Academics named Fellows of the Australian Academy of Humanities

Five researchers from the University of Sydney, Professor Simon Butt, Professor Jay Johnston, Associate Professor Antonia Rubino, Associate Professor Thom van Dooren and Professor Anik Waldow, have been elected as Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities.

The Fellowship of the Academy comprises more than 670 distinguished individuals. Election as Fellows is a significant achievement and is testament to the outstanding contribution they have made to their disciplines, and the exceptionally high regard in which they are held by their peers in the humanities community, both in Australia and abroad.

Twenty-four Fellows were elected to the Academy on 23 November 2022. The distinguished researchers represent a diverse range of fields, including leading Australian experts on Indigenous Australian and Pacific languages and cultures, digital media technologies, feminism, Australian cultural history, literary cultures past and present, Australian archaeology, and environmental studies. 

“The calibre of these new Fellows is a testament to the continuing strength of the humanities in Australia today, despite the many difficulties experienced by the sector over the past few years”, said Academy President Emeritus Professor Lesley Head FASSA FAHA.  

Simon Butt is Professor of Indonesian Law and Director of the Centre for Asian and Pacific Law at the University of Sydney Law School. His research interests include Indonesian legal history, law and religion and the way that Indonesian judges write their decisions. He has consulted on Indonesian law to the private and public sectors, and has provided advice and expert opinions about Indonesian law for litigation in the US, UK, Hong Kong, Singapore and Australia.

Jay Johnston is Professor in Religion in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She is a leader in conceptual and methodological innovation particularly in the new subfields of subtle body studies and aesthetics of religion. Her work demonstrates the importance of Religious Studies scholarship for the fields of heritage studies, wildlife conservation and environmental humanities, art history, Norse and Celtic studies.

Antonia Rubino is an Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She is a sociolinguist whose research focuses on multilingualism in migration contexts, particularly the use, changes and transmission of Italian dialect and English in the Italo-Australian migrant community. Her projects have pioneered the analysis of language use within the family, the media, education, and the landscape of Sydney. 

Thom van Dooren is Associate Professor in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences and Deputy Director at the Sydney Environment Institute. His work is situated in the interdisciplinary environmental humanities with particular grounding in cultural studies, philosophy, and science and technology studies. He is a leading figure in the international discussions and collaborations that are shaping the environmental humanities as a field of teaching and research.

Anik Waldow is a Professor of Philosophy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She mainly works in early modern philosophy and has published articles on the moral and cognitive function of sympathy, theories of personal identity, the role of affect in the formation of the self, scepticism and associationist theories of thought and language. Since 2018 she has been the director of the Sydney Intellectual History Network.

Hero image: L-R: Associate Professor Thom van Dooren; Professor Anik Waldow; Professor Simon Butt; Professor Jay Johnston; Associate Professor Antonia Rubino.