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Promoting and empowering research to come to new understandings of the human past, its importance in the present, and its lessons for the future.
The Vere Gordon Childe Centre is a multi-disciplinary research centre situated within the School of Humanities, at the University of Sydney, The Centre aims to understand global human diversity through the study of material culture, artistic representation, and intangible heritage.
The Centre takes its name from University of Sydney graduate Vere Gordon Childe (1892 – 1957) notable for his achievements in archaeology and for his influence on the Australian labour movement.
The Vere Gordon Childe Centre is one of four flagship centres in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences that focus on multidisciplinary research
The Director, Professor Kirsten McKenzie is a historian. The Deputy Director, Dr Joseph (Seppi) Lehner is an archaeologist, and the Centre Executive includes specialists in a wide range of fields both within and outside the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences.
Vere Gordon Childe is notable for his worldwide achievements in archaeology and his equally significant early influence on the Australian labour movement. After taking up a scholarship at Oxford, where his socialist views and writings made him a person of interest to MI6, Childe returned to Australia where he worked as private secretary and speech writer to New South Wales Labor Premier John Storey, gaining the attention of the Australian security services. His perceived radical views soon ensured he was not offered an academic post at the University of Sydney (or anywhere in Australia).
As a result, his career as the pre-eminent archaeologist and scholar of his time began not in Australia but in the United Kingdom – where he held the prestigious Abercromby Chair of Archaeology at the University of Edinburgh from 1927 to 1946, before becoming the Director of the Institute of Archaeology in London from 1946 until his retirement in 1956. Many of his big ideas about the early origins and spread of agriculture have continued to gain traction with the advent of new scientific techniques like ancient genomics, making his scholarship as relevant in the 21st century as it was in the 20th.
On his return to Australia in 1957, Childe was belatedly awarded an honorary degree by the University of Sydney. On 19 October of that year he fell to his death from the cliffs near Govett’s Leap in the Blue Mountains – from the very spot Charles Darwin had stood remarking at the view some 100 years before. His glasses, pipe, compass, hat and folded raincoat were found at the spot.
Naming our Centre after Vere Gordon Childe commemorates and recognises one of Australia’s pre-eminent academic figures – one overlooked by his native country and alma mater for far too long.
The VGCC Reading Room holds collections from several centres, foundations and institutes at the University of Sydney including The Near Eastern Archaeological Foundation (NEAF), The Australian Archaeological Institute at Athens (AAIA) and rare collections from the Department of Classics and Ancient History. These collections are housed within the Vere Gordon Childe Centre Reading Room (VGCC), Level 4, Madsen Building, University of Sydney.
The NEAF collection within the VGCC Reading Room includes archaeological volumes, periodicals and theses covering the Near East, Cyprus, Mediterranean studies and Archaeological science, theory and method, and history. With nearly 14,000 volumes, not including journals and dissertations, the AAIA Collections within the VGCC Reading Room is an invaluable collection that contains volumes not usually found elsewhere in Australia.
The Reading Room does not allow off-site borrowing so the full collection is theoretically available at all times. Books in the collection are not available for inter-library loans. The library catalogue can be found at: https://humanities-arts-library.sydney.edu.au/
Access to the VGCC Reading Room can be made available by request to researchers, scholars and VGCC members. For access requests please contact the VGCC directly on vgc.centre@sydney.edu.au
The Vere Gordon Childe Centre Boardroom has a capacity of 45 people and may be booked for Centre-aligned events, please contact vgc.centre@sydney.edu.au for further information.
