Academy of Social Sciences in Australia
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President's Report
Professor Stuart Macintyre
This is my first report since assuming the presidency of the Academy and the first months have increased my appreciation both of the quality of the work done by the Secretariat and the contribution of my predecessor, Sue Richardson.
Most of us are familiar with a range of activities undertaken by the Academy: the annual Symposium and Colloquium, the Cunningham Lecture, the research projects made possible by the funding for the Learned Academies Special Projects, the workshops, the Indigenous Summer School, the International Programs, the policy briefings and the publication of Policy Papers, commissioned Occasional Papers and the journal Dialogue. All of these activities draw on the expertise of the fellowship but they also require considerable organisation.
Less obvious but no less important are the calls on the Academy to provide advice to government and public agencies across the range of the social sciences, and also to represent them to those responsible for higher education and research. The imminent Research Quality Framework gives these activities particular importance. Again, John Beaton and his colleagues provide invaluable service in ensuring that our disciplines are understood and appreciated.
My appreciation of Sue Richardson's leadership was augmented when she took several months of well-deserved long service leave from her duties at Flinders, and I was no longer able to call on her for advice! She was assiduous in her attention to Academy business, sure in her judgement, generous in support of colleagues and remarkably effective in her advocacy. I am lucky that I will be able to draw on her intimate knowledge and understanding of the Academy, and grateful that she will assist when I am in Harvard later in the year and for the first part of next year.
National Academies Forum (NAF)
At the beginning of the year the Academy of Social Sciences assumed responsibility from the Academy of the Technological Sciences and Engineering for the National Academies Forum. This is an important mechanism for linking the four learned academies, and both its presidency and the secretariat rotates among the academies, so for the next two years we are providing both. I am pleased to announce that Irina Kotycheva has joined the ASSA Secretariat in the role of Program Officer for the National Academies Forum for which ASSA has Secretariat responsibilities during my tenure as the NAF President. Irina was originally trained as a civil engineer at Astrakhan University and we all look forward to this new addition to our multicultural Secretariat.
With Sue Richardson and John Beaton, I travelled to Tasmania in late February for a Symposium on Recherche Bay. The French naval expedition of D'Entrecasteaux was present at Recherche Bay for several weeks in both 1792 and 1793, and conducted an extensive range of research activities, including a harmonious and productive interaction with the Indigenous peoples of the area. A crucial area of the Bay was recently secured from the threat of logging, and is to be developed as a cultural site. After a trip down to Recherche Bay, the two-day symposium discussed a wide range of papers on its history, culture, science and technology. As the NAF secretariat, this Academy assumes the responsibility for steering the papers toward publication. While all four academies contributed to this Symposium, it was organised by the Australian Academy of Science, and that Academy deserves credit for its success. We took advantage of the attendance of the four presidents and executive directors to hold an executive meeting of the National Academies Forum, and that suggested the Academy of the Social Sciences might organise another colloquium for 2008 under the NAF banner and on similar lines at a place that marks an important moment in the building of the nation. John Beaton and I would be very happy to receive suggestions.
Funding
Sue Richardson reported in the last Dialogue of 2006 that we were still awaiting implementation of the funding recommendations of the Review of the Learned Academies that was undertaken in 2005. The Review had suggested that the academies were making an important contribution, and that there was a potential for a greater one if a modest increase in their annual grants-in-aid was provided. This has particular force for the Academy of the Social Sciences because supplementary funding under the Higher Education Innovation Program had come to an end, so that we were faced with cuts to valuable activities unless Government acts swiftly to implement the recommendations of its 2005 Review of the Learned Academies. Over the past few months the four Academies have continued to press the case for implementing the funding recommendations. Peter Shergold (FASSA) has provided helpful advice, and a letter from the Prime Minister indicated that the Commonwealth government has not lost sight of the matter.
Panels
At the 2006 General Meeting Marian Sawer, the chair of Panel C, reported a discussion at that panel meeting on the restrictions created by our present panel arrangements. She noted that the panels combine Fellows in groupings that are designed to bring cognate disciplines together, but might no longer take account of newer disciplinary relationships and make it difficult for Fellows to pursue intellectual interests across panels.
The panels were established in 1970 and have remained very much as they were originally constituted. Panel A began with Anthropology, Demography, Geography and Sociology; and has added Linguistics. Panel B began with Economics, Business Administration and Economic History; it no longer lists Business Administration but has added Accountancy and Statistics. Panel C was and remains a combination of History, Law, Philosophy and Political Science. Panel D comprised Education and Psychology; it now includes Social Medicine.
A glance at any faculty handbook or research report will reveal other fields of study in the social sciences. Some of these have arisen within disciplines, and others are cross-disciplinary fields of study. How well, I wonder, do our present arrangements represent these fields? And disciplinary practitioners vary in their interests: some political scientists, for example, work close to history while others have closer connections to sociology or economics. How well does the Academy panel structure recognise such interests and support their pursuit?
The Academy of Humanities deals with this multiplicity by allowing its Fellows to belong to two Electoral Sections (which are roughly the functional equivalent of our Panels). But it has many more Electoral Sections, and its annual meetings have to allow more time for meetings so that Fellows can attend two meetings if they so desire. The Electoral Sections of course have voting authority: some in the Academy of Humanities worry about the voting equality of dual membership. Our Secretariat had offered to set up a web-based forum on the structure of ASSA Panels so that Fellows could debate the issues of disciplinary groupings, but that project has been reconsidered due to the unacceptable costs of IT set up and management. The Secretariat will instead continue to receive the thoughts on Panels from Fellows via email or other normal forms of communication. These will be assembled and provided to Panel Chairs.
I asked Marian Sawer to consult with her panel executive and lead a discussion of this subject at the Academy Executive, so that we can consider the issues and put them before the fellowship. I shall report further in the next Dialogue, but again would welcome any preliminary suggestions.
Honours
Finally, we were delighted to see three Fellows of the Academy recognised in the 2007 Australia Day Honours.
Peter Shergold AM became a Companion in the Order of Australia. Hilary Charlesworth became a Member of the Order of Australia and Christopher Findlay also became a Member of the Order of Australia. On your behalf, I wrote to them expressing our congratulations.
Stuart Macintyre
2007
Last modified: 2 November 2009.