lecture, again touching on the Unitarians, was a talk he gave in 2010 entitled ‘The Very Long Eighteenth Century: An Experiment in the History of Religion’. Bob’s contributions to the field of British history were honored in 1992 by the volume Religion and Irreligion in Victorian Society: Essays in Honor of R. K. Webb edited by R. W. Davis and R. J. Helmstadter.

In 1968 Webb published Modern England, which became the standard textbook for a generation of students. In 1980, with his former Columbia University colleague Peter Gay, Bob published Modern Europe Since 1815, a thoughtful and elegantly written survey of the subject.

Webb served as an instructor of history at Wesleyan University from 1951 to 1953. He then moved to Columbia University where he remained for 17 years, during some of that time chairing the university’s famed Contemporary Civilization Programme. From 1968 to 1975 Webb was editor of the American Historical Review, then still published at the AHA’s headquarters in Washington, D. C. (Bob’s work on AHA projects continued; in 1995 he contributed the section on ‘Britain and Ireland Since 1760’ to The American Historical Association’s Guide to Historical Literature.) From 1975 to 1992 Bob Webb was professor of history at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County and served in a number of critical administrative positions, including chair of the history department and, for a time, acting vice chancellor for academic affairs. During his career, Bob received two Guggenheim fellowships, and was for many years a member of the Educational Advisory Board of the Guggenheim Foundation. During his career Bob was also active in the national leadership of the American Association of University Professors.

The University of Maryland, Baltimore County was a young school, founded in 1966, and most of its history faculty were then in their thirties. Bob was half a generation older than the majority of his peers. Somewhat to our initial surprise, Bob took up his new position with zeal, investing his considerable energies in promoting the history department and the university. Bob traded off chairing responsibilities with Jim Mohr, and then passed the leadership torch to John Jeffries and Jim Grubb. Intellectually he was a ready resource to all of us. ‘Bob Webb taught the faculty’, as Victor Wexler once put it. Bob was a loyal and generous colleague who could be counted on for a letter of reference, a witty anecdote, or a word of encouragement or consolation, as the occasion required. Throughout his career Bob aided other scholars in their work, most recently Linda Lear as she was writing her biography of Beatrix Potter. To the end of his life Bob was regarded with admiration and affection by his colleagues. Bob is survived by his wife Patty Webb, their daughters Emily Martin and Margaret Pressler, and six grandchildren. An annual ‘Robert K. Webb Lecture’ has been established by the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, which is part of a Humanities Forum series open to the public.

SANDRA HERBERTUNIVERSITY OF MARYLAND, BALTIMORE COUNTY

This obituary first appeared in the American Historical Association’s November 2012 issue of Perspectives on History. It is kindly reproduced here with permission from Professor Sandra Herbert and the American Historical Association.


T R E A S U R E R ’ S S TAT E M E N T

The Abridged Audited Financial Statements for 2013 appear on the following pages. An operating surplus of $60,790 is reported on the Statement of Income and Expenditure, with an overall surplus of $223,987, including unrealised capital gains on investments of $163,198.

INCOME

The Higher Education Support Act (2003) payment received in January 2013 reflected the consolidation of Grant-in-Aid and the Supplementary Grant into one indexed payment as previously announced in the May 2012 Federal Budget. In June 2012 the Academy received a one-off grant from the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education to support international activities. Final payments for the Australian Research Council Learned Academy Special Project (ARC–LASP) – Humanities Connections were received in December 2012. Income was also received from the Australia Council of Learned Academies for the Academy’s role in developing the Securing Australia’s Future programme, and its support for research project three: Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond.

ACADEMY INVESTMENTS

The Council continues to work closely with our investment managers, JBWere, to ensure that the investment strategy is appropriate to the Academy’s needs and circumstances, particularly with the continuing unease in global markets. The Academy’s investments increased in value through the year, reflecting a more stable stock market – a marked change to the previous year. Investment income shows a decrease against the prior year, reflecting lower interest rates for term deposits, which are included in the Academy’s diversified investment portfolio.

EXPENDITURE

The Academy has continued its careful management of resources. Expenditure for activities has increased from the previous year reflecting the increased income available to support international participation, the commencement of the Mapping the Humanities and Social Sciences in Australia project, activities associated with LASP-Humanities Connections and additional activities outlined in this Annual Report. The Academy invested $50,000 of its reserves as its contribution to the Mapping the Humanities and Social Sciences in Australia project.

Despite the increase in activities, employment costs continue to be maintained at previous levels, which is a credit to the staff in the Secretariat. Costs reflected against publishing this year show a return to more realistic levels, with the low figure reported in 2012–13 due to publication dates falling across financial years rather than a significant reduction in costs. A marginal increase in administration expenditure is reported, reflecting the increase in utilities, rent and the continuing upgrade to computer facilities in the Secretariat.

The Academy’s balance sheet continues to show improvement, recording an end-of-year result of $980,242 – up from $756,255 from the previous financial year. Positive trends in the net asset position have been recorded for several years in succession, although we are yet to return to pre-financial crisis levels, indicating the need for continued careful management of resources.

Prudent management of resources has provided a sound operating basis for the coming financial year, during which the Academy will undertake activities to again advance scholarship in the humanities for the benefit of the nation.

PROFESSOR PAMELA SHARPE FAHAHONORARY TREASURER


A B R I D G E D F I N A N C I A L R E P O R T


aT H E A U S T R A L I A N A C A D E M Y O F T H E H U M A N I T I E S A N N U A L R E P O R T 2 0 1 2 – 1 3

THE AUSTRALIAN ACADEMY OF THE

HUMANITIES

ANNUAL REP ORT2012–13

annual report - 2012–13 - Australian Academy of the Humanities

Documents