The Australian Academy of the Humanities
The Australian Academy of the Humanities elects Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA as its new President
Contact: Christine Barnicoat
The Australian Academy of the Humanities elected Professor Joseph Lo Bianco AM FAHA as its 15th President at the Annual General Meeting held in Canberra on Saturday 21 November 2009.
Professor Lo Bianco is Chair of Language and Literacy Education at the University of Melbourne and Associate Dean (Global Relations). He is Co-Director (with Professor Simon Marginson) of the Strategic Research Initiative: Knowledge Economies in the Asia-Pacific.
He was elected to Fellowship of the Academy in 1999 and to its Council in 2007. He has served as Chair of the Academy’s Language Studies Committee since 2005. He is a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a Member of the Order of Australia.
Professor Lo Bianco is an internationally recognised expert in language education. He was the author of the 1987 National Policy on Languages, adopted as a bipartisan national plan for English, Indigenous languages, Asian and European languages, and Interpreting and Translating services and now used worldwide as a model of rational language planning. He has worked as a consultant on language planning with a long list of nations, including postapartheid South Africa, Singapore, Canada, the USA, Scotland, Ireland, Sri Lanka, Hong Kong, Italy, Japan and Western Samoa. He is particularly interested in multiculturalism and diversity in education, and the continuum between language and cultural education and the wider humanities and social sciences.
Established by Royal Charter in 1969, the Australian Academy of the Humanities is dedicated to promoting a greater understanding of the humanities and to supporting scholarship in those fields. The Academy advises Government and the community on matters involving the humanities; facilitates connections between Fellows and with their peers abroad; conducts policy research; provides opportunities for emerging Australian humanities scholars; and maintains relations with international humanities organisations. It comprises around 500 of Australia’s finest scholars, all internationally renowned in their fields of knowledge.
