Academy Fellow

Andrew Jakubowicz is nationally and internationally recognised as a leading scholar on multiculturalism and associated social issues, while being an innovator in the use of non-traditional media to communicate the insights and findings of sociological research.

His focuses on the relationships between power and culture, in particular, between key social institutions (including the state, education, media) and culturally diverse populations in Australia. This highly significant research foregrounds his interdisciplinary training in sociology, political science and economics, and the humanities.

He has provided sustained research leadership, through generating productive interdisciplinary research environments and building teams of researchers whose interaction has produced new knowledge in innovative forms. He led the Centre for Multicultural Studies at Wollongong University, then helped to build and co-directed a series of highly productive research centres and strengths at the University of Technology Sydney. The Ethnicity Racism and the Media project, which is still the only major Australian study in this important area, continues to inspire researchers and activists. From 2011 to 2017 he led an ARC LP multi-university project Cyber Racism and Community Resilience, to engage with one of the most significant contemporary issues. As with the 1994 project the outcomes are advances in theory and directly-focused practical policy with agencies such as the Australian Human Rights Commission. A significant collaborative project on Indigenous Australian political aspirations and the failure of Australian media, has produced a book, articles and podcasts as its immediate outcomes, and a major impact on state policy.

As a public intellectual, Andrew has been committed to communicating sociology, including through online blogs, television documentaries, submissions to parliamentary inquiries, participation in government advisory bodies and interactive data-bases and narratives. In collaborations with government and communities in NSW, Queensland and Victoria, in path-breaking projects on his website, Making Multicultural Australia, he has brought decades of ongoing scholarship to historical and contemporary analysis for this archive and narrative. His research on racism and multiculturalism has found expression in six major television documentary series, while his research on the Jewish refugees of Shanghai has resulted in major museum exhibitions, an interactive web documentary, radio and TV programs, and a number of book chapters and research papers.

Andrew has taken sustained public leadership and advocacy roles, contributing to policy debates and proposals for legislative innovation. He was the inaugural Chair of the Disability Studies Research Institute and founded and was a Board member of the Institute for Cultural Diversity. He has served on the SBS Board, Australia Council committees, and the Advisory Board for Multicultural NSW. He leads a consultancy on local cultural diversity planning in Sydney, applying sociological research to challenges of everyday multiculturalism. During COVID lockdown he published widely disseminated analyses of the challenges of the Australian health data system to recognise the experience of the pandemic on Australia’s CALD communities. He provides sociological insights to the Royal Commission on Violence against, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability, as senior advisor on Cultural and Linguistic Diversity.

Member Commonwealth Migrant Task Force 1973-1975

Member Board Special Broadcasting Service 1983-1986

Member Australia Council Multicultural Advisory Committee (ACMAC) 2002-2005

Member Advisory Board for Multicultural NSW 2016-2018

Member CALD Communities COVID-19 Health Advisory Group Australian Department of Health 2020-2022

Senior Advisor Cultural and Linguistic Diversity Royal Commission on Violence Against, Abuse, Neglect and Exploitation of People with Disability 2021-2022

FRSN

1. 2020 Thomas A., A. Jakubowicz and H. Norman 2019, Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? Aboriginal Studies Press, Canberra.
2. 2019 “The voices of diversity in multicultural societies: using multimedia to communicate authenticity and insight” in K. Darian-Smith, and P. Hamilton (eds) Remembering Migration: Oral Histories and Heritage in Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, Cham, Switz. pp. 185-202.
3. 2018 “Algorithms of hate: How the Internet facilitates the spread of racism and how public policy might help stem the impact”, Journal & Proceedings of the Royal Society of New South Wales, vol. 151, part 1, pp. 69–81
4. 2017 “New Australian ways of knowing ‘multiculturalism’ in a period of rapid social change: when ibn Khaldun engages Southern theory”, in Martina Boese and Vince Marotta (eds) Critical reflections on Migration, ‘race’ and Multiculturalism, Routledge, London.
5. 2017 Jakubowicz, A. et al. Cyber Racism and Community Resilience, Palgrave Macmillan, London.