A prominent member of Queensland`s arts community has taken up a high-profile appointment with The University of Queensland.
UQ Vice-Chancellor, Professor John Hay, AC, has announced the appointment of Professor Richard Fotheringham as Executive Dean of the Faculty of Arts.
Professor Fotheringham has been acting in the role of Executive Dean since September 2004 when he succeeded Professor Alan Rix who was appointed Pro-Vice-Chancellor Ipswich. During the time he was Acting Executive Dean, Professor Fotheringham strengthened the identity of the Faculty of Arts by helping engage its research and teaching with Australian society and the wider community.
“It`s an extraordinary honour and an exciting challenge,” Professor Fotheringham said.
“I really have never been an ivory tower person, I came from a career in theatre and performing arts and I have always tried to keep links with the wider community.
“I want to strengthen those links so that we become the institution that people think of when they need expertise and research in the arts.”
In his previous role as Head of the University`s School of English, Media Studies and Art History, Professor Fotheringham demonstrated a keen ability to link the arts with government agencies, industry and the wider community.
Professor Hay said Professor Fotheringham would bring those qualities to the role of Executive Dean.
“Professor Fotheringham is recognised as having made an eminent contribution to the arts through the quality of his teaching, his leadership and his advocacy,” Professor Hay said.
“He has strongly promoted the arts at UQ through numerous public events, including lectures, seminars and musical and dramatic performances. He has negotiated links between the University and the Brisbane Writers Festival and the Brisbane Festival.”
Professor Fotheringham`s record of service to the wider community includes a term as Chair of the Board of Senior Secondary School Studies and as a member of the Board of the Queensland Theatre Company. In 2004 he was honoured with a fellowship of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
A UQ graduate (BA, MA, PhD), Professor Fotheringham returned to the University in 1979 to teach theatre, film and television studies after a decade working in professional theatre.
Professor Fotheringham said one of his major goals would be to develop international areas of research excellence.
“The Faculty is conducting unique humanities research and is linking with the sciences,” he said.
“We are, for example, working on projects in music therapy for people with neurological damage. This draws on the expertise of the creative arts and the sciences.
“We don`t see there being a wall between the arts and the sciences.”
Professor Fotheringham`s own ongoing research project is a series of scholarly editions of early Australian plays for the Academy Editions of Australian Literature, a series of full-scale critical editions of major works of Australian Literature, sponsored by the Australian Academy of the Humanities.
His other publications include a study of Australian plays and films entitled Sport in Australian Drama and a biography of the short-story writer and playwright Arthur Hoey Davis, In Search of Steele Rudd.
Professor Fotheringham is also convenor of the 2006 World Shakespeare Congress, which will be held in Brisbane in July.
He was Treasurer of the Australasian Drama Studies Association for nine years and served for over a decade on the advisory boards of the Academy of the Arts at the Queensland Institute of Technology and the Arts Centre at the University of Southern Queensland.
High resolution images of Professor Fotheringham can be viewed here. To obtain an image please contact Diana Lilley (telephone 07 3365 2753, email d.lilley@uq.edu.au).
Media: For more information, contact Professor Richard Fotheringham (telephone 07 3365 1822) or Chris Saxby at UQ Communications (telephone 07 3365 2479, email c.saxby@uq.edu.au).
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