Academy Fellow

Professor Kate Darian-Smith is the President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, commencing her term in 2025.  

She is Professorial Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Professor Darian-Smith served as Executive Dean and Pro Vice-Chancellor, College of Arts, Law and Education, at the University of Tasmania (2018-2024). She previously held senior leadership roles at the University of Melbourne, including professorial appointments in Australian Studies, History, and Cultural Heritage, and as Director of the Australian Centre, and Associate Dean and Deputy Dean roles in the Faculty of Arts. She has held visiting professorial positions at universities in the US, China and Japan.

Professor Darian-Smith has a distinguished academic career, recognised internationally for her research in Australian history, cultural heritage, memory studies, and histories of war and society, settler-Indigenous relations, childhood, education, media and migration. Her recent research focuses on Australia’s cultural and social transformations during the 20th century.

She has held 15 Australian Research Council (ARC) grants, including as node convenor for the ARC Cultural Research Network, and served on the ARC’s Humanities and Creative Arts Evaluation Committee for ERA and College of Experts. A member of several international academic editorial boards, Professor Darian-Smith is a former editor of Australian Historical Studies and section editor for History Compass, and is currently on the Editorial Advisory Board, Documents on Australian Foreign Policy, at DFAT. Other government appointments include to the Board, Australia-Japan Foundation, DFAT and the Council, Australian Museum of Democracy, Old Parliament House. Her contributions extend to advisory roles with government, museums, and cultural organisations, and she is a Senior Research Fellow at Museums Victoria.

Professor Darian-Smith has a longstanding commitment to promoting Australian Studies internationally, particularly in the Asia-Pacific region, and is a past President of the International Australian Studies Association. Elected as a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2008, she brings a wealth of experience and a passion for interdisciplinary collaboration to her leadership of the Academy.

2010: Australian Learning and Teaching Council, Award Excellence in Postgraduate Supervision

2010: University of Melbourne Award for RHD Supervision and Mentoring

Recent Select Publications (from 2019) 

• Darian-Smith, K, Turnbull, S, Khorana, S and Harvey, K, Migrants, Television and Australian Stories: A new history, Routledge, (forthcoming 2025)
• Darian-Smith, K and Lowe, D (eds), The Australian Embassy in Tokyo and Australia-Japan Relations, ANU Press, 2023
• Sluga, G, Darian-Smith, K, and Herren, M (eds), Sites of International Memory, University of Pennsylvania Press, 2023
• Darian-Smith, K ‘General Histories: Things as they are’, in Beilharz, P and Supski, S (eds), The Work of History: Writing for Stuart Macintyre, Melbourne University Press, 2022, pp. 235-248
• Darian-Smith, K, ‘Mapping Migration in Melbourne’s Emotional Cityscapes, 1960s to 1980s’ in Barclay, K and Riddle, J (eds), Urban Emotions and the Making of the City: Interdisciplinary Perspectives, Routledge, 2021" 124-142
• Benbow, H, Darian-Smith, K, and Duché-Gavet, V, ‘Beyond Bully Beef: Soldiers, Food and Transcultural Interactions in World War I’, Food, Culture & Society, v. 24, 2, 2021,:90-405
• Harvey, K and Darian-Smith, K, ‘Translating Australia: Language, migrant education and television’ in Radstone, S and Wilson, R (eds), Translating Worlds: Migration, Memory and Culture, Palgrave Macmillan, 2020: 18-130
• Darian-Smith, K, ‘Children, Comforts and Intercultural Culinary Exchanges for Australians in both World Wars’, Cultural and Social History, v. 17, n. 5, 2020, pp. 697-713
• Darian-Smith, K and Hamilton, P (eds), Remembering Migration: Oral History and Heritage in Australia, Palgrave Macmillan, 2019
• Darian-Smith, K and Waghorne, E (eds), The First World War, the Universities and the Professions in Australia 1914-1939, Melbourne University Press, 2019
• Darian-Smith, K, ‘Pearl Harbor and Australia’s War in the Pacific’, in Bailey, B and D Farber (eds), Beyond Pearl Harbor: A Pacific History, University Press of Kansas, 2019, pp.173-193
• Darian-Smith, K, ‘Heritage Conservation and the Transformation of Institutions of Incarceration into Community Arts Centers in Postcolonial Australia’ in Bharne V and Sandmeier, T (eds), Routledge Companion to Global Heritage Conservation, London, Routledge, 2019, pp. 379-93