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Award-winning Australian writer and historian, Dr Billy Griffiths – whose latest book Deep Time Dreaming: Uncovering Ancient Australia (2018) has been described as ‘the freshest, most important book about our past in years’ – is the recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ 2020 Max Crawford Medal. The Medal is Australia’s most prestigious award for outstanding achievement and promise in the humanities by an Australia-based early-career scholar.

Each year, in this distinguished lecture series, a Fellow is invited by Council to deliver a lecture on their latest research. The series also features a lecture by each Academy President during their term in office. The Academy Lecture is a rich display of the breadth and depth of scholarship in the Humanities and the impact and imaginative power of this work.

Dr Harry Van Issum is the recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ inaugural John Mulvaney Fellowship. The Fellowship provides funds to an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander early-career humanities researcher to undertake research or fieldwork in Australia or overseas. Dr Van Issum will travel to the United Kingdom to assist in the repatriation of Woppaburra skeletal remains presently held in the collections of the Natural History Museum in London.

Fashion Studies has emerged in the past ten years as a vibrant research topic, originating in part from women’s studies, literary theory, sociology, business and labour histories, and queer histories of the 1970s-90s.

The Hancock Lecture invites young Australian scholars of excellence to deliver their research in an accessible way for the everyday Australian.

Digital and big data developments are transforming possibilities for understanding Australian society and culture, enabling unprecedented research into our history and heritage, our place in the region, and the way we live now and into the future. Yet Australia’s unique social and cultural data and the source material required for research – such as artefacts, field notes, film, oral recordings – are largely unconnected and locked away in individual projects, collections and institutions.

Acknowledgement of Country

The Australian Academy of the Humanities recognises Australia’s First Nations Peoples as the traditional owners and custodians of this land, and their continuous connection to country, community and culture.