Professor Kay Anderson Presents the Inaugural Fay Gale Lecture

By Reena Dobson

28 March 2010

On Wednesday 10 March, the inaugural Fay Gale lecture was held at UWS’ Parramatta Campus. Established by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia (ASSA), this annual lecture series honours the late Professor Fay Gale (AO) who passed away in 2008, and whose richly diverse career delivered an exceptional legacy to the academic discipline of Geography, Aboriginal justice, university administration, and women’s professional advancement.

It is very fitting that the inaugural lecture featured Professor Kay Anderson, of the Centre for Cultural Research, at the University of Western Sydney. Kay has known Fay from the very beginnings of her academic journey, as she progressed from being one of Fay’s many undergraduate students at the University of Adelaide, through to being co-author with Fay of their 1992 Inventing Places and on to becoming a Professor in her own right. Kay’s paper, Provocation from the Periphery: Rethinking ‘The Human’ in Memory of Fay Gale, eloquently wove together a tribute to Fay, while simultaneously offering an overview of Kay’s current research focus, and Fay’s enduring influence on her work.