David Rowe elected to the Australian Academy of the Humanities

Professor David Rowe from the UWS Institute for Culture and Society (ICS) has been elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. This honour is in recognition of his outstanding contribution and his exceptionally high regard among his peers in the humanities, both in Australia and abroad.

Topics central to the field of Cultural Studies – gender, national identity and global networking, and image flow – figure prominently in his work.  Professor Rowe is a world leader in the study of the mass media representation of sport, and he has also researched and published extensively on media institutions, journalism, popular music, cultural policy and urban leisure.

The Academy advances knowledge of, and the pursuit of excellence in, the humanities in Australia for the benefit of the nation. Established by Royal Charter in 1969, it is constituted by a body of approximately 600 peer-elected Fellows who are leaders and experts in the broad disciplinary groups which share a common and central concern with human behaviour and culture.

"This is a pleasing personal honour, but more importantly it demonstrates the strength of the UWS Institute for Culture and Society in the discipline of Cultural & Communication Studies", says Professor Rowe.

"My ICS colleagues, Professors Ien Ang, Tony Bennett, Bob Hodge and Timothy Rowse, are Academy Fellows of longstanding."

"In January 2015 we will be joined in the Institute by another Fellow – Professor Gay Hawkins".

Professor Rowe says the concentration of Fellows at ICS highlights UWS' strength in the Humanities.

"In particular, Cultural Studies is an area in which we have performed very well in Excellence in Research for Australia (ERA), which evaluates the quality of the research conducted at Australian universities," he says. 

The Institute for Culture and Society researches the transformations in culture and society in the context of contemporary global change, and promotes engaged, inter-disciplinary and collaborative scholarship in the Humanities and Social Sciences.

Ends

10 December 2014

Mark Smith, Senior Media Officer