Academy News February

As 2022 begins I want to take this opportunity to thank outgoing President Jane Hall for her outstanding leadership over the past three years. I hope that this year’s Annual Events will be held in person and we will have a chance to thank her properly at that time.

Two of our Fellows were recognised as Officers of the Order of Australia for their contributions to research and education in the 2022 Order of Australia Honours List. Warmest congratulations Professor Sandra Eades and Professor Heather Douglas.

Many Fellows have expressed concern that the Acting Minister for Education the Hon Stuart Robert vetoed six ARC DP grants that had been recommended for funding. In December, the Academy issued a public statement expressing our concern. More recently, we have also coordinated with the four other Learned Academies to issue a joint statement on this important matter – you can read it here.

We will continue to work with politicians of all stripes to press for legislative reform to ensure political independence of research funding decisions. That said, it was pleasing to see so many Fellows and other social scientists among the funded projects announced.

As I begin my term as President I encourage you to reach out to me with any thoughts about how the Academy can better serve our Fellowship and the community. Best wishes for a healthy, enjoyable, and productive 2022!

Richard Holden, President

After 10 months working with the International Science Council and the BBC, our dynamic, audio-rich story on the renewal of the First Languages of Australia is now live.

The article is part of the International Science Council’s Unlocking Science initiative and was chosen from dozens of research-focused stories submitted by Academies and other ISC members around the world – you will notice it features two Fellows, Professor Larissa Behrendt and Professor Felicity Meakins. The BBC will be promoting the story actively across the year and aims to get over 100 million views of each piece in the Unlocking Science series.

A huge thanks to Felicity Meakins who dedicated untold hours to this project, working extensively with our Communications team (including over the holiday break) to ensure this story was right. This project would not have been possible without her advice, insights and hands-on support.

Enjoy the read here.

Eight researchers kicked off February with some good news – as the recipients of our 2022 Australia-China Joint Action Program, each will receive additional funding to progress collaborative research projects.

The projects include research on carbon neutrality, digitalisation and ageing, gender in the labour market and the effect of anti poverty strategies. They were chosen through a competitive selection process.

The eight researchers comprise pairs of Australian and Chinese scholars who have proposed a collaborative research project: Australian scholars will each receive $7000 AUD, while the Chinese scholars will each receive ¥35,000 RMB.

Learn more about the winning projects and this long-running Academy grant program.

Professor Stuart Macintyre (1947-2021) was one of Australia’s most outstanding historians and public intellectuals. An extraordinarily prodigious scholar, his scholarship covered many fields including the history of social movements, Australian public policy, intellectual history and labour history. Stuart was an inspiring teacher and PhD supervisor and mentor; his generous support of the careers of others was a gift from which many have benefited over several decades. He made an enormous contribution to the history profession and to Australian intellectual life more broadly.

This two-day symposium will honour and celebrate Stuart’s extraordinary contributions across many scholarly fields and topics. It is timed to coincide with the publication of his final book, The Party: The Communist Party of Australia from heyday to reckoning (Allen and Unwin, 2022) published in February 2022.

More information and symposium registration here.

The Academy is offering two policy internship opportunities for social science PhD/Masters students or recent graduates to work on a disability policy project for the Australian Government.

The 3–4-month internships are ready to start as soon as the right candidates apply. They come with an APA-equivalent stipend and can be undertaken full or part-time in the Academy’s Canberra office or elsewhere in Australia. Successful applicants will work with a dynamic policy team and gain valuable experience in the translation of research into social policy. More about the internships including how to apply (applications close 20 February) available here.

As Australia focuses on the monumental task of reaching net-zero emissions by 2050, two critical questions remain; how will we get there and at what rate? To address these questions, the Australian Council of Learned Academies will be launching a series of papers throughout February, building upon the findings of the Australian Energy Transition Research Plan which was released June 2021. Cumulatively, the papers will address how the research and innovation sector can pave a clever pathway to reaching net-zero emissions.

No room at the Inn: the 2022 Fay Gale Lecture, presented by Professor Chelsea Watego, is a reflection on the location of race in the Australian academy, both in its absence and presence. Chelsea Watego (formerly Bond) is a Munanjahli and South Sea Islander woman with over 20 years of experience working within Indigenous health as a health worker and researcher.

This lecture is jointly presented by the Academy and the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender at the University of Adelaide. The lecture will take place in person in Adelaide and will also be streamed online. Register here.

READ

If you live in the ACT or NSW, you probably know the Georges River, but you may not know its history, and how local people campaigned to defend it. Fellow Heather Goodall kicks off 2022 with the book Georges River Blues: Swamps, Blues and Resident Action, 1945-1980 (ANU Press), which details local campaigns which fought hard to preserve this area of bushland in the suburbs of Sydney.

Fellow Michael Quinlan’s new title Unfree Workers: Insubordination and Resistance in Convict Australia, 1788-1860 (Springer Verlag, Singapore) fills an important gap in research on unfree labor, examining how convicts played a key role in the development of capitalism in Australia and how their active resistance shaped both workplace relations and institutions. It highlights the contribution of convicts to worker mobilization and political descent, forcing a rethink of Australia’s foundational story.

For a simultaneously sobering and uplifting look at the world’s various existential challenges, we can also recommend Fellow Andrew Leigh MP’s latest book What's the Worst That Could Happen? Existential Risk and Extreme Politics (MIT Press)

LISTEN

Fans of the Seriously Social podcast will need to wait a month longer – we’ve moved to a monthly schedule and your first episode will be live at the end of March. In the meantime, catch up on all the latest episodes, available on your favourite pod platform or via our own Seriously Social platform.

Luckily, our story on giving new life to the First Languages of Australia is now live on BBC Storyworks –eagle-eyed readers will notice it also contains a link to a previous episode of the Seriously Social podcast titled Slang and Sleeping Languages. If you missed the link above, check it out here.