The Australian Academy of the Humanities was established by

Royal Charter A royal charter is a formal grant issued by a monarch under royal prerogative as letters patent. Historically, they have been used to promulgate public laws, the most famous example being the English Magna Carta (great charter) of 1215, but s ...

in 1969 to advance scholarship and

public interest The public interest is "the welfare or well-being of the general public" and society. Overview Economist Lok Sang Ho in his ''Public Policy and the Public Interest'' argues that the public interest must be assessed impartially and, therefor ...

in the

humanities Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

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

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 Geoffrey Norman Blainey (born 11 March 1930) is an Australian historian, academic, best selling author and commentator. He is noted for having written authoritative texts on the economic and social history of Australia, including '' The Tyranny ...

, Kenneth Inglis,

John Mulvaney Derek John Mulvaney (26 October 1925 – 21 September 2016), known as John Mulvaney and D. J. Mulvaney, was an Australian archaeologist. He was the first qualified archaeologist to focus his work on Australia. Life Mulvaney was born in Ya ...

, David Monro, Franz Philipp, Saiyid Rizvi,

Oskar Spate Oskar Hermann Khristian Spate (30 March 191129 May 2000) was a geographer best known for his role in strengthening geography as a discipline in Australia and the Pacific. Early life Spate was born to a German father and an English mother in the ...

and

Judith Wright Judith Arundell Wright (31 May 191525 June 2000) was an Australian poet, environmentalist and campaigner for Aboriginal land rights. She was a recipient of the Christopher Brennan Award. Biography Judith Wright was born in Armidale, New So ...

) and one Honorary Fellow ( J. C. Beaglehole) 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 FASSA FAHA (elected November 2020) Vice-President & Honorary Secretary: Professor Emerita

Elizabeth Minchin Elizabeth Hume Minchin is an Australian classicist and former professor of classics at the Australian National University (ANU). Until 2014 she was one of the two editors of '' Antichthon'', the journal of the Australasian Society for Classical S ...

FAHA Vice-President & International Secretary: Professor Louise Edwards FASSA FHKAH FAHA Honorary Treasurer: Emeritus Professor Richard Waterhouse FRSN FASSA FAHA Editor: Emeritus Professor Graham Tulloch FAHA Immediate Past President: Professor

Joy Damousi Joy Damousi, is an Australian historian and Professor and Director of the Institute for Humanities and Social Sciences at Australian Catholic University. She was Professor of History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the U ...

FASSA FAHA Members: Professor Duncan Ivison FRSN FAHA, Professor Jennifer Milam FAHA, Distinguished Professor Ingrid Piller 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 Archaeology or archeology is the scientific study of human activity through the recovery and analysis of material culture. The archaeological record consists of artifacts, architecture, biofacts or ecofacts, sites, and cultural landsca ...

* Asian Studies * Classical Studies * Cultural and Communication Studies *

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Peoples, culture, and language * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England ** English national ide ...

* European Languages and Cultures *History *

Linguistics Linguistics is the science, scientific study of human language. It is called a scientific study because it entails a comprehensive, systematic, objective, and precise analysis of all aspects of language, particularly its nature and structure ...

*Philosophy and the

History of Ideas Intellectual history (also the history of ideas) is the study of the history of human thought and of intellectuals, people who conceptualize, discuss, write about, and concern themselves with ideas. The investigative premise of intellectual his ...

Religion Religion is usually defined as a social- cultural system of designated behaviors and practices, morals, beliefs, worldviews, texts, sanctified places, prophecies, ethics, or organizations, that generally relates humanity to supernatural, ...

The Arts The arts are a very wide range of human practices of creative expression, storytelling and cultural participation. They encompass multiple diverse and plural modes of thinking, doing and being, in an extremely broad range of media. Both ...

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 David Malet Armstrong (8 July 1926 – 13 May 2014), often D. M. Armstrong, was an Australian philosopher. He is well known for his work on metaphysics and the philosophy of mind, and for his defence of a factualist ontology, a functiona ...

* James Johnston AUCHMUTY* *

Arthur Llewellyn BASHAM Arthur Llewellyn Basham (24 May 1914 – 27 January 1986) was a noted historian, Indologist and author of a number of books. As a Professor at the School of Oriental and African Studies, London in the 1950s and the 1960s, he taught a number of fa ...

* Flora Marjorie BASSETT * John BOWMAN * Ernest BRAMSTED * Joseph Terence BURKE* * Alexander CAMBITOGLOU *

Alan Rowland CHISHOLM Alan Rowland Chisholm (1888–1981), often referred to as A. R. Chisholm, was a distinguished professor of French, critic and memorialist. During the more than three decades he spent at the University of Melbourne, the French "program became a ...

* * Charles Manning Hope CLARK * Raymond Maxwell CRAWFORD* * William CULICAN * William Allan EDWARDS* * Brian ELLIOTT * Ralph ELLIOTT * Ralph Barstow FARRELL* *

Charles Patrick FITZGERALD Charles Patrick Fitzgerald (5 March 190213 April 1992) was a British historian and writer whose academic career occurred mostly in Australia. He was a professor of East Asian studies with particular focus on China. Early life and education Fitzg ...

* Kathleen Elizabeth FITZPATRICK* * Alexander Boyce GIBSON* * Gordon GREENWOOD* * (William) Keith HANCOCK *

Ursula HOFF Ursula Hoff (26 December 1909 in London, UK – 10 January 2005 in Melbourne) was an Australian scholar and prolific author on art. She enjoyed a long career at the National Gallery of Victoria in Melbourne, where she was deputy director from 196 ...

* Alec Derwent HOPE* * Harold Arthur Kinross HUNT* * John Andrew LA NAUZE* *

James R. LAWLER James Ronald Lawler (1929–2013) was the foundation professor of French studies at the University of Western Australia (1963-1971) and later the Edward Carson Waller Distinguished Service Professor in Romance Languages and Literatures at the U ...

*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 * Ian Ramsey MAXWELL* * Alexander George MITCHELL* * Harold James OLIVER * John Arthur PASSMORE * Douglas Henry PIKE * (Archibald) Grenfell PRICE* * Paul REDDING * George Federick Elliot RUDÉ * George Harrison RUSSELL * Richard Herbert SAMUEL* * Alan George Lewers SHAW * George Pelham SHIPP* * Keith Val SINCLAIR * John Jamieson Carswell SMART * Jacob SMIT *

Bernard William SMITH Bernard William Smith (3 October 19162 September 2011) was an Australian art historian, art critic and academic, considered the founding father of Australian art history, and one of the country's most important thinkers. His book ''Place, Taste ...

* Alan Ker STOUT* * Theodor George Henry STREHLOW * Léon TAUMAN* * Arthur Dale TRENDALL* * Louis Augustus TRIEBEL* * Otto Berkelbach VAN DER SPRENKEL * John Manning WARD * Francis James WEST * Gerald Alfred WILKES

Honorary Foundation Fellows

* Claude Thomas BISSELL *

Herbert Cole COOMBS Herbert Cole "Nugget" Coombs (24 February 1906 – 29 October 1997) was an Australian economist and public servant. He is best known for having been the first Governor of the Reserve Bank of Australia, in which capacity he served from 1960 to ...

* 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 in Australia: the

Australian Academy of Science The Australian Academy of Science was founded in 1954 by a group of distinguished Australians, including Australian Fellows of the Royal Society of London. The first president was Sir Mark Oliphant. The academy is modelled after the Royal Soc ...

(AAS), the

Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia The Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA) is an independent, non-governmental organisation devoted to the advancement of knowledge and research in the social sciences. It has its origins in the Social Science Research Council of Austr ...

(ASSA), and the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering (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 Humanities are academic disciplines that study aspects of human society and culture. In the Renaissance, the term contrasted with divinity and referred to what is now called classics, the main area of secular study in universities at the t ...

Organisations based in Australia with royal patronage Australian National Academies 1969 establishments in Australia * National academies of arts and humanities