The establishment of the Institute of Advanced Studies will provide both a focus and an active foundation of support for the intellectual activity of its community. The initiative of the Institute is designed to ensure a robust support for the promotion and maintenance of consistent levels of excellence in research so that the University can hold its place in the international world of academic inquiry. It will also provide a platform for public debates and the participation of members of the larger community. The Institute will serve the University by collecting details of the range of activities across the campus: to actively compile the work of its researchers and visitors in a central database so as to maximise opportunities for collaboration and cross-disciplinary work both within and outside the academic community.

The charter of the Institute, then, is to develop the research profile of the University, particularly through the support and fostering of cross-disciplinary programs focussed on important and topical issues. The Institute will enhance the University’s reputation for excellence and enterprise, and enrich the experience for postgraduate students by providing a dynamic environment for their work.

The Institute's specific program work will, by its nature, ensure that more opportunities are created for intellectual work within discrete disciplines and across disciplinary divides, and that more people have knowledge of such activities. This extends beyond the University community, too, so that knowledge is disseminated into broader constituencies. Traditionally, the University has had a range of prestigious researchers and visitors on-site, engaged in scholarly work and presenting ideas and research outcomes in public fora. But often the information is not disseminated outside of the discipline area, when the topics can be of interest to a much broader audience. The Institute will serve as a focus for this wider dissemination of ideas, and actively coordinate particular thematic convergences and practices. 1999 sees the concept of the Institute being unveiled in preparation for a launch in the year 2000. Dr Colin Lucas, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Oxford has agreed to officially launch the Institute in early September.

• Identify and develop partnerships with external bodies and within UWA to ensure the maximum support for the programs presented by IAS.

• Design and administer the first two cross-disciplinary programs for 2000: Land, Culture, Place and Identity, and Science at the New Millenium.

• Ensure, through consultation and the establishment of good working relationships with faculties and departments, that information about public events and visiting scholars to the campus is widely distributed. Additionally, there are opportunities created by involvement in the planning phase, particularly in enabling the focus of an annual theme to develop across the University.

• Assist in providing further definition to the operations of the University's endowed lectures so as to strengthen their profile and administration.

• Act responsively to opportunities for public events and visits to the University by scholars and distinguished professionals, including artists and public intellectuals, who can contribute to scholarly debate.

• Two significant programs in Humanities and Sciences that will include concentrated workshop/colloquium involving visiting scholars and UWA scholars as well as a range of public activities, including UWA Extension Lectures and involvement in the Perth International Arts Festival, and will result in publications. These events will also provide opportunities for postgraduate students to work intensively with visitors attached to the programs.

• Strategic partnerships with bodies such as the Institute Of Public Administration Australia to co-host visitors to their National Conference in Perth in November 2000 in the role of a Distinguished Visiting Professor at UWA.

• Value-adding of visits to the campus for visitors to discipline-specific conferences such as the Australasian Victorian Studies Association annual conference in February 2000. I have negotiated a lecture to be given in the UWA Extension Summer School program by keynote speaker Patrick Brantlinger. This is to ensure that he receives the broadest coverage during his visit; he will offer a presentation of his scholarly work on Irish famine which is part of a larger project on discourse about the extinction of primitive races, including Australian and Tasmanian, in the nineteenth century.

• Project management of endowed lecture series, including the annual Callaway Lecture and the Sir Wallace Kyle Oration. It is intended that both of these lectures for 2000 will form part of the Land Culture Place and Identity program because of the focus of the planned speakers. The invited speaker for the 2000 Kyle Oration is Professor Mamphela Ramphele, Vice-Chancellor of the University of Cape Town, and the likely date is Tuesday October 3. Additionally, the coordination of annual endowed and other public lectures including the Fred Alexander Lecture, the Shann Memorial Lecture, and the lectures of the Faculty of Medicine and Dentistry, will enable them to become part of the public profile of the University and ensure strong audiences and a broad dissemination of knowledge through the community.

• Strategic partnerships with other research institutes. In 2000, IAS will become involved with presentation of a Humanities Research Centre (ANU) colloquium in Fremantle on the work of Professor George Seddon as part of the Land Culture Place and Identity program. The ability to forward plan and include UWA on the itinerary of visitors to other Australian universities is foremost in the charter of IAS. The opportunities for bodies such as the four learned Australian Academies to host their national symposiums in partnership arrangements at UWA through IAS will also be actively pursued. We are currently negotiating with the International Center for Relativistic Astrophysics, a body supported by UNESCO, to host the 2000 regional meeting in Perth as part of the Science at the New Millennium program.

• The benefit of dedicated residential accommodation for IAS will enable research groups to be based on campus, such as those intended in the two programs for 2000, in a cost-effective manner.

• The development and maintenance of an IAS web site will allow the dissemination of information about the range of events that take place at UWA, and a register of information relating to the programs being supported by IAS.

• Practical support and involvement in planning and hosting departmental visitors and integrating their visits into the University community will be vigorously pursued.

We are already establishing good contacts with the international community of scholars engaged in research centres and intend to maximise opportunities for exchange and reciprocation. We have joined the international Consortium of Humanities Centres and Institutes (CHCI); Executive Officer Terri-ann White attended the annual meeting of the CHCI in Brisbane in July, the first meeting held by the body outside North America. Terri-ann White is to visit the Institute of Advanced Studies at the University of Bristol in November. In our first year of establishment we are setting the groundwork for a lively first year of operations.

Terri-ann White

Academic Executive Officer