The Australian Academy of the Humanities
New Fellows for 2007
At the Annual General Meeting of the Australian Academy of the Humanities on 17 November 2007, 20 outstanding scholars were elected Fellows, and 4 individuals were elected Honorary Fellows.
Fellows elected to the Academy are residents of Australia who have achieved the highest distinction in scholarship in the humanities (Prehistory and Archaeology; Asian Studies; Classical Studies; English; European Languages and Cultures; History; Linguistics and Philology; Philosophy, Religion and the History of Ideas; Cultural and Communication Studies; The Arts).
Honorary Fellows include distinguished public figures who advocate for the humanities, practitioners of the arts, overseas scholars in the humanities who have a close association with Australia, and Australian-based scholars who have made substantial contributions to the humanities throughout their careers.
Below are short profiles of the Academy’s newest Fellows:
Karl Adelaar
Karl (Sander) Adelaar studied Indonesian languages and cultures and Austronesian linguistics at Leiden University, where he also lectured. He was a research fellow in Linguistics at the Australian National University and a Humboldt Fellow at Goethe University (Frankfurt) before coming to the University of Melbourne. His research includes comparative and descriptive linguistics with emphasis on varieties of Malay and the languages of Borneo (where he has conducted extensive field research), Madagascar and Taiwan. He is also interested in the oral and written literary traditions of Indonesia. His publications include ‘Salako or Badamea: Sketch grammar, text and lexicon of a Kanayatn dialect in West Borneo’ (2005) and ‘Between worlds: linguistic papers in memory of David John Prentice’ (2002).
David Braddon-Mitchell
David Braddon-Mitchell is a Senior Lecturer in Philosophy at the University of Sydney. He was previously at the University of Auckland and a Research Fellow at the Australian National University. He is the author of articles in leading philosophy journals including The Journal of Philosophy, Nous, Mind, The British Journal for the Philosophy of Science, Philosophical Studies, Philosophy and Phenomenological Review, Synthese, Erkenntnis, Analysis, The Monist, Ratio, The Journal of Political Philosophy, and the Australasian Journal of Philosophy. He works in Philosophy of Mind and metaphysics, and crosses borders into philosophy of science, philosophy of biology, ethics and political philosophy from time to time. His publications include ‘The Philosophy of Mind and Cognition’ (with Frank Jackson, 1996).
Deirdre Coleman
Deirdre Coleman holds the Robert Wallace Chair of English Literary Studies at the University of Melbourne. She completed Honours in English at the University of Melbourne before going to Oxford University where she graduated with a BPhil (1979) in Victorian literature and a DPhil (1986) on Coleridge’s journalism. Since returning to Australia she has taught at the Universities of Wollongong, Adelaide and Sydney. While at the University of Sydney she was awarded the Vice-Chancellor’s Award for Excellence in Research Supervision. In December 2006 she was appointed to the Robert Wallace Chair of English at the University of Melbourne. Her publications include ‘Romantic Colonization and British Anti-Slavery’ (2005) and ‘Maiden Voyages and Infant Colonies: Two Women’s Travel Narratives of the 1790s’ (1999).
Helen Creese
Associate Professor Helen Creese is Director of Research at the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. She has a BA with Honours and PhD from the ANU, and is Reader in Indonesian and the Indonesian Programme Coordinator at UQ. Her research interests include Balinese history, gender history, Balinese, Javanese and Indonesian literature. Her publications include ‘Women of the Kakawin World: Marriage and Sexuality in the Indic Courts of Java and Bali, 9th-19th Centuries’ (2004) and ‘Parthayana The Journeying of Partha: An Eighteenth Century Balinese Kakawin’ (1998).
Helen Dunstan
Professor Helen Dunstan is a historian of premodern China, with a primary focus on economic thought and economic policy in the first half of the Qing dynasty (1644-1911). She is particularly interested in the processes through which the central government made economic-policy decisions, and in the interplay between motives of very different kinds in such decision-making. While much of her research to date has focused on state intervention in the grain trade, her interests have now shifted to provincial finance in the Qianlong reign. Other topics on which she has worked include the southwest-Shanxi salt industry, particularly in the Ming dynasty (1368-1644), and Chinese environmental history. She enjoys teaching East Asian gender history, and has always been fascinated by the anthropological study of Chinese society. Her publications include ‘State or Merchant? Political Economy and Political Process in 1740s China’ (2006) and ‘Conflicting Counsels to Confuse the Age: A Documentary Study of Political Economy in Qing China, 1644–1840’ (1996).
Edward Duyker
Dr Edward Duyker OAM is an independant scholar of Australian maritime exploration and is a world authority on eighteenth-century French expeditions. He is a no-nonsense historian, whose edited translation of the journal of d’Entrecasteaux is the first English version since its 1808 publication. This and his studies of Marion Dufresne, Jacques-Julien de Labillardiere and Francois Peron have opened the way for fresh scholarship. These works offer insights into imperial history, Tasmanian Aboriginal life and natural history. His publications include ‘Francois Peron: An Impetuous Life: Naturalist and Voyager’ (2006) and Citizen Labillardiere: A Naturalist’s Life in Revolution and Exploration (1755-1834) (2003).
Louise Edwards
Louise Edwards is Director of the University of Technology, Sydney China Research Centre and Convenor of the Australian Research Council’s (ARC) Asia Pacific Futures Research Network (http://www.sueztosuva.org.au/). Her current research explores women in politics in China and gendered cultures of war in China. Previous research included Chinese literature and intellectual history. Her most recent publications have focussed on the history of the women’s suffrage movement during the first half of the twentieth century. Her publications include ‘Gender, Politics and Democracy: Women’s Suffrage in China’ (2008) and ‘Men and Women in Qing China: Gender in “The Red Chamber Dream”‘ (2001).
Susan Foley
Dr Susan Foley is Senior Research Fellow in the History Program at the University of Melbourne. She completed a PhD at Murdoch University in 1987. After a brief period at the University of Western Australia, she spent nineteen years at Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand, where she taught European history. She returned to Australia in mid-2006. A specialist in French history, Susan’s research interests lie in cultural and political history, and in gender and women’s history, since the 18th century. Her current projects include a study of the correspondence of French Republican leader, Léon Gambetta, and his lover, Léonie Léon; and research into the ‘gendering’ of political identities within French Republican families. With Professor Charles Sowerwine, she is also engaged on an ARC-funded project on the evolution of female identity in the nineteenth century. Her publications include ‘Women in France since 1789: The Meanings of Difference’ (2004) and ‘French History in the Antipodes: Proceedings of the Twelfth George Rudé Seminar on French History’ (2001).
Efstathios Gauntlett
Professor Stathis Gauntlett was Dardalis Chair of Hellenic Studies at La Trobe University until his retirement in 2006. He has made a notable contribution to the study of Modern Greek language and culture in Australia through his teaching and research. His research has focussed on the ‘rebetika’, songs in an urban popular genre which merge Greek and Turkish elements, and which reached their zenith in the 1930s. He has also contributed extensively to the cultural activites of the local Greek community, to the interpreting and tranlsating profession, and to the development of Modern Greek as a subject for study. His publications include ‘Rebetika Song: A Contribution to a Scholarly Approach’ (2002).
Gareth Griffiths
Professor Gareth Griffiths is Professor of English and Cultural Studies at the University of Western Australia. His research interests include African literature in English, mission texts and religion in postcolonial societies, sacral and secular forces in transcultural exchanges and postcolonial literature and theory. He is a member of the Editorial Advisory Board for several journals including the Australian Review of African Studies. He has a lifelong research and publishing interest in theatre and performance,especially in Australia and in post-colonial societies generally. His publications include ‘African Literatures in English: East and West’ (2000) and ‘The Empire Writes Back: The Theory and Practice of Post-Colonial Literatures’ (with W.D. Ashcroft and Helen Tiffin, 2002).
Ghassan Hage
Ghassan Hage is Future Generation Professor of Anthropolgy and Social Theory at the University of Melbourne. He has teaching and research associations with a number of international institutions including Harvard, Université de Montreal au Quebec, École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris, and the American University of Beirut. His publications include ‘Against Paranoid Nationalism: Searching for Hope in a Shrinking Society’ (2003) and ‘White Nation: Fantasies of White Supremacy in a Multicultural Society’ (2000).
Alan Hájek
Alan Hájek is Professor of Philosophy at the Australian National University. He has a Bachelor of Science, with honours, from the University of Melbourne, where he won the Dwight prize for Statistics, and a Master of Arts degree in philosophy from Western Ontario. In 1993 he took a PhD from Princeton, winning the Porter Ogden Jacobus fellowship. He has taught at the University of Melbourne, California University of Technology, and ANU, where he has taught since 2005. His work is at the intersection of epistemology, philosophy of science and probability theory. His publications include "What Conditional Probability Could Not Be" (2003), "What Are Degrees of Belief?" (with Lina Eriksson, 2007), and "A Philosopher's Guide to Probability" (2007).
Alfredo Martínez Expósito
Associate Professor Alfredo Martínez Expósito is Head of the School of Languages and Comparative Cultural Studies at the University of Queensland. He holds a Licenciado en Filologia a Hispanica and is Doctor en Literatura Hispanica from Oviedo. He teaches in the fields of Spanish and Latin American language and literature, Hispanic cinema and gender and culture studies. His research interests include gay and lesbian cultures in the Hispanic world, film, TV and media discourses in Spanish, and language policy in the Iberian peninsula. His publications include ‘La poetica de lo nuevo en el teatro de Ramon Gomez de la Serna’ (1994) and ‘Escrituras torcidas: ensayos de critica “queer”‘ (2004).
Peter Menzies
Peter Menzies is Professor of Philosophy in the Department of Philosophy at Macquarie University. He received his M.Phil. from St. Andrew’s University in 1980, and his PhD from Stanford University in 1984. He has been an ARC Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, and a Research Fellow at the Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. He has been at Macquarie University since 1995. At Macquarie University he teaches various subjects in philosophy, and his current research interests are metaphysics, the philosophy of science and mind, epistemology, and the philosophy of language and logic. His publications include many articles in ‘Mind’, ‘Mind and Language’, ‘Ethics’ and other journals.
Frances Muecke
Frances Muecke is Senior Lecturer at the Department of Classics and Ancient History at the University of Sydney. Her fields of expertise include Greek and Roman comedy, Horace’s ‘Satires’, genre in ancient poetry and humanist scholarship and antiquarianism in Rome (1470-1527). Her publications include ‘Horace Satires II with Introduction, Translation and Commentary’ (1997) and ‘Greek Drama III: Papers in Honour of Kevin Lee’ (with J Davidson and P Wilson, 2006).
Susan O’Connor
Dr Susan O’Connor is Head of the Department of Archaeology and Natural History at the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. She is currently conducting a major archaeological research project in East Timor investigating the cultural and environmental changes that took place across the Neolithic transition and into the Metal Age. This project complements and builds on previous research in the eastern Maluku region and Wallacea and current research in Papua New Guinea which is investigating Pleistocene colonisation in Island Southeast Asia and Greater Australia and subsequent patterns of migration, interaction and exchange. Her publications include various papers in ‘Terra Australis’, ‘Archaeology in Oceania’ and ‘Antiquity’.
Pamela Sharpe
Pam Sharpe is Professor and Graduate Research Coordinator in the School of History and Classics at the University of Tasmania. She was a post doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Essex before becoming Lecturer in Social and Economic History at the University of Bristol. She was ARC QEII Research Fellow at the University of Western Australia and then Convenor of the ARC Network for Early European Research. She was appointed Professor of History at the University of Tasmania in 2006. Her research interests include the history of women, demography, poverty and textiles from 17th-19th century England. She is also working on the history of a mining community in Western Australia.
Theodoor van Leeuwen
Theodoor van Leeuwen is Dean of the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Technology, Sydney. Before becoming an academic, Theo van Leeuwen worked as a film and television producer, scriptwriter and director in his native Holland and in Australia. He studied linguistics and semiotics at Macquarie and Sydney University and at the CETSAS in Paris. He has worked at Macquarie University, the University of the Arts (London), and Cardiff University, and lectured at many other universities throughout the world. He has written many books and articles on discourse analysis, visual communication and multimodality. His publications include ‘Introducing Social Semiotics’ (2005) and he is currently working on ‘Global Media Discourse’ (2007). He is also editor of the journal ‘Visual Communication’.
Gerard Vaughan
Dr Gerard Vaughan was appointed Director of the National Gallery of Victoria in 1999. After completing his Master’s thesis at Melbourne University on the French post-impressionist painter Maurice Denis, Gerard taught art history at Melbourne University before undertaking doctoral research at Oxford University from 1981 on aspects of neoclassical taste. He is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries of London. For fifteen years from 1983 he was the London-based adviser to the Felton Bequests’ Committee. From 1989-1991, he served as Private Secretary to the Vice-Chancellor of Oxford University, becoming Deputy Director of Campaign for Oxford University, and in 1994 Director of the British Museum Development Trust. Since becoming Director and CEO of the National Gallery of Victoria, he has been responsible for a redevelopment program involving two separate building complexes: The Ian Potter Centre - NGV Australia at Federation Square, and NGV International in St Kilda Road.
Gillian Whitlock
Gillian Whitlock is Professor in the School of English, Media Studies and Art History at the University of Queensland. Her current research includes memoir in contemporary Australian writing, settlers in postcolonial criticism and Australian biography. Her research interests include autobiography and biography, postcolonial studies and women’s writing. Her publications include ‘The Intimate Empire: Reading Women’s Autobiography (2000) and ‘Soft Weapons: Autobiography in Transit’ (2007).
The Academy’s newest Honorary Fellows are:
Christopher Clark
Christopher Clark received a BA with First Class honours from the University of Sydney in 1985 and a PhD from Cambridge in 1991. Since then he has been a lecturer at the University of Cambridge, and is currently Reader in Modern European History at Cambridge. He is the series editor of ‘New Perspectives on European History’, Cambridge University Press, and sits on the Editorial Board of European History Quarterly. His publications include The Politics of Conversion: Missionary Protestantism and the Jews in Prussia 1728-1941 (1995) and Iron Kingdom: The Rise and Downfall of Prussia 1600-1947 (2006)
Jackie Huggins AM
Jackie Huggins is Deputy Director of the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Unit at the University of Queensland. She is a leading advocate for Indigenous affairs and holds leadership positions in many organisations across the country. She is also on many editorial advisory boards, and has published widely on Australian Indigenous issues, in particular on women’s studies and history. She is editor of the Australian Journal of Indigenous Education and author of Auntie Rita (with Rita Huggins, 1994) and Sistergirl (1999). In 2001 she was awarded an Australia Medal for her work with Indigenous people, particularly in reconciliation, literacy, women’s issues and social justice.
Michael McRobbie
Michael McRobbie is President of Indiana University (IU), USA, and in addition to the responsibilities of that position he holds professorships in cognitive science, computer science, informatics, and philosophy, and an adjunct professorship in library and information science on the IU Bloomington campus. He is also a professor of computer technology in the Purdue School of Engineering at the IUPUI campus. He began his academic career with a Bachelor’s degree from the University of Queensland and a doctorate from the Australian National University. He is the author, co-author or editor of several books and nearly 100 academic papers, including ‘The Library and Education: Integrating Information Landscapes’ (2003).
Lyndal Roper
Lyndal Roper is Professorial Fellow at the University of Melbourne and Professor of Early Modern History at the University of Oxford. She is Fellow and Tutor in history at Balliol College, Oxford, and she has also been Professor of Early Modern History at Royal Holloway, University of London. She grew up in Australia and completed her undergraduate studies at the University of Melbourne. Now based in Oxford, she often returns to Australia to take up Visiting Fellowships, such as those at UWA, ANU and Melbourne. She has published in the field of early modern European social and cultural history, with particular focus on the role of gender in the radical social, political and religious changes of European history from the Reformation through to the Enlightenment. She has made fundamental contributions to women’s and gender history, as well as the relationship between history and psychoanalysis.
For more information about the Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, please contact the Fellowship Officer (02 6125 8965) at the Academy.
