News and Events

2006 Media Releases

La Trobe University appoints seven new professors

The Vice-Chancellor of La Trobe University, Professor Brian Stoddart, has announced the appointment of five new professors – in philosophy, economics, finance and education – as well two personal chairs, in English and sexual health research.

Andrew Brennan – a leading researcher in logic, philosophy of language, personal identity, animal ethics and environmental policy – has been appointed to the Chair of Philosophy. Previously Professor of Philosophy at the University of Western Australia for 14 years, Professor Brennan is a graduate of St Andrews, Calgary and Oxford universities and began his career at the University of Stirling in the UK.

Professor Brennan holds an ARC Discovery Project grant for his research into ‘Making Ethics Work’, which he will continue at La Trobe. His recent work includes a co-authored book on philosophy of logic, and papers on such topics as dryland salinity in Australia, globalisation, the birth of modern science and the ethics of place.

At La Trobe, Professor Brennan plans to develop projects on sustainability, ethics and policy, and build on existing research links with overseas groups in China and Europe. ‘This University offers an exciting research environment with scope for new interdisciplinary work on ethics, globalisation and sustainability – proof of the real contributions philosophy can make to the big issues facing us as individuals and as a community,’ he says.

During the past five years Professor Brennan has held visiting professorships at the University of Oslo and at City University Hong Kong. Former Chair of the Animal Ethics Committee in Western Australia, he also serves on the Board of the Australian and New Zealand Council for the Care of Animals in Research and Teaching.

Contact: Tel: 03 9479 2988 Email: Andrew.brennan@latrobe.edu.au

Gary Bryan Magee, formerly Associate Professor in the Department of Economics at the University of Melbourne, has been appointed to the Chair in Economics. A leading economic historian, Professor Magee’s research interests include British, Australian, American and global economic history, innovation, technological change and entrepreneurship, the economics of migration, international economics and public policy.

Professor Magee has published two major research monographs, many articles in key economic history and business history journals and has been invited to contribute to prestigious invitation-only publications including The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. A member of both the national and international economic and business history communities, he was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society, UK, in 2001.

Professor Magee started his academic career as a lecturer in Economics at La Trobe in 1991. Since then he has held a number of academic positions at Oxford University, Australian National University, University of London and the University of Melbourne.

He has also held a number of visiting appointments, including the Australian Bicentennial Fellowship, University of London; Visiting Fellowships at the University of Oxford and the Russian Academy of Sciences, Moscow; and Distinguished Visitor, China Development Institute, China.

Contact: Tel: 03 8344 9717 Email: g.magee@unimelb.edu.au

Xiangkang Yin, a specialist in quantitative economic theory and theoretical finance, has been appointed Professor of Economics and Finance. Professor Yin did his PhD in Economic Cybernetics at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, in 1989, with a doctoral dissertation on ‘Random Control Theory and Its Applications to Financing and Investment’.

Professor Yin joined La Trobe as a lecturer in June 1995, became senior lecturer in 1999, and Reader in 2004. His research interests are in the areas of Chinese economy, corporate finance and governance, financial markets, industrial economics, innovation and development, and micro/macro analysis of imperfect competition.

Professor Yin has held major ARC Discovery and Linkage Grants and has helped provide World Bank funded consulting services to the Foreign Trade University in Vietnam. His research has been published in the International Review of Financial Analysis, the Journal of Finance and the Journal of Development Economics. He is currently working at the Australian Graduate School of Management on corporate governance issues.

Contact: Tel: 03 9479 2312 Email: x.yin@latrobe.edu.au

Frank Hardman, a Reader in Language and Education in the School of Education, Communication and Language Sciences at the University of Newcastle upon Tyne, has been appointed to the Chair of Educational Studies. His work on literacy, teacher discourse and language in the education field has had considerable impact in the United Kingdom and internationally.

Dr Hardman has a longstanding interest in classroom discourse and interaction and has contributed widely to debate in this area. His recent work on classroom talk, which uses a computerised system for recording interaction, has attracted significant interest from practitioners, policy makers and researchers.

At Newcastle upon Tyne he was a lecturer in Education, Director of Continuing Professional Development and Assistant Dean in the Faculty of Education and Senior Lecturer in Education. He had held a number of senior management positions and has served on many university committees.

Professor Hardman has undertaken collaborative work in Kenya on classroom interaction in primary schools and is about to extend this work with a cognate UNICEF-funded study in Nigeria.

Contact: Tel: 0044 0 191 222 6628 Email: f.c.hardman@ncl.uk

Vaughan Prain, formerly Head of the School of Education, has been appointed to the Chair of Education at La Trobe University’s Bendigo campus. His previous positions at La Trobe include Associate Professor and Research Coordinator in the former School of Arts and Education and Head of Education, Research and Postgraduate Studies in the Faculty of Education.

Professor Prain has made substantial contributions to education literature in English and science education. His research interests include science literacy writing for learning in secondary science, the use of new technologies for learning and the teaching of writing at primary, secondary and tertiary levels, including writing research.

Professor Prain’s pioneering work in bridging science education and English education led to his appointment to the Australian Academy of Science/ DEST national project entitled ‘Primary Connections’ which links primary science and literacy. He has presented his research at national and international conferences and has held leadership roles in various professional organisations.

Prior to his University career, Professor Prain taught at Heywood High School and Brighton Grammar School and tutored at the State College of Victoria, Bendigo.

Contact: Tel: 03 5444 7314 Email: v.prain@latrobe.edu.au

John Wiltshire, a leading Jane Austen scholar and member of La Trobe’s English program for more than 30 years, has been appointed to a personal Chair. Among his books are Samuel Johnson and the Medical World (1991), Jane Austen and the Body: ‘The Picture of Health’ (Cambridge University Press, 1992) – both reissued in paperback this year – and Recreating Jane Austen (Cambridge University Press, 2001).

His edition of Austen’s most ambitious novel, Mansfield Park, was recently published in the first scholarly account of the author’s work, The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Jane Austen.

Professor Wiltshire has also researched and written extensively in the fields of medicine, nursing, ethics and narrative. His work in healthcare focuses on both informal and formal narratives of embodiment. He has published Drugs in the Health Marketplace (1995) (With Professor Paul Komesaroff, Monash University) and articles and chapters on aspects of nursing, narrative and qualitative research (with Professor Judith Parker, University of Melbourne).

Professor Wiltshire is currently working on a history of Western medicine from the viewpoint of the patient, and preparing a volume for the Helm Information series, Icons of Modern Culture, on Dr Johnson. He is convenor of an international conference on Jane Austen to be held at La Trobe University in 2007.

Contact: Tel: 03 9479 2397 Email: j.wiltshire@latrobe.edu.au

Gary Dowsett, Deputy Director at La Trobe University’s Australian Research Centre in Sex, Health and Society and Associate Professor of Clinical Sociomedical Sciences at Columbia University, New York, has been appointed to a Personal Chair. A sociologist, Professor Dowsett has long been interested in sexuality research, particularly in the rise of modern gay communities.

Since 1986, he has researched the HIV epidemic in Australia’s gay communities, and worked on many other international HIV/AIDS and sexual health projects. He has been a consultant to WHO’s Global Programme on AIDS in Geneva, an adviser to other WHO programs, to the UN Development Programme and the Joint United Nations Programme on AIDS.

Professor Dowsett has designed a seven-country study of young people and contexts of risk in relation to HIV/AIDS, reviewed HIV/AIDS intervention programs for men who have sex with men in Bangladesh, and collaborated on similar research in Fiji. He has developed training programs in community-based research and qualitative research design, and has taught research design courses in Australia, Fiji, and the USA. Professor Dowsett is author, co-author or editor of five books, more than 70 book chapters and academic papers, and over 60 other publications.

Professor Dowsett was elected to the International Academy of Sex Research in 2003, and his first book, Making the Difference: Schools, Families and Social Division, co-authored with three colleagues, was voted one of the top ten most influential books in Australian sociology by the Australian Sociological Association. In 2005, he was awarded a prestigious five-year VicHealth Senior Research Fellowship.

Contact: Tel: 03 9285 5199 Email: g.dowsett@latrobe.edu.au