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AAH is proud to be signatories to the Australian Council of Learned Academies’s (ACOLA) statement on funding cuts to the New Zealand Marsden Fund. Australia’s Learned Academies support humanities and social sciences research and our New Zealand colleagues.
Over 80 HASS projects have been funded in the 2025 round, with 23 Fellows receiving funding for projects including: heritage management of seawalls in the wake of climate change, the history and emergence of truth as a social value, preservation of Papuan languages, how people with a disability experience digital technology and more.
In his address at the Annual Academy Dinner on 14 November 2024, Professor Glyn Davis AC FASSA, Secretary of the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet (and honours student of Donald Horne), reflected on Horne as a ‘public intellectual’ and the space left behind in Australia’s discourse since his death. Download a PDF of the speech here.
Few 55-year-old organisations could still yarn with a founding member — in that way the Academy of the Humanities is in a unique and privileged position. Now 97, Foundation Fellow Emeritus Professor Francis West FAHA shares a few curious stories of the early years of the Academy and reflects on where it is now.
The career of highly respected German Studies scholar, Dr Margaret Anne Rose FAHA FRHistS, reveals the power of connecting literature, philosophy, political thought, art and history in humanistic discovery. Her award winning research shows the power of ideas in changing human history.
Freedom rider activist Gary Williams, distinguished theatre director Professor Julian Meyrick, Roman historian Professor Tim Parkin, an expert in decision-making Professor Katie Steele and an award-winning poet Professor Sarah Holland-Batt are among 41 distinguished humanities scholars and practitioners elected to Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities today.
What does Australian English sound like? In Donald Horne’s 1964 publication, The Lucky Country, language and how it shapes our identities was given only passing mention. Horne described ‘Australian language’ as largely derivative of ‘city slang’, ‘provincial idiom’ or ‘thieves cant’ from England. But James Walker FAHA, Professor of Linguistics, shows that the diverse languages of post-war migrants has enriched Australian English as it evolves in interaction with class and heritage to create a new national identity.
Donald Horne, who served as chair of the Australia Council, thought that proper discussion of the arts and its role in shaping our national identity was all too rare in his era. Emeritus Professor Fred D’Agostino FAHA invites us to one such discussion on Wednesday 13 November 2024.
There’s been much talk recently about whether children under 18 should be banned from accessing social media. Many claim social media negatively impacts children’s wellbeing. But is exclusion the answer? What are the other solutions? Professor Axel Bruns FAHA from QUT Digital Media Research Centre and Dr Aleesha Rodriguez from the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child examine how we can keep children safe online — while still upholding their rights to information and education.
This week Professor Helena Grehan FAHA reveals how the immersive experience of theatre helps audiences sit with complex and often contradictory ideas and emotions. She explores the multi-award production, Jurrungu Ngan-ga ‘Straight Talk’ and its call for us to reconsider ideas of incarceration, imprisonment and Australian nationhood.
The Australian Academy of the Humanities has awarded the 2024 Medal for Excellence in Translation to Stephanie Smee for her translation of the multi-award-winning French bestseller, ‘On the line: notes from a factory’ by Joseph Ponthus, published by Black Inc. in Australia in 2021.
Philosopher and architectural theorist Dr Lucy Benjamin is the 2024 recipient of the Ernst and Rosemarie Keller Award, which will support new research into how we think about the past, the kind of memorials we construct to commemorate history, and how we perceive monuments as time passes.