Professor Marion Maddox FAHA was one of Australia’s leading scholars of religion and politics in Australia. She was born in 1965 to Shirley and Robert Maddox and raised with a strong sense of social justice within the Uniting Church of Australia. She attended South Strathfield primary and secondary schools, before completing the last two years of her school education at the Methodist Ladies College in Burwood, NSW. Marion then completed a Bachelor of Arts and graduated with first class Honours in Anthropology at the University of Sydney in 1988.
Marion went on to be awarded two PhDs, the first in theology at Flinders University, Adelaide, in 1992, and the second in politics at the University of New South Wales, Sydney in 2000. She worked as a Lecturer/Senior Lecturer in Religion Studies at the University of South Australia from 1992-1996 and following this as a Lecturer in Australian Politics at the University of Adelaide from 1997-1998.
In 1999, Marion was awarded an Australian Parliamentary Fellowship, from the Parliament of Australia and the Australasian Political Studies Association, and a Visiting Fellowship from the Humanities Research Centre at the Australian National University. The research she conducted resulted in the publication of her first two sole-authored books For God and Country: Religious Dynamics in Australian Federal Politics (Canberra: Parliament of Australia 2001), and God Under Howard: The Rise of The Religious Right in Australian Politics (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 2005). The second in particular led to acclaim and was read widely beyond an academic audience.
Marion and her family moved to New Zealand in 2000, where she worked as a Lecturer, then Senior Lecturer and Reader in Religious Studies at Victoria University of Wellington until 2007. During this time, she was a recipient of a Sabbatical Fellowship from the Australian National University Research School of Social Sciences in 2003 and was the Acting Head of Victoria University Department of Religious Studies in 2006.
Marion returned to Sydney in 2008, to take up a position of Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Research on Social Inclusion (CORE) at Macquarie University. She was a Visiting Professor at Sciences-Po, Institut des Etudes Politiques, Aix-En-Provence in 2010, and was awarded an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship in 2011, focused on religion and secular education in Australia, New Zealand and France. She wrote her third and final monograph Taking God to School: The End of Australia’s Egalitarian Education? (Sydney: Allen & Unwin 2014), arising from this Fellowship. Marion was promoted to Professor in 2011 and was awarded an ARC 2012 Discovery Project, as Lead Investigator, on Religion and Political Thought (RAPT), with Chief Investigators Roland Boer, Christopher Hartney, Geoffrey Boucher and Matthew Sharpe.
Marion was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH) in 2017, and delivered a plenary address at the AAH 2018 Symposium on the ‘Clash of Civilisations? Where are we Now?’, convened by AAH Fellows, Professors Bronwen Neil and Catriona Mackenzie. Marion also edited a Special Issue on ‘Religion in Australian Public Life: Resurgence, Insurgence, Cooption?’for the journal Religions in 2019-2020, and edited a volume titled, Charles Strong’s Australian Church: Christian Social Activism 1885-1917 (Melbourne University Press) in 2021.
Marion was also a highly active member of the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (AASR). She was a founding member of the AASR Women’s Caucus and delivered the Penny McGee Lecture in 2002, on ‘Women, Religion and the Australian Right’. She mentored many PhD and Early Career Scholars through the AASR Women’s Caucus mentoring scheme and served as the AASR President in 2020. Marion was an inclusive and enthusiastic supervisor who promoted her HDR students work’ extensively, and created opportunities through CORE, her ARC grants, academic symposiums and journal editing for early career research in religion and politics. Many HDRs’, early and mid-career researchers’ careers were advanced by these activities and generous support from Marion.
Marion will always be remembered as one of the leading scholars and public intellectuals on religion, politics and education in Australia. She will also be fondly enshrined in many of her colleagues and mentees’ memories, for her sharp wit, research excellence and bravery, in her commitment to social justice and the way that she faced her experience with cancer.
Marion is survived by her husband, Michael, and her daughter, Dorothy, and preceded in death by her son, Lawrence. Vale Marion, your scholarship and support of emerging scholars and peers will remain ever valued.
Associate Professor Anna Halafoff FAHA (Deakin University)
Dr Holly Randell-Moon (Charles Sturt University)
Professor Bronwen Neil FAHA (Australian Catholic University)
