ANU Humanities Research Centre looks to its 100th Anniversary

Congratulations to the ANU Humanities Research Centre (HRC) who last week celebrated their 50^th anniversary with a commitment shared by ANU leadership to foreground the Centre’s role in advocating for humanities research as we hurtle forward into a new half century.

Founded by Professor Ian Donaldson in the early 1970s, the HRC was established to champion advanced research in and across the humanities nationally and internationally. However, it is far more than that.

HRC Director, Professor Kylie Message-Jones said “The Humanities Research Centre is a place, an action, and a community that is dedicated to intellectual excellence and public impact, connection and exchange across all fields of human endeavour. 

“It is more like an ecosystem or a network than a building or a centre. Although tiny in core staff numbers, we make a huge impact through bringing together cohorts of researchers each year; they stay for a while, then leave us to create their own networks, to which we continue to be linked.”

Conducting research on humanities issues including the 2023 Voice to Parliament, environmental justice, museological diversity, racial capitalism, migration, trauma and more, the centre hosts around 25 international, interstate and internal fellows each year.

To mark the occasion, lectures, workshops, seminars and activities were facilitated across the week centred on the theme of ‘everywhen’, a theme derived from ANU anthropologist, W. E. H. Stanner’s writings on the Indigenous concept of the dreamtime. Everywhen brings together a sense of ever-present time with people, culture, law, the landscape and cosmos. 

Amongst the event schedule was the launch of Humanities Research: Volume XX, Number 1, 2024 ‘Public Humanities of the Future: Museums, Archives, Universities and Beyond’ edited by Professor Kylie Message, Professor Frank Bongiorno and Associate Professor Robert Wellington. With more than 30 contributors from across the ANU, Australia, Spain, Italy, England, the United States of America, Argentina and France, the newly relaunched journal explores the roles, responsibilities and challenges of the humanities in 2024 and beyond.

Looking beyond Professor Message-Jones said, “Moving into its second half-century, the HRC will continue to build, platform, and profile knowledge that is based in or engages with the humanities. This work is not finished; The challenges Professor Donaldson addressed 50 years ago remain current because the opportunities we provide are not possible and cannot be undertaken in the day-to-day departmental context. 

“The innovative and interdisciplinary research we support will continue to make significant contributions to the world we live in; to our partners and collaborators in the galleries, libraries, archives and museums sector; to our own communities and to the broader global public sphere. It will also contribute to the academic disciplines we work in and through; and to ways that scholars and researchers approach urgent problems and risks that have not even been imagined yet.” 

See here for the full event schedule and here for recordings of the guest lectures.