Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
President's Report
Professor Fay Gale
In this annual report for 1999 I would first wish to honour our previous President, Professor Paul Bourke. I miss greatly the contribution and wise counsel he continued to offer in his role as immediate past president. I joined with a large number of Fellows in attending the very fitting memorial service for Paul in the Great Hall in University House on Thursday 29 July and in the celebration of his academic work at Flinders University on Friday 24 September.
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This year has been a very active one for the Academy and a number of new initiatives have taken place and various procedures have been changed and updated. Probably the most exciting venture, however, has been the acquisition of new premises.
Thanks to the efforts of our Executive Director, Barry Clissold, great progress has been made on the arrangements for the refurbishment of 28 Balmain Crescent in preparation for our move in the New Year. We have long awaited this opportunity to occupy a large house that is clearly the sole premises of the Academy and one with easy access for all fellows and visitors.
It was Professor Bourke's great wish that something like this would one day eventuate and it is sad that he is not here to enjoy it. The new arrangements will give us an excellent large conference room with a very pleasant outlook. We will also be able to have a library as well as several offices. There will now be space for visiting scholars to work and have ready access to the Academy's publications. I am sure that this greater visibility and accessibility will greatly enhance our public profile.
Most fellows will now be aware of the changed, upgraded and streamlined procedures for the election of fellows. It was time to make changes to ensure as much as possible comparability between panels and to ensure greater accountability in the procedures. By introducing independent assessors to the process we should ensure greater objectivity than was possible when using only referees who may be well known to the candidate. Whilst there has been some concern expressed that the role of panels might be weakened by this process, this was not the intention and should not be the case. It will merely mean that further expert advice is added to the decision making process. Panel chairs will continue to attend the meetings of the Membership committee to discuss the considerations of the Panel committees and to explain where needed the results of the Panel ballot.
The Workshop committee is one of our most prominent committees in terms of raising the profile of the Academy and promoting scholarship. During the year the guidelines have been through a series of iterations to clarify them and to make them readily available to all potential applicants. We have also spelled out more clearly the conditions of the grant and the publication requirements. The new guidelines support greater scholarly participation and encourage cross subsidy. Workshops bring together scholars working at the leading edge of research on particular problems. They provide an avenue for intense intellectual exchange and the generation of new ideas often directed at informing policy. They are by intent small and transdisciplinary. They have resulted in some excellent publications that have often had considerable impact on government. I have opened two workshops on behalf of the Academy and have been most impressed by the quality of the scholarship and discussion and the commitment and enthusiasm of the participants. The requirements for funding and Academy support are now stringent and the Workshop Committee consists of many dedicated scholars who work hard to raise the profile and standards of the workshops. Professor Jill Roe has been a stimulating and enthusiastic chair of the committee and will be greatly missed. We have been fortunate in having such an efficient officer in Sue Rider to assist this active committee through the reorganisation.
The guidelines for the nomination and selection of younger scholars for the Academy's medal have also been updated and amended during the year. The wording on eligibility has been changed so that younger scholars are no longer defined by age but by years, in this case eight years, since commencing their professional career. This enables the committee to consider scholars, usually women, who have entered academic life somewhat later than the norm. Referees are now to be called and considerable weight is placed on the citation put forward by the nominator.
The Public Affairs Committee which was established last year has met several times this year to develop its rationale. In line with one of the recommendations of the ARC review of the Social Sciences this committee was established to promote the work of the Academy and to publicise its many scholarly activities. By means of a workshop and the assistance of a consultant, considerable work has been put into developing a new website taking into consideration the requirements of potential users and the benefits to the Academy of electronic communication.
Fellows will have already noticed the new logo and the revamped newsletter now called Dialogue. These have been designed to make the Academy and its work more noticeable and more widely publicised. A new and more appropriate letterhead will be printed when we move to the new location.
Our international work has also taken on an added dimension. The International Committee develops and maintains links with specific countries and assists with discipline ties and with visits of fellows to countries with which it might otherwise be difficult for individuals to establish contact. The work of this committee is reported in later pages. In addition I have attempted this year to broaden the image and profile of the Academy with Social Science organisations in countries where fellows already have discipline contacts but where we do not necessarily have Academy ties. Thus as reported in Dialogue 3/1999, Professor Jim Jupp and I visited Lord Plant in London to discuss the newly established Academy of the Social Sciences there and its relationships with the British Academy. I also visited New York and Harvard to gain information and contacts with the Social Sciences Research Council and the American Academy of the Arts and Sciences.
I have since been to New Zealand to speak at a conference on the Social Sciences organised by the Royal Society of New Zealand. I have also given a paper at the biennial conference of AASSREC (Association of Asian Social Science Research Councils) in Seoul, Korea. Professor George Smolicz, an affiliate of this organisation in a different capacity, also spoke at this conference. Just after the AGM I will be going to Phitsanuluk in Thailand to a meeting of IFSSO (International Federation of Social Science Organisations) and ISSC (International Social Science Council). I am attempting to re-establish links with these social science bodies to ensure that we are well known and consulted in the region. I was unable to represent us at the UNESCO conference in Budapest as I was already committed in the United States. However Associate Professor Sue Richardson and Mr Ian Castles went to the meeting in Budapest and spoke on behalf of social scientists. I have participated in the national committee of UNESCO and I anticipate greater cooperative ventures with them in the future.
A Research Projects Committee has been set up to work with the Research Director, Dr John Robertson, on long term projects and funding applications. We have been successful in obtaining funding for a new large scale project again this year. This project will carry out a study of Post Graduate Training. The research has already commenced and has brought together a team of scholars to enable cross-disciplinary collaboration. This new initiative is timely in view of the recently released Green Paper which emphasises the need for change in the structure and funding of post graduate training.
This year the Annual General Meeting will be restructured. I have felt it unnecessary to repeat orally material which is already available in this Annual Report and in Dialogue. As a result it is anticipated that the meeting will be much shorter and finish in adequate time for Fellows to catch afternoon flights home. I am hoping for a speedier and more efficient meeting that will improve attendance and participation.
Our role in the political field remains very active. Professor Vicki Sara, Chair of the Australian Research Council, attended the last meeting of the Executive Committee and we have since submitted our response to the Green Paper, New Knowledge, New Opportunities. I spoke at a meeting of the four academies on this issue in Adelaide. In my role on the National Academies Forum, I have with the other presidents had a meeting with Dr David Kemp to discuss our concerns with the paper. We have written a joint submission to the paper, realising after much discussion, that we have very similar concerns since research is of prime importance to all Fellows.
The National Academies Forum has been active in a number of other ways. It has conducted valuable interdisciplinary symposia on topics as diverse as Scholarship, Intellectual Ownership and the Law and Fire! The Australian Experience. This Forum has also gone through a time of re-evaluation this year and as a part of this assessment has been re-named The Council of the Australian Academies.
This has been a very busy year with many changes and an upgrading of many of our procedures. These initiatives should put us in good shape for the very important five yearly review which DETYA will conduct next year.
Fay Gale
President, 1999
Last modified: 2 November 2009.