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Dear Fellows and friends,
As we come to the end of a busy and productive year, I want to extend my warmest thanks to all Academy Fellows, partners and friends for your contributions and support in 2025.
The Academy’s 2025 Gala Dinner at the Sydney Opera House last month was a wonderful evening of connection and celebration and a fabulous way to end the year - recognising our new Fellows, Paul Bourke Award winners and the inaugural Rechnitz Memorial Award recipient Professor Marcia Langton AO FASSA FTSE. Invited speakers Professor Tom Calma AO FAA FASSA FAHA and Chief Scientist Professor Tony Haymet FTSE highlighted the importance of Indigenous Knowledges for the social sciences, as did a welcome message from the Governor General.
The Academy has now launched its new Strategic Plan for 2026 to 2030, which amplifies and focuses its activities across its education, policy, international, workshop and membership portfolios. It can be found here.
A hard copy of the first edition of the Academy’s new bi-annual magazine Socium was posted to all Academy Fellows last week. This new initiative makes visible the achievements of Fellows and the research of our award winners, as well as highlighting the impact of social science research on policy and for the community. Please contact fellowship@socialsciences.org.au if you have not received your copy or to suggest ideas for future magazine stories. The digital edition of Socium is available on the Academy’s website here.
As we look toward the year ahead, I wish you all a restorative and joyful festive season. Do note that the National Office will be closed from COB Wednesday 24 December and will reopen at 9am on Monday 5 January 2026.
Thank you once again for your dedication to advancing the social sciences in Australia. I look forward to all that we will accomplish together in 2026.
Kate Darian-Smith
President |
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Gala Dinner |
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Pictured above (L to R): Scientia Professor Carla Treloar, Professor kylie valentine, new Fellow Professor Helen Keane and Professor Alison Ritter |
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Pictured above: Professor Tony Haymet and Professor Tom Calma |
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Pictured above (L to R): Professor Leon Mann, Dr Chris Hatherly, Professor Marcia Langton, Professor Kate Darian-Smith and Professor Tom Calma |
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Pictured above (L to R): Professor Leon Mann, Professor Ute Roessner and new Honorary Fellow Antony Green |
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Pictured above: New Fellow Professor Angela Nickerson and Gadigal Traditional Custodian Aunty Rhonda Dixon-Grosvenor |
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Pictured above (L to R): Paul Bourke Award recipients Dr Archie Thomas, Dr Erin O'Donnell, Dr Kathryn Baragwanath and Dr Tianze Sun with Academy President Professor Kate Darian-Smith and CEO Dr Chris Hatherly |
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Have you seen Socium?
The Academy’s new bi-annual magazine Socium was posted to all Academy Fellows last week. If you have not received your copy, please contact the National Office via email at fellowship@socialsciences.org.au to ensure we have the correct mailing address listed.
The magazine is also available as a digital download here. |
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Scientia Professor Jane McAdam AO from UNSW has been named an inaugural member of the NSW Government’s Settlement Advisory Council, a formal advisory body to the NSW Minister for Multiculturalism, providing expert advice and policy support to strengthen settlement services across the state. |
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Professor Yuming Guo from Monash University and new Fellow has also been elected to the Australian Academy of Health & Medical Sciences and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences & Engineering. Yuming is an internationally recognised environmental epidemiologist whose research has revealed how climate change, air pollution, and extreme weather events affect human health. His findings underpin global policy responses and have guided WHO frameworks on environmental health. |
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Professor Frank Bongiorno AM has been announced as the University of Canberra's inaugural Donald Horne Professor of History and Public Ideas, and Director of the new Centre of Public Ideas, launching in early 2026. On the appointment, Prof Bongiorno said, 'I am an historian, and much of my work has been in Australian political history. I notice that a great deal of public debate and policymaking in Australia happens without much sense of what I call “historical hinterland” – a rich sense of context that helps us see the present in perspective.' |
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Distinguished Professor Anthony Elliott AM has been awarded funding by the European Commission's Erasmus+ Programme to lead a new Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence 2025-2028 at Adelaide University. The Centre of Excellence is a multi-year programme bringing together scholars from a range of disciplines to examine digital transformation and new forms of cooperation between Australia and Europe on Gen AI, the Creative Industries and Digital Regulation and Governance. |
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Professor Sara Davies of Griffith University has been elected to the World Health Organization’s Technical Advisory Group on Health, Migration and Displacement. |
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Professor Nicholas Evans has been awarded the Neil and Saras Smith Medal for Linguistics, by the British Academy, for his research into a wide range of languages, often endangered, from Australia and New Guinea, and for exploring their consequences for general linguistic theory. His research has contributed to our understanding of the nature of language contact, its interaction with internally motivated linguistic change, and the way such changes lead to the development of linguistic areas. |
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Policy |
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Opportunity for Fellows: Policy Committee EoI |
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Fellows interested in joining the Academy's Policy Committee and contributing to its work across a broad range of higher education, research and social policy submissions and reports are invited to send an email to policy@socialsciences.org.au outlining their interests and background. The committee is particularly interested in representation from new members with expertise in human geography, anthropology, law and education. |
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Academy roundtable program |
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On the 24 October the Academy co-convened a policy roundtable with the Commonwealth Treasury: Resilient Futures: Priorities for the 2026 Intergenerational Report. Building on the edited collection More than Fiscal the discussion identified both technical and policy considerations for the upcoming report across themes such as population, productivity, health, income support and retirement incomes. The Academy roundtable program continues to provide valuable forums for evidence-based policy conversations and direct engagement with decision makers. |
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FEATURED FELLOW |
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Professor Yin Paradies |
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Discipline: Sociology
Affiliation: Deakin University
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Last week Yin represented the Academy at the Tri-Academy Summit on Indigenous Engagement in Aotearoa New Zealand, alongside Fellows Professor Maggie Walter, Professor Jakelin Troy and other Indigenous scholars; with the Australian delegation led by Professor Tom Calma AO FAA FAHA FASSA. |
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How would you describe your work at a dinner party? |
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What role do the social sciences play in your work?
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I tell people that I teach and research Indigenous knowledges, decolonisation, racism, anti-racism, cultural safety and related topics. They usually want to talk about Indigenous knowledges as, often, they don’t know what that is. |
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My critical social sciences training very much inform my work, particularly the tenets of reflexivity, power analysis, de-naturalisation of the taken-for-granted, explanatory symmetry and transformative praxis.
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What initially drew you to your field of study?
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When I started my first year of university, my parents told me that I needed to get a job. I ended up working as a Commonwealth government Indigenous cadet at the Australian Bureau of Statistics in the Indigenous health statistics section. That work in Indigenous health led to an interest in the social determinants of health, racism, in particular, then to anti-racism and cultural safety, decolonisation and Indigenous knowledges. |
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What continues to motivate your work?
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A good proportion of people find my work quite transformative. It has real impacts on how they experience and perceive the world and, as a result, they make changes in real life. I find this to be an honour and a privilege as well as a strong motivation to continue my work. |
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Where is your 'happy place'? |
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My happy place is the homestead where I live. A place that flows in waves of peaceful tranquility and as a hubbub of activity, encompassing the ebbs and flows of life. |
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Emeritus Professor Alan Powell AM held a personal chair in Econometrics at Monash University. He specialised in economy-wide modelling and in policy analysis and was elected as an Academy fellow in 1973. Alan passed away on 3 November 2025.
Read Alan’s reflections on becoming a Jubilee Fellow in 2015 here. |
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The Academy wishes to acknowledge the passing of former President of the Australian Academy of Humanities Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner AO FAHA FQA. A tribute to Professor Turner is available to read here. |
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Read, Watch, Listen, Attend |
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Read |
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New Fellow Emeritus Professor Hal Pawson and his colleagues published a second edition of their 2020 book ‘Housing Policy in Australia: A case for system reform’. This extensively revised and updated book was launched at Australian Parliament House, Canberra on 4 November by Federal Housing Minister, Clare O’Neil as keynote speaker.
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Fellow Professor Sean Scalmer has a new book A Fair Day’s Work tracing 150 years of campaigns for workers’ rights and for the fair distribution of productivity gains in the context of the length of the working day.
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Our colleagues at the Australian Academy of Health and Medical Sciences have released a new Decadal Plan for Women in the Health and Medical Sciences. Find out more here.
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Academy President Kate Darian-Smith traces the history of "Australian Values" in this new article for The Conversation.
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Listen |
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Boyer Lectures: Larissa Behrendt - Justice, ideas and inclusion
Academy Fellow Professor Larissa Behrendt AO is a Euahleyai/Gamillaroi woman, Distinguished Professor of Law and Inaugural Chair in Indigenous Research at the University of Technology Sydney. In the third Boyer Lecture for 2025, she presents a three-point remedy to get us past the ‘us and them’ mentality, highlighting the necessity and importance of truth and story-telling and the critical importance of universities, the arts and creative and cultural institutions to forge a truly healthy democracy. Listen online here. |
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Watch |
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Forum 2025 - AI: The Hope and the Hype | Royal Society of NSW
The full recordings for AI: The Hope and the Hype are now available on YouTube. Catch up with the annual Forum by the Society and Australia's Learned Academies, where experts across multiple disciplines explored how artificial intelligence can help, how it can harm, and what we can do to steer it in the right direction. Visit YouTube page here.
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Attend |
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ARDC HASS and Indigenous Research Data Commons Summer School 2026
Join our Summer School to learn hands-on digital research skills, network and inspire new research outcomes. It's open to all researchers, especially HDRs and ECMRs in humanities, arts, social science (HASS) and Indigenous research. Travel bursaries are available.
The Summer School workshops include working with Indigenous data, making data sustainable, working with social media platform data, and answering social science questions using administrative data with R.
When: 3 - 4 Feb 2026
Where: Federation University, Ballarat
Run by: ARDC
Register now: https://bit.ly/2026-summer-school
True Liberal? The Record and Legacy of the Fraser Government, 1975-1983 symposium
The University of Melbourne Archives, Melbourne School of Government and Trinity College are co-hosting a symposium on the 50th anniversary of the Fraser government following the landslide federal election in December 1975.
The symposium brings together scholars, politicians, political thinkers and civil society leaders to review the record of the government and its relevance to contemporary issues and debates.
When: 12 -13 Dec 2025
Where: Trinity College, The University of Melbourne
Run by: Melbourne’s Archives & Special Collections, the Melbourne School of Government and Trinity College
For more information or to register: https://www.trinity.unimelb.edu.au/whats-happening/events/malcom-fraser-symposium
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The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia acknowledges Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples as the First Peoples of Australia.
We acknowledge and pay our respects to the traditional owners of the land on which our national office is located, the Ngunnawal and Ngambri peoples, and
to their elders past and present. |
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