 | Dear ~~first_name~~,
Welcome to this month’s CHASS update.
There have recently been a few consultations in progress – which are keeping the CHASS Board busy. One is from the Senate’s Education and Employment Legislation Committee, which called for submissions on the Higher Education Support Amendment (Reverse Job-Ready Graduates Fee Hikes and End 50k Arts Degrees) Bill 2025. The bill itself was introduced by Senator Mehreen Faruqi, from the Australian Greens, late last year. Senator Faruqi has been a welcome and long-term ally of those of us seeking to get the failed Job-ready Graduates scheme overturned.
There is now an accumulation of research pointing to JRG’s pernicious effect not only on the humanities, arts and social science (HASS) disciplines but also on the equity and participation goals for tertiary education that the present government claims it is committed to. An Innovative Research Universities report has criticised its impact on participation by economically disadvantaged students.
CHASS Board member Professor Sandra Gattenhof has produced research jointly with Dr John Nicholas Saunders that discloses its negative effects on arts education, which is likely to flow through to a wider, long-term crisis in the arts workforce, creative industries and social participation in the arts.
CHASS has criticised JRG on numerous occasions and again called for its abolition in our 2025 election statement, still available on our website. But our position has always been a more nuanced one than calling for mere abolition. It is summed up in our recent submission, also now available on our website as well as having been published by the Senate Committee.
“It has never been the position of CHASS that JRG can be abolished without consideration of the problems of both rising student debt and university underfunding. Any change in fees needs to be part of a larger package that ensures adequate support for the teaching of the HASS disciplines, since the absence of any such provision will reduce the income they earn, with further catastrophic job losses and course cuts on top of those already suffered since the pandemic.”
In other words, there needs to be an overhaul of the fee structure as part of a larger plan for adequate tertiary funding. My own Vice-Chancellor at the University of Canberra, Professor The Honourable Bill Shorten, recently argued that rising domestic student debt, combined with international free income, was an unsatisfactory financial foundation for the future of Australian universities. Even the Liberal Party’s recent post-2025 election review recognised the increasing potency of student debt as a legitimate grievance among younger Australians. It is well past time the present government, now almost four years in office, moved beyond band-aid measures such as the recent 20 per cent debt relief measure – although welcome in itself – to produce a coherent, long-term plan for the future of the country’s ailing university sector.
Frank Bongiorno AM
CHASS President
| New: The Paul Bourke Awards for Early Career Research
Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia
Four Paul Bourke Award recipients are selected each year by members of the Academy’s Panel Committees. The awards are presented to social science researchers within five years of receiving their doctorate (with allowances for career interruptions).
New: The William and Winifred Bowness Photography Prize
Museum of Australian Photography
The Bowness Photography Prize invites entries from artists working with photography. Entries for the prize will be considered from still photo-based media including analogue and digital photography, produced within the last year.
Entries close 14 June.
For the full details, read on...
| SAVE THE DATES
2026 Social Sciences Week
Saturday 12 - Sunday 20 September 2026
Webinars
New: Advocacy and Cultural Policy
Friday 8 May, 12:00pm - 1:30pm, AEST
CHASS
This event is intended for HASS discipline association representatives.
New: Thriving Kids, thriving families, thriving communities
Online, Tomorrow, 29 April, 1-2pm, AEST
Brotherhood of St. Laurence
New: Young People & Disasters
Online, Tomorrow, 29 April, 1-2pm, AEST
Centre for Excellence
Conferences
2026 ASCP Conference
Australasian Society for Continental Philosophy
Macquarie University
Tuesday 1 - Thursday 3 December 2026
More information to come.
2026 AAS Conference
Australian Anthropological Society
Mparntwe/Alice Springs
Wednesday 10 - Friday 12 June 2026
2026 AAP Conference
Australasian Association of Philosophy
Te Whare Wānanga o Waikato, Aotearoa
Sunday 5 - Thursday 9 July 2026
The Australian Sociological Association
Revolution & Resistance
University of the Sunshine Coast
Tuesday 24 - Friday 27 November 2026
Submission deadline: April 24th.
| All of the below articles are available on open access:
Carah, N., Brown, M. G., Tapairu Kahukura, H., Enright, L., & Tesiram, R. (2026). Intimate platform biographies on, off and underneath Instagram. Media, Culture & Society, 0(0).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437261442005
Rozas Urrunaga, L., & Hallgren, L. (2026). Defining displaced publics. Media, Culture & Society, 0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437261442424
Duncan, P. (2026). Making America hot again: Aesthetic politics, from Walter Benjamin to Sydney Sweeney. Media, Culture & Society, 0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437261440350
Artman, H. (2026). Pan-national populism: Latino news influencer practices in the global economy. Media, Culture & Society, 0(0). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/01634437261435954
Rahmani, D., Crutcher Williams, J., Violanti, M. T., & Kelly, S. (2026). Teacher Clarity, Immediacy, and Self-Efficacy: An Ecological Approach to Student Burnout. Business and Professional Communication Quarterly, 0(0).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/23294906261437400
Carlson, M. M., & Maeda, Y. (2026). Political Speech, Scandals, and the News Media in Japan. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 0(0).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/19401612261423412
Zhou, Y., Kobayashi, T., & Seki, L. (2026). Evaluating the Impact of China’s “Wolf Warrior Diplomacy” in East Asia: An Experimental Approach. The International Journal of Press/Politics, 0(0).https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/19401612261431042
Freestone, J., Siefried, KJ., Drysdale, K., Murray, J., Ward, J., Ezard, N., Clifford, B., and Bourne, A. (2026). “Sex, methamphetamine, and a surge in heterosexual syphilis: A call to diversify perspectives, research, and services addressing sexualised drug use”, Contemporary Drug Problems. Online 29 March 2026. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/00914509261433267
Drysdale K, Gendera S, Londos C, White G & Fisher KR (2026). “Radical accessibility: codesigning for intersectionality in a peer-led LGBTIQA+ disability digital storytelling project”, Disability and Rehabilitation. 1–16. Online 13 March 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/09638288.2026.2643547
Lupton D, and Drysdale, K (2026). “Health Biographies: Narrative Case Studies of Health, Sexualities and Inclusion in the Pandemic Age", Culture, Health and Sexuality, 1–12. Online 27 February 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/13691058.2026.2636217
Drysdale, K., Karasu, Y., & Watson, L. (2026). “’Because I felt so alone’: Trans and Gender Diverse People’s Needs and Preferences for Menopausal Information and Resources”. International Journal of Transgender Health. Online 26 January 2026. https://doi.org/10.1080/26895269.2026.2618635
Muoneke, O. B., Tan, Y., & Robinson, G. (2026). The vicious cycle: How institutional and technological lock-ins subvert private investment in renewable energy in Emerging Asia. Energy Sources, Part B: Economics, Planning, and Policy, 21(1). https://doi.org/10.1080/15567249.2026.2642771
| | HASS Employment Opportunities |
New: Director, Corporate Services
Australian Government
Domestic, Family and Sexual Violence Commission
New: Dean of Law and Criminology
Murdoch University
New: Research Fellow
The Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies
Australian National University
New: Lecturer in Australian Political Studies
University of Canberra
Working with CHASS President Frank Bongiorno
New: Senior Policy Analyst
Australian Government
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Stream
New: Digital Development Specialist
Art Gallery Society of NSW
New: Education & Research Academics - Melbourne Law School
University of Melbourne
New: Senior Lecturer/Lecturer in Psychology
University of Sydney
Application deadline: 23 May. Read on...
| We encourage you to support the HASS sector by sharing details about your discipline/department via this newsletter. No news is too small of too big. Any mention of HASS is of value to our sector and we plan on continuing to extend the reach of our newsletter overtime. Please submit all content to CHASS Digital Publications via digitalpublications@chass.org.au . Suggested content includes, but is not limited to:
- Awards and Prizes
- Call for Papers (journals/conferences)
- Call for Book Chapters
- Competitions
- Discipline/Department news
- Industry connections
- Funding Opportunities
- Job and/or scholarship opportunities (these will also be listed on our publicly searchable website directory)
- Publications, especially those with free full access
- Social sciences week events
- Other upcoming events
- Submissions
- Social gatherings
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