Launch of 'State of Hope - Griffith Review'

Presented by the Griffith Review and National Library of Australia.  Image: Flinders University Art Museum Collection

South Australia has always demonstrated a willingness to challenge prevailing sentiments, experiment, boldly innovate and take a national lead. Explore the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia with Dennis Atkins, Chris Wallace, Angela Woollacott and Peter Stanley. Chaired by Griffith Review editor Julianne Schultz.

In association with Griffith Review:

Professor Angela Woollacott is the Manning Clark professor of history at the Australian National University. Her most recent book, Settler Society in the Australian Colonies: Self-Government and Imperial Culture (Oxford University Press, 2015), was shortlisted for the history book award in the 2015 Queensland Literary Awards. She is researching and writing a biography of Don Dunstan, supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant.

Dr Chris Wallace is a historian, biographer and journalist, and a visiting fellow at the National Centre of Biography, School of History, Australian National University. Her doctorate investigates political biography as political intervention in twentieth-century Australia. Her books include Greer: Untamed Shrew (Pan Macmillan, 1997), The Private Don (Allen & Unwin, 2004) and Hewson: A Portrait (Pan Macmillan, 1993).

Dennis Atkins is the national affairs editor with The Courier Mail in Brisbane. He was born in the Adelaide Hills and started his forty-year career as a political journalist and commentator with News Limited in that city.

Professor Peter Stanley of UNSW Canberra is the author of twenty-seven books, including Whyalla at War (East Street Publications, 2004). His recent titles include Lost Boys of Anzac (NewSouth, 2014) and Bad Characters (Pier 9, 2010), which jointly won the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History in 2011.

Please reserve your free tickets here.

About the edition

As the industrial model that shaped twentieth-century South Australia is replaced by an uncertain future, now more than ever the state needs to draw on the strengths of its past in order to move ahead. 

South Australia has always demonstrated a willingness to challenge prevailing sentiments, experiment, boldly innovate and take a national lead – and as a result has produced a disproportionate number of leaders in business, science, the arts and public policy. 

Now, on the cusp of change, the state needs to draw on its talent for experiment and innovation in order to thrive in an increasingly competitive world. State of Hopeexplores the economic, social, environmental and cultural challenges facing South Australia, and the possibilities of renewal and revitalisation. It celebrates the unselfconscious willingness that hope enables.

State of Hope is co-edited by Julianne Schultz and Patrick Allington. 

This edition is a partnership between Griffith Review and Flinders University, and is published with the support of Arts South Australia.