Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

Cunningham Lectures

The Academy's annual public lectures are named after the first Chairman of the Social Science Research Committee (the Academy's predecessor), Dr Kenneth Stewart Cunningham; the post he had held from 1943 to 1952. The Cunningham Lecture is coupled with ASSA's prestigious Annual Symposium and is open to the public.

2010
Web page What if mainstream science is right? The rout of knowledge and analysis in Australian climate change policy.
Speaker: Ross Garnaut AO
The integrated wisdom of mainstream science and mainstream economics identify large risks to established patterns of human civilisation from unmitigated or weakly mitigated climate change. These risks are important in all countries, and greater in Australia than in any other developed country. …
2009
Web page Green democracy, global governance.
Speaker: John Dryzek
The contemporary prominence of climate change confirms the democratic and ecological deficits of global governance. When authority migrates from states into the international system, democracy does not usually follow, causing problems in a world where legitimate political authority ought to be democratic. …
2007
Web page World order under stress: issues and initiatives for the 21st century.
Speaker: Robert O'Neill
Forty years ago, when I stepped off the aircraft which had brought me back from a year of war in Vietnam, I had the beginnings of an anxiety which has grown more acute since. …
2006
Web page Building democracy and justice after conflict.
Speaker: Hilary Charlesworth
It has been said that democracy or state-building has 'become one of the critical all-consuming strategic and moral imperatives of our terrorised time'. …
2005
Web page Re-thinking Australian governance - the Howard legacy.
Speaker: Paul Kelly
As I wrote this Lecture I reflected that it is 30 years ago this week that we witnessed the Dismissal - the product of personality conflict and defects within our system. …
2004
Web page The Esteem Engine: a resource for institutional design.
Speaker: Geoffrey Brennan
In what follows, I want to say a little about what I take to be one element in the story of this eclipse - namely, the emergence of the idea of 'invisible-hand' mechanisms in normative social analysis. …
2003
Web page Leadership observed: roles, decisions, character, relationships and journeys.
Speaker: Leo Mann
Who is a leader? How important are leaders? What difference do they make? What drives and motivates them? What makes a capable leader? What is the essence of effective leadership? How do we nurture leadership? …
2002
Web page Before the bough breaks: doing more for our children in the 21st century.
Speaker: Fiona Stanley
Much of the data in this article comes from a paper commissioned by the Australian Bureau of Statistics for the Millenium Year Book, entitled Child Health since Federation. …
2001
Web page Australia Fair.
Speaker: Hugh Stretton
One use of a lecture in such intelligent company would be to sketch a social democratic future in which Australians become even richer, freer, more equal, more cooperative, fonder of one another and happier than most of us already are. …
2000
Web page Thinking peace, making peace: millennial reflections.
Speakers: Margaret Jolly and Barry Hindess
The year 2000 not only marked the millennium in Western calendars but, as a sign of millennial optimism perhaps, was declared by the United Nations to be the International Year for a Culture of Peace, inaugurating an International Decade for Peace. UNESCO was selected as the focal UN agency for all related activities. …
1999
Web page Pushing back the frontiers of death.
Speaker: John C Caldwell
The most persistent imagery in literature, particularly in poetry, is human frailty, especially the inevitability of death. 'Mortals' is a term used to designate the human race.
1998
Web page Shared space - divided cultures: Australia today.
Speaker: Fay Gale
It is with considerable trepidation that I give this lecture. The topic is not just complex and immense, but it has been so taken over by the media and so politicised by so many varying and vested interests, that any objective discussion that satisfies everyone will be impossible.