Bulletin

Issue: January/February 2006

Visitors

Reinvigorating public social science

Professor Calhoun was awarded an honorary doctorate from La Trobe University for his contribu-tions to the social sciences.

Director of the University’s Thesis Eleven Centre for Social Theory, Professor Peter Beilharz, said under Professor Calhoun’s presidency, the Social Science Research Council in the US had been ‘reinvigorated as a leader of public social science and research into critical social issues’.

Professor Calhoun’s own research interests range from knowledge institutions, innovation, information technology, HIV/AIDS and social transformation to media, democracy and the public sphere.

His study of the Tiananmen Square protests of 1989 resulted in the prize-winning book, Neither Gods Nor Emperors: Students and the Struggle for Democracy in China (1994). Among his other books are Understanding September 11th (2002), and Lessons of Empire (2005).