Western NSW Branch Meeting 2023-2
“A new history of Australian political thought”
Professor Wayne Hudson FAHA
Adjunct Research Professor, Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture
Charles Sturt University, Canberra
Date: Thursday, 15 June 2023, 6.00 pm
Venue: Charles Stuart University, 15 Blackall Street, Barton, ACT
Video presentation: YouTube video
All are welcome
This meeting was a joint presentation of Charles Sturt University, as part of its Provocations Public Lecture Series, and the Western NSW Branch of the Royal Society of NSW
Summary: In this lecture, Wayne Hudson will discuss why there is no general history of Australian political thought and the research strategies which might enable such a history to be written. Australians have underestimated the range of political ideas that came to Australia, often misunderstood how these ideas were interpreted here, and been slow to grasp the originality of Australian political thought. Wayne is currently writing a book designed to remedy this.
Professor Wayne Hudson is an Adjunct Research Professor at the Australian Centre for Christianity and Culture in Canberra at Charles Sturt University. He is an intellectual historian and a critical realist social philosopher who works across the areas of history, politics, philosophy, and religion and has written or edited over 23 books. His latest book is Beyond Religion and the Secular: Creative Spiritual Movements and their relevance to Political, Social and Cultural Reform (Bloomsbury 2023). Wayne is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in recognition of his work in Australian religious thought, the role of English Deism in the Enlightenment, and the connections between religion, utopia, and reform.
15 May 2025
RSL Mittagong, Carrington Room 
