On Campus and Online

Julia Horne discusses the imminent publication of a new collection of essays, Australian Universities: A Conversation about Public Good. The collection is co-edited by Julia Horne and Matthew Thomas, and emerged out of the recent 2020/21 History of University Life Webinar Series, which addressed the deterioration of relations between government and public universities. The publishing project builds on the webinars to think imaginatively about the future of Australian higher education by understanding the past and the present. It is a multi-disciplinary project that draws across History, Political Science, Public and Social Policy, Education and other disciplines to address a variety of issues including students, culture, indigenous strategy and funding. The focus of Julia’s talk is the interplay of history with the present in a publishing project that began as a series of conversations which, we hope, the book will continue. She will also reflect on whether historians have a part to play in developing policy, in this case, higher education policy.

Julia Horne is Professor of History and University Historian at the University of Sydney. She writes widely on the history of higher education including its place in the lives of women, war and postwar reconstruction. Her recent books include Sydney the Making of a Public University (with Geoffrey Sherington, Miegunyah Press) and Preserving the Past: the University of Sydney and the Unified National System of Higher Education 1987-96 (with Stephen Garton, MUP)