Top row (L to R): Professor Michael Berk AO FASSA FAHMS, Professor Justin Kenardy AO FASSA & Professor Mike Young AO FASSAMiddle row: Professor Rosemary Rayfuse AM FASSA , Professor Chandra Athukorala AM FASSA & Professor Steve Zubrick AM FASSA FAHMSBottom row: Professor Colin MacLeod AM FASSA, Professor Louise Chappell AM FASSA & Professor Greg…
The Academy of the Social Sciences congratulates the inaugural commissioners appointed to the Australian Tertiary Education Commission, including Fellow Dr Stephen Duckett FASSA. Australia’s tertiary education sector equips our future workforce with the professional and technical for a range of careers and drive research and innovation. More than a simple qualification and route to employment,…
What initially drew you to your field of study? I’ve long been drawn to the stories Australia doesn’t always tell about itself—histories of colonisation, race relations, and cross-cultural encounters that sit just beneath the surface of national narratives. Like many non-Indigenous Australians, these histories are not abstract, but difficult, powerful and embodied and are threaded though my own family story too. Early…
Pictured above: Kiesha Wear (left), Coordinator of Data Sovereignty at Wungening Aboriginal Corporation and Distinguished Professor Emerita Maggie Walter FASSA at the 2025 Global Indigenous Data Sovereignty (GIDSov) Conference. (Image credit: Wolflab Media) For decades, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have been among the most counted populations in Australia, and among the least heard. Governments…
Professor Adam Possamai Affiliation: Western Sydney University Discipline: Sociology Year elected: 2023 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? As everyone has an opinion about religion, being a believer, ex-believer, atheist, sceptic or someone who grew up with a religion, I always find it challenging to speak about my research. I have found that…
Professor Emerita Joan Beaumont Affiliation: Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs, Australian National University Discipline: History, heritage and archaeology Year elected: 1997 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? Historians of the two world wars and Australia’s role in these. What role do the social sciences play in your work? I draw…
Affiliation: University of MelbourneDiscipline: History, heritage and archaeologyYear elected: 2023 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? I am interested in memory activism or how different actors mobilise the past for different ends especially for the purposes of challenging harmful historical discourses and achieving meaningful social change. What initially drew you to your field…
*Distinguished Professor Bessant is pictured above with her dog, Frankie. Frankie’s social science qualifications are not listed here, but can be supplied upon request. Affiliation: RMIT School of Global, Urban and Social StudiesDiscipline: SociologyYear elected: 2024 What initially drew you to your field of study? I was first drawn to youth studies and to related…
Affiliation: UNSW Law & JusticeDiscipline: Law and Legal StudiesYear elected: 2023 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? If I was at a dinner party right now, I’d tell people that I focus on the law of the sea and that’s concerned with laws between different countries over maritime issues. So I look at the closing of the Strait of…
Affiliation: Monash UniversityDiscipline: Health SciencesYear elected: 2023 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? I help systems put evidence into action with communities, especially those most impacted by disadvantage, by centring lived experience and moving beyond Western, Eurocentric, and colonised assumptions to achieve fair and equitable health and wellbeing across the lifespan. What role do the…
Affiliation: Monash UniversityDiscipline: Social WorkYear elected: 2023 What initially drew you to your field of study? Since 1999, I have specialized in examining the experiences of young adults who grew up in forms of out-of-home care (i.e. foster, kinship or residential group home care) often called care leavers or care experienced young people. My initial…
Above: Professor Ford (left) pictured with a Cambodian labour activist. Professor Michele Ford Affiliation: Arts and Social Sciences – University of SydneyDiscipline: SociologyYear elected: 2022 What initially drew you to your field of study? Serendipity. I didn’t want to do Law or Medicine, so took on an Engineering/Arts double degree, which brought me from regional Queensland to…
Professor Nicola ReavleyAffiliation: The Centre for Mental Health, University of MelbourneDiscipline: Public HealthYear elected: 2024 How would you describe your work at a dinner party? I study public knowledge and attitudes to mental health and illness and how we can shift those in beneficial ways. What initially drew you to your field of study?My field…
Professor Kalpana Ram Affiliation: Australian National UniversityDiscipline: AnthropologyYear elected: 2021 What initially drew you to your field of study? Many of my answers about intellectual trajectory have their roots in my life journeys between India and Australia. I arrived in Sydney in 1971 from Delhi at the age of fourteen because of my father’s government…
What could be more important than understanding the social world? Every plan, every policy, every technical solution ultimately has to operate within society. For me, social sciences are everything.
The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia was proud to officially launch Australia’s War History, the latest educational resource from the Seriously Social school program, at the historic Anzac Memorial in Sydney on Monday 9 March. This new resource has been designed to support teaching and learning about Australia’s wartime experiences and their ongoing…
I like to think about the ways in which law ought to respond to technological change.
Housing affordability…the effects of Global Climate Change…high national debt…We need to come up with solutions and a way forward in dealing with these challenges being faced by a generation of people for the first time.
Social scientists know how the brain works and understand the ins and outs of group dynamics. We should use that in a much broader context. Too often we preach to the converted.
Social scientists need to be loud and proud about their capacity to provide unique contextualised insights into the ways in which digital technology is reshaping everyday education.
I believe that convergence science approaches are necessary to solve the complex issues of the non-communicable and particularly mental health disorders… The social sciences are a keystone approach in this matrix.
I am interested in building inter-generational, international networks of scholars and front-line educators designing and enacting literacy curriculum for social and environmental justice. I desperately want good things – ethical practices – to go viral. That’s my current obsession.
Libraries and archives, along with galleries and museums – and their role in the preservation of our national heritage -sit at the heart of a democratic society. They need to be celebrated, funded, and made accessible to all.
I get so much pleasure from helping others…develop their thinking. At a time when it can feel that thinking is under threat…the art of building concepts is something that we should cherish and protect as social scientists.