Professor Glyn Davis Announced As 2010 Boyer Lecturer

IMMEDIATE RELEASE: 18 June 2010

The Republic of Learning and the 2010 Boyer Lectures

The 51st Boyer Lectures will be presented by Professor Glyn Davis AC, Vice-Chancellor and Principal of the University of Melbourne, commencing on-air from 14 November 2010. Each of the six Lectures in the series will be broadcast on ABC Radio National and be available online.

Each year the ABC Board invites a prominent Australian or group of Australians to present six radio lectures expressing their thoughts on major social, cultural, scientific or political issues. Professor Davis' Boyer Lecture series, entitled The Republic of Learning: higher education transforms Australia, will include six lectures exploring Australia's higher education landscape, revealing an experience sharply at odds with traditional images of sleepy cloisters and ivory towers.

ABC Chairman Maurice Newman said, "Professor Davis' position as a leading academic, at the centre of Australia's tertiary education transformation, will bring a depth of knowledge and analysis for which the Boyer Lectures are so well-respected. His insights will shed light on changes in the tertiary education sector that have occurred since many listeners were pursuing their degrees and a glimpse into the future for those who are on the path to higher education."

Professor Davis said, "I am honoured to deliver the first Boyer lectures devoted to the place of higher education in Australian life. TAFES, colleges and universities offer a vibrant set of choices for students across the nation. Australians have discovered a perhaps unsuspected talent for education, and our campuses are now among the most international spaces anywhere in the Australian community.

"The 2010 Boyer lectures provide a welcome opportunity to discuss this transformation and its implications for our national life".

Professor Glyn Davis is Professor of Political Science, and Vice-Chancellor and Principal, at the University of Melbourne. He was educated in Arts at the University of New South Wales and the Australian National University, before undertaking post-doctoral appointments as a Harkness Fellow at the University of California Berkeley, the Brookings Institution in Washington DC and the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University. Professor Davis teaches and researches in the field of public policy. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and a Companion in the Order of Australia. In early 2008 Professor Davis was named a member of the Innovation Taskforce, an expert group commissioned to review Australia's research and innovation systems and he also served, with the Prime Minister, as co-chair of the Australia 2020 Summit.

Internationally, Professor Davis is Chair of Universitas 21, a group of 24 leading universities from around the globe, a board member of the Association of Pacific Rim Universities, a member of the Hong Kong Grants Commission, and a Director of the Menzies Centre for Australian Studies at King's College London.

The annual Boyer Lecture series began in 1959 and is named after the late Sir Richard Boyer a former Chairman of the ABC. Over the years featured speakers have come from a very broad range of disciplines and interests. Previous Boyer Lecturers include; former Reserve Bank Governor Ian Macfarlane, Archbishop Dr Peter Jensen, international affairs expert Owen Harries, historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey, author David Malouf, former Prime Minister (then head of the ACTU) Bob Hawke, Aboriginal leader and lawyer Noel Pearson, Professor Graeme Clark AC, prominent business leader Rupert Murdoch AC and General Peter Cosgrove, AC MC (Retd).

Media contact: Nicola Fern, ABC Radio National Marketing Manager, (03) 9626 1758/0418 494 252, fern.nicola(at)abc.net.au


SOURCE: ABC Radio National