The ANU Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) is pleased to announce that applications are now open for its 2024-25 Visiting Fellowship Program.

The AuSI Visiting Fellowship Program brings early and mid-career researchers to the ANU campus to conduct and share research that promotes the study of Australia or transnational and comparative research involving Australia. Fellowship proposals are invited from scholars of all academic disciplines who are based in Australian and overseas academic institutions. Last year, nine scholars undertook Fellowships in a range of disciplines spanning policy studies, storytelling, colonial history, geochemistry, migration, medical humanities, and digital rights.

The Program enables Visiting Fellows to undertake innovative research whilst contributing to the collegial research culture across ANU. Fellows become members of the ANU community, and generally collaborate with ANU academics, present seminars or guest lectures, and attend AuSI events, such as the Visiting Fellows Dinner.

There are a range of themes that Fellowship proposals for the 2024-25 Program must relate to, including:

• Innovation
• Democratic participation and prosperity
• Health and Wellbeing
• Global environmental sustainability
• First Nations traditional knowledge

The closing date to apply for the 2023-24 Visiting Fellowship Program is midnight (AEST) 30 June 2024.

More information along with the application form can be found here.

With the program entering its third year, hear from some past AuSI Visiting Fellows about their experience below:

“The policies of the Global North profoundly shape and constrain prospects for development in the South, and right now human development is going backward in many parts of the Global South, which is linked to growing debt issues, the climate crisis and an increasing number of conflicts. If Australia wants to develop genuine partnerships with neighbours to promote a stable region - as we claim - we need to fully understand the impacts of our policy choices and programs and how they are received. Being at ANU, being able to chat with experts working on a range of related projects has dramatically progressed my thinking and helped me shape this project.”

- Dr Susan Engel, University of Wollongong – AuSI Visiting Fellow 2024

“With this Fellowship, I had the opportunity to learn and share my research interests in particular on Indigenous well-being and land management, and emerging economies. I had the opportunity to present to a wider range of researchers and learn about the well-being research being conducted at the ANU Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, and developed a plan for future collaborations. The Fellowship provided me an excellent opportunity to showcase my research which will help create a greater impact in the future and it will help me to collaborate with ANU experts in the future.”

- Kamaljit K Sangha, Charles Darwin University – AuSI Visiting Fellow 2023

“The Fellowship has helped me sustain and renew connections with colleagues at ANU, while expanding my network to academics that I had not yet met. It has helped me forge new connections between my own university, the ANU and collecting institutions. Data collected during the fellowship will also underpin my ongoing research on Australian message sticks and be accessible to other scholars working in this field.”

- Piers Kelly, University of New England – AuSI Visiting Fellow 2022

“My Fellowship at the AuSI was a productive whirlwind. In addition to attending seminars in the School of Politics and International Relations, I cultivated new professional relationships and deepened existing ones through a series of one-on-one meetings with an array of faculty and graduate students. Most notably, these meetings enabled me to: 1) significantly advance my book project on the Australian Human Rights Commission; 2) connect with ANU-based scholars who are working on Australia as part of the Comparative Agendas Project; 3) develop a plan to bring UT-Austin students to the ANU for three days in 2024 … and discuss with AuSI Director Paul Pickering a new model for gatherings of the Australian and New Zealand Studies Association of North America.”

- Rhonda Evans, The University of Texas at Austin – AuSI Visiting Fellow 2022

View the full list of AuSI’s 2024-25 Visiting Fellows