Artistic visions

Professor Robert Dixon

Few tertiary institutions can boast a research precinct devoted solely to arts and humanities.

A facility found in very few Australian universities puts research into the past and present into a context that makes the future clearer.

Opened in September last year, UQ’s Faculty of Arts Research Precinct is wholly dedicated to humanities and arts research. Located in the Forgan Smith Tower on the Great Court at St Lucia, the precinct houses the Centre for Critical and Cultural Studies (CCS), the Australian Studies Centre (ASC), and the Centre for the History of European Discourses (CHED).

Initially funded through UQ strategic grants, the research centres and precinct refurbishment have since expanded and attracted external funding from organisations such as the Australian Research Council (ARC). Newly appointed ARC Federation Fellow, Professor Graeme Turner, a widely respected and much-published commentator on Australian cultural studies, heads the CCS.

ASC Director Professor David Carter is helping promote Australian Studies in the People’s Republic of China. He has just returned from the Biennial Chinese Australian Studies Association Conference at Inner Mongolia University where he spoke at the opening ceremony and gave a paper on literary study research trends in Australia. The ASC has a contract with the Australia China Council within the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade to promote Australian Studies research and teaching in the Chinese university sector.

The ASC’s research is focused in the field of cultural history, especially in the areas of print culture studies, the history of modernity in Australia, and issues of race and culture. Researchers are examining key aspects of the history of print forms in Australia concerning the book trade, reading and consumption practices, and recent changes in the publishing industry.

Professor Robert Dixon, an ARC Professorial Fellow, is researching the career of famous photographer, author, cinematographer and showman, Frank Hurley. Postdoctoral researchers in the area of race and culture are examining the cultural dimensions of Indigenous protest activities in Australia, and the rise of Islam among Indigenous Australians.

The ASC has also joined with the University's Fryer Library to offer the first Fryer Library Awards, for researchers working with the Library's unique Australian collections. Director Professor Peter Cryle said CHED’s research focus reflected the view that cultural and intellectual languages and traditions of early modern Europe influenced many current cultural and political issues.

“Rather than focusing on ideas, CHED is concerned with the discourses in which thought is formulated, the purposes envisaged for such discourses, the networks in which they circulated, and the larger cultural and political contexts in which they functioned,” Professor Cryle said.

CENTRE FOR CRITICAL AND CULTURAL STUDIES