The Value of Humanities Research in Regional Australia

We are two academics at Flinders University in South Australia who have been involved with the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Researchers and Centres (ACHRC)—as it is now named—for over a decade. Robert, in mid-career as a literary scholar and research leader, launched the network in 2011, while Tully began working for the organisation as an administrator in the years between finishing her PhD and commencing her first full-time lecturer position, balancing the role with postdocs and part-time contracts. Modelled on the international Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI), the ACHRC met annually at different institutions around Australia and New Zealand. It advocated for better outcomes for humanities research and staff, diffused strategic knowledge for people of all career stages, and networked centre administrators. We concentrated on providing professional development that could be hard to get at one’s own institution given the distinctive and sometimes isolated nature of humanities research centres in their own institutions and the lack of knowledge about the Humanities expressed by many in our universities’ senior executive roles. We connected with the Australian Academy of the Humanities, the Australian Research Council, the Council for the Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences (CHASS), and the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (DASSH); we also investigated the nuances of the relationship between humanities scholars and the GLAM (galleries, libraries, archives and museums) sector. The consortium’s main vehicle has been face-to-face discussion at annual meetings and symposia on topics of practical and strategic relevance to getting humanities research—broadly defined—done in a changing and often hostile environment.