7 December 2006
|
|
Associate Professor Bain Attwood
|
|
|
Dr Michael Ackland
|
Two outstanding Monash University academics have been elected as Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
Associate Professor Bain Attwood, School of Historical Studies and Dr Michael Ackland, School of English, Communications and Performance Studies were elected at the Annual General Meeting of the Academy last month.
Fellows of the Academy are residents of Australia who have achieved the highest distinction in scholarship.
The Academy said Associate Professor Attwood, who is also the Adjunct Professor at the Centre for Cross-Cultural Research at the Australian National University, is a "leading historian of Aboriginal-white relations in Australia".
"His work is distinguished by a combination of comparative expertise, theoretical sophistication, independence and acuity of judgement and intellectual courage," it said.
"Taken as a whole, his work constitutes perhaps the most sustained critical commentary on the debates over Aboriginal history during the past two decades."
Associate Professor Attwood said it was a "great honour" to be elected to the Academy.
"Several of my colleagues in the School of Historical Studies are Fellows of the Australian Academy of Humanities, and this reflects the high regard in which the School is held," he said.
The Academy said Dr Ackland has "contributed to international scholarship in the fields of Romanticism, American Literature and Postcolonial Studies".
"The majority of his monographs and published research papers deal, however, with Australian literature from the founding settlement to the contemporary period, and here his achievement has been truly outstanding," it said.
"I believe this is a great honour and a recognition of many years' work in the field," Dr Ackland said.
"Sometimes one feels that Australian studies receives insufficient recognition in its own land, and so it is very heartening when research with this focus is recognised in this way."
For more information contact Mr John Watts at Media Communications on +61 3 9905 9201.
| 
