The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969 to advance scholarship and public interest in the humanities in Australia. It operates as an independent

not-for-profit organisation A nonprofit organization (NPO) or non-profit organisation, also known as a non-business entity, not-for-profit organization, or nonprofit institution, is a legal entity organized and operated for a collective, public or social benefit, in co ...

partly funded by the Australian government.

History

The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by Royal Charter in 1969. Its antecedent was the Australian Humanities Research Council (AHRC), which was convened informally in 1954 through the combined efforts of Dr Brian R. Elliott and Professor A.N. Jeffares, who organised preliminary meetings in Melbourne of delegates drawn from the Faculties of Arts in Australian universities. The AHRC was a positive force in education and scholarship, and its activities gradually evolved, especially in its support for national projects in the humanities. Recognition among the AHRC executive of the changing functions of the Council led in 1967 to the proposal of establishing an Academy. Royal consent was granted to the petition on 25 June 1969, and Letters Patent issued, constituting the Academy from that date. The Academy's Foundation Fellows were the members the AHRC. The highest distinction in scholarship in the humanities was required of candidates for election to the Fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. The first intake comprising sixteen Fellows (including Geoffrey Blainey, Kenneth Inglis, John Mulvaney, David Monro, Franz Philipp, Saiyid Rizvi, Oskar Spate and Judith Wright) and one Honorary Fellow (

J. C. Beaglehole John Cawte Beaglehole (13 June 1901 – 10 October 1971) was a New Zealand historian whose greatest scholastic achievement was the editing of James Cook's three journals of exploration, together with the writing of an acclaimed biography of Coo ...

) were elected by the fifty-one Foundation Fellows at a Special General Meeting on 20–21 September 1969. Annual elections have taken place since that time. For an account of the debates and efforts that led to the establishment of the Academy, see Graeme Davison FAHA's article in the inaugural edition of ''Humanities Australia'': 'Phoenix Rising: The Academy and the Humanities in 1969'.

Governance

The Academy is governed by a Council of leaders in the humanities, elected from among its Fellows, who provide strategic direction, policy guidance, and management oversight. The Council meets four times a year. A Canberra-based Secretariat is responsible for the day-to-day running of the Academy.

Council in 2020

President: Professor

Lesley Head Lesley Head is an Australian geographer specialising in human-environment relations. She is active in geographical debates about the relationship between humans and nature, using concepts and analytical methods from physical geography, archaeo ...

FASSA FAHA (elected November 2020) Vice-President & Honorary Secretary: Professor Emerita Elizabeth Minchin FAHA Vice-President & International Secretary: Professor

Louise Edwards Louise Olivia Violet Edwards (born 21 November 1978) is a Canadians, Canadian astronomer and assistant professor of physics at California Polytechnic State University (Cal Poly), and is one of the first Black Canadians to receive a PhD in astron ...

FASSA FHKAH FAHA Honorary Treasurer: Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FRSN FASSA FAHA Editor: Emeritus Professor Graham Tulloch FAHA Immediate Past President: Professor Joy Damousi FASSA FAHA Members: Professor Duncan Ivison FRSN FAHA, Professor Jennifer Milam FAHA, Distinguished Professor

Ingrid Piller Ingrid Piller (born 1967) is an Australian linguist, who specializes in intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education. Piller is Distinguished Professor at Macquarie University and an elected fellow o ...

FAHA, Distinguished Professor Julian Thomas FAHA and Distinguished Professor Sean Ulm FSA MAACAI FAHA

Fellowship

The Academy comprises a Fellowship of over 640 of the most influential humanities researchers and practitioners in, or associated, with Australia. The post-nominal abbreviation for a Fellow of the Academy is FAHA. The following eleven disciplines serve as the Fellowship's electoral sections: * Archaeology *

Asian Studies Asian studies is the term used usually in North America and Australia for what in Europe is known as Oriental studies. The field is concerned with the Asian people, their cultures, languages, history and politics. Within the Asian sphere, Asian ...

Classical Studies Classics or classical studies is the study of classical antiquity. In the Western world, classics traditionally refers to the study of Classical Greek and Roman literature and their related original languages, Ancient Greek and Latin. Classics ...

Cultural Culture () is an umbrella term which encompasses the social behavior, institutions, and Social norm, norms found in human Society, societies, as well as the knowledge, beliefs, arts, laws, Social norm, customs, capabilities, and habits of the ...

and

Communication Studies Communication studies or communication science is an academic discipline that deals with processes of human communication and behavior, patterns of communication in interpersonal relationships, social interactions and communication in differen ...

* English * European Languages and Cultures *History * Linguistics *Philosophy and the History of Ideas * Religion * The Arts Election to the Academy takes place at the Annual general meeting, following nomination by Council on the advice of the eleven electoral sections.

Foundation Fellows

At the date of the grant of the Royal Charter establishing the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 1969, there were 51 Members of the AHRC who became the Foundation Fellows of the new Academy. ''An asterisk denotes a Fellow who was also a Foundation Member of the AHRC.'' * David Malet ARMSTRONG * James Johnston AUCHMUTY* * Arthur Llewellyn BASHAM * Flora Marjorie BASSETT * John BOWMAN *

Ernest BRAMSTED Ernest Kohn Bramsted (born Ernst Kohn-Bramstedt, 1901; died 14 May 1978) was a German-born historian and sociologist of literature who spent large parts of his career in Germany, England and Australia. Early life Ernst Kohn-Bramstadt was born in ...

* Joseph Terence BURKE* * Alexander CAMBITOGLOU * Alan Rowland CHISHOLM* * Charles Manning Hope CLARK * Raymond Maxwell CRAWFORD* *

William CULICAN William "Bill" Culican (21 August 1928 – 24 March 1984) was an Australian archaeology, Australian archaeologist and lecturer in biblical archaeology and pre-classical antiquity at the University of Melbourne. Life Born at New Barn Farm, Gre ...

* William Allan EDWARDS* * Brian ELLIOTT *

Ralph ELLIOTT Ralph Warren Victor Elliott, Member of the Order of Australia, AM (born Rudolf W. H. V. Ehrenberg; 14 August 1921 – 24 June 2012) was a German-born Australian professor of English, and a Runology, runologist. Life and career Elliott was born R ...

* Ralph Barstow FARRELL* * Charles Patrick FITZGERALD * Kathleen Elizabeth FITZPATRICK* * Alexander Boyce GIBSON* * Gordon GREENWOOD* * (William) Keith HANCOCK * Ursula HOFF * Alec Derwent HOPE* * Harold Arthur Kinross HUNT* *

John Andrew LA NAUZE John Andrew La Nauze (9 June 1911 – 20 August 1990) was an Australian historian from Western Australia. He was born in the Goldfields town of Boulder. Shortly after his fourth birthday, his Mauritian-born father Captain Charles La Nauze was ...

* * James R. LAWLER*Wallace Kirsop
Scholar of French Poetry over Three Continents: James Ronald Lawler 1929-2019
isfar.org.au. Retrieved 25 October 2022. *

Ts'un-yan LIU Liu Ts'un-yan 柳存仁 (pinyin Liu Cunren) (1917–2009) was a scholar of Chinese letters and thought, an author of fiction, drama, and screenplays, and a major figure in the development of Asian Studies in Australia. Born in Shandong, he began ...

* Ian Ramsey MAXWELL* * Alexander George MITCHELL* * Harold James OLIVER * John Arthur PASSMORE * Douglas Henry PIKE * (Archibald)

Grenfell PRICE Sir Archibald Grenfell Price CMG FRGS (28 January 1892 – 20 July 1977) was an Australian geographer, historian and educationist. Life Price was born at North Adelaide and was the only surviving son of Henry Archibald Price, banker and busine ...

* *

Paul REDDING Paul Redding is an Australian philosopher and professor of philosophy at the University of Sydney. He is known for his research on Kantian philosophy and the tradition of German idealism and its relation to analytic philosophy and pragmatism. H ...

* George Federick Elliot RUDÉ * George Harrison RUSSELL * Richard Herbert SAMUEL* *

Alan George Lewers SHAW Alan George Lewers Shaw (3 February 1916 – 5 April 2012) was an Australian historian and author of several text books and historiographies on Australian and Victorian history. He taught at the University of Melbourne and the University o ...

* George Pelham SHIPP* * Keith Val SINCLAIR * John Jamieson Carswell SMART * Jacob SMIT * Bernard William SMITH * Alan Ker STOUT* * Theodor George Henry STREHLOW * Léon TAUMAN* *

Arthur Dale TRENDALL Arthur Dale Trendall, (28 March 1909 – 13 November 1995) was a New Zealand art historian and classical archaeologist whose work on identifying the work of individual artists on Greek ceramic vessels at Apulia and other sites earned him in ...

* * Louis Augustus TRIEBEL* * Otto Berkelbach VAN DER SPRENKEL *

John Manning WARD John Manning Ward (6 July 1919 – 6 May 1990) was a Vice-Chancellor and Challis Professor of History at the University of Sydney. Ward was born in Sydney and was educated at Fort Street Boys High School and the University of Sydney. He ...

* Francis James WEST * Gerald Alfred WILKES

Honorary Foundation Fellows

* Claude Thomas BISSELL * Herbert Cole COOMBS * Alexander Norman JEFFARES *

John McMANNERS John McManners (1916–2006) was a British clergyman and historian of religion who specialized in the history of the church and other aspects of religious life in 18th-century France. He was Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History at the Univ ...

* Robert (Gordon) MENZIES * Kenneth Baillieu MYER * Harold (Leslie) WHITEJohn Farquharson
Obituary: Sir Harold Leslie White
Obituaries Australia, anu.edu.au. Retrieved 25 October 2022.

Other academies

There are three other

Learned Academies A learned society (; also learned academy, scholarly society, or academic association) is an organization that exists to promote an academic discipline, profession, or a group of related disciplines such as the arts and science. Membership may ...

in Australia: the Australian Academy of Science (AAS), the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA), and the

Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering The Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering (ATSE) is a learned academy that helps Australians understand and use technology to solve complex problems. It was founded in 1975 as one of Australia's then four learned academies (now five) ...

(ATSE). These four academies co-operate through the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), formed in 2010. In addition to this, the four Academies convene the biennial National Scholarly Communication Forum "to disseminate information changes to the context and structures of scholarly communication in Australia, and to make recommendations on what a broad spectrum of participants see as the best developmental policies".

References

Sources

The Australian Academy of the Humanities Royal Charter and By-Laws
{{authority control Educational institutions established in 1969 Humanities Organisations based in Australia with royal patronage Australian National Academies 1969 establishments in Australia * National academies of arts and humanities