Professor Bronwyn Parry

“I guess I've had an unconventional career in some ways. I grew up in Queensland, moved to what’s now known as Canberra College and then enrolled in university at the ANU.

After my first year there I got into a horrendous car accident and decided to move to Sydney to pursue a career in theatre. Combining my interest in cabinet making, I became the first woman to be apprenticed as a scenery builder in Australia. By the time I was 25, I was running the largest construction workshop at the Australian Opera. I worked on lots of fantastic projects in the film industry including Mad Max films, Dead Calm and The Adventures of Priscilla, Queen of the Desert.

After years in the industry I thought, my creative side was completely fulfilled, but my intellectual tank was dry. I was sticking headphones inside my earmuffs so I could listen to Radio National talk about things like social issues, politics, economics, and so on. So I decided to go back to uni and study sociology.

Following my honours year, I won the Commonwealth Scholarship and the University Medal, which took me to Cambridge, where I did my PhD. I loved living in the UK, so I completed a postdoctoral fellowship at King’s College Cambridge and after that, a competitive senior research fellowship.

After 10 years, I decided to move to the East End of London to join Queen Mary University of London. There I worked to enhance the skills and capabilities of low-socioeconomic students and as a result, many of them graduated with first class degrees. That was hugely rewarding and fun.

I then took up my Chair at King's College London where I created the first undergraduate degree in global health and social medicine in the UK. I worked my way up through the ranks, later becoming the Vice Principal for Service. In this role I was in charge of all the institutions’ social impact agenda, including things like increasing opportunities for students whose educational journey had been disrupted.

In 2023, I decided I must return home to Australia, and was very fortunate to be offered the Deanship of CASS at the ANU. Now my agenda is to concentrate on delivering outstanding research and teaching with an increased focus on social impact, equity and inclusion. This, I'm happy to say, aligns pretty closely with what the Australian Universities Accord has just announced as the priorities for higher education in Australia moving forward.”

“Well, I guess two things are really exciting to me. One is actually getting some traction with the social impact work at ANU. Last year I worked to create POLIS, the Centre for Social Policy Research, which will include a Social Impact Hub. This is the place we will develop a compelling suite of work around new social interventions that can be directly utilised by public stakeholders to address the challenges that face all of Australia today; whether it's natural disasters like flooding, the cost of living or trying to get access to university.

I care hugely about Indigenous rights and issues that are affecting young people, so I'm also working on a really exciting new program for our students to be trained to acquire the skill set and the mindset that they need to be the global leaders and changemakers of tomorrow.”

“I think professionally, being able to craft a career that has been really meaningful to me throughout. And to create a number of things that I think have had a lasting positive impact for the people that have been the recipients of those programs.

Bringing questions around global health and the social implications of developments in health and medicine to the forefront, proved to be really important during the pandemic.

The work that I've done developing complementary pathways into education for some of the most disadvantaged young people, has provided them with a chance to restart their lives and their educational journeys. Distributing privilege and translating the value of having a world leading education and participating in world leading research has also been really important for me, on a personal level.

I can tell you though, without a shadow of a doubt that my greatest achievement, has been marrying my fantastic wife, Sally, and having the opportunity to have two amazing sons, Alex and Jacob with her, something I didn't think I would be able to realise through the course of my lifetime. We have an incredible partnership and I'm indebted to her for everything that I'm able to do and achieve, so that means a huge amount to me.”

“I think in recent times, I have been a bit awestruck by the bravery of the young women that I have seen in Iran. Mahsa Amini and Narges Mohammadi, who won the 2023 Nobel Peace Prize. These are women who have taken it upon themselves to advocate for their right to freedom of expression in countries where they're experiencing very oppressive regimes that have tried to stifle their right to be themselves in terms of their dress, educational aspirations, social interests, etc.

I think I'm a pretty brave person, but put in the same situation, I don't know if I would be quite that brave. I like to think I would, but I'm not sure that I would. So, I am enormously respectful of them, for their willingness to fight for freedom of expression and right to fulfill their own individual potential as women in the face of extraordinary opposition. I think that's incredibly impressive.”

“I've had several. In the non-academic sphere, Christine Dunstan OAM was the woman who first apprenticed me in Sydney. She ran her own production company, which was very unusual at the time. Without her and her role modelling of what was possible for women to do, I don't think I would have been brave enough to imagine that I could have done that. She took me on and that was incredible, that was the thing that made all the difference.

There were also two senior academic leaders of mine in the UK. One was Denise Lievesley, who when I knew her, was the Dean of the Faculty of Social Science and Public Policy at King’s. The other was Professor Evelyn Welsh FKC, who was then the Senior Vice Principal of KCL, now Vice Chancellor of Bristol University both of whom, in very different ways, modelled to me what really efficient, effective and humane female leadership can look like in higher education.

Evelyn's quite incredible in terms of her ability to just get across the most staggering amount of information and detail. I also admired the way in which she contributed to the leadership of the institution across so many different axes simultaneously. Denise was always an incredibly warm and supportive, imaginative Dean who really took all of our interests and kept them close to her heart. She showed me how it's possible to take people with you, when you want to institute processes of change, and her mentorship was, and continues to be, important to me.

You know, advice and mentoring is incredibly important. I really believe in not pulling the rope ladder up behind you, once you have got to the pinnacle of your career, your primary responsibility should be helping others up in whatever way you can.”