HRC welcomes new director

English Literature Professor Will Christie has joined ANU as Director of the Humanities Research Centre (HRC).

A specialist in Romantic period literature, before joining ANU Professor Christie worked at the University of Sydney, where he was also Pro-Dean of Research in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and was responsible for the university’s ERA 2015 submission.

Professor Christie said it was an “easy decision” to come to ANU. “Though I’ve been at Sydney for a long time, I’ve never had the opportunity or privilege of running a centre of this kind,” he said.

His ambitions for the HRC are to raise its profile inside and outside the academic world and make it a hub for humanities scholars at ANU and beyond.

“Humanities exist in pockets throughout the campus, but people are not always aware of each other’s activities,” he said.

“My local ambition is to bring people into the HRC and establish a lively hub for ANU staff, so that people who are interested in the humanities can become affiliates of the Centre. Every staff member has some investment in the HRC.

“The HRC has historically been a centre of activity for scholars across the nation, one that many of us would visit as fellows or to attend a conference. Most of us working in the humanities in the last 20-30 years have had something to do with the Centre.”

Professor Christie also plans to strengthen the HRC’s ties with the Australian Academy of the Humanities and with other major cultural institutions. 

As for research projects, Professor Christie has a number on the go, including one looking at the history of public lecturing in the development of a knowledge economy – fitting for a centre which itself hosts an extensive public lecture program.  

“Public lecturing in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries was a huge part of our culture and a central educational and social resource. But histories of education rarely, if ever, take it into account and few scholars have written or talked about it,” he said.

“It was where most people and all middle-class women got their information, aside from periodicals.”

A second major project of Professor Christie’s is on Romantic China, and relations between China and the West from the seventeenth century onwards, bringing together eastern and western scholars working on this subject.

Of his experience at ANU so far, Professor Christie said it “couldn’t have been better.”

“Everyone has been very welcoming and it’s been a really positive experience coming here. I think there’s a collective investment in building up the HRC’s profile again.”