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Humanities research in Australia is about to become better understood with the results of a preliminary survey of Australian Humanities-based research centres launched by the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (ACHRC) at their Annual Meeting , this year hosted in Perth at the Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia on July 7-9.

Humanities research centres come in all shapes and sizes, with various purposes, activities and structures. Understanding this diversity and developing a picture of what success looks like for them will help not only Humanities researchers but also the universities to which they report, as well as the funding bodies and government departments who do not always ‘get' humanities research and the infrastructure needed to produce it.

"This is the first time that research into centres and institutes has been produced in Australia," said Robert Phiddian, Director of the ACHRC.

The results of the survey show that there are about 180 centres in the university sector in Australia who are based in or who include the Humanities. These range from centres with no official budget and some of the time of one or two teaching-research academics to centres with large budgets and multi-faceted programs of activity, research development and outreach, to centres with small budgets but the goodwill and enthusiasm of over 100 researchers spread out across their own institution and beyond.

The survey also reveals that nearly all centres are interdisciplinary and most are umbrellas for a range of projects to come and go according to their natural life cycles. Most centres have less than 1 FTE admin support, and the only consistent element of governance we can discern is a strong emphasis on the need for academic leadership.

The preliminary results will be delivered to a group of centre-based Humanities researchers and allied staff at the ACHRC's annual meeting, themed " Spaces and Networks for the Humanities: Building Research Environments ". The Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia is a particularly good place for the launch, as it is a research centre that operates multiple programs across the full disciplinary spread but with a strong Humanities agenda. The meeting brings together Humanities-focussed researchers from across Australasia with guests from Japan, Singapore, and the United States.

Media references

Robert Phiddian (Director ACHRC) (+61 4)28 833 327

Susan Takao (Associate Director, UWA Institute of Advance Studies)  (+61 8)  6488 4797/(+61 4)00 213 034