New Professors to lead groundbreaking research

The University of New South Wales has announced appointments to three new cross-faculty Chairs as part of its bid to capture new areas of groundbreaking collaborative research.

The appointments follow an international and nation-wide search for outstanding academics able to transcend traditional boundaries between disciplines. The Professorships are funded by the University’s commercial arm NewSouth Global.

A former senior advisor to the World Health Organisation (WHO), Daniel Tarantola was most recently with the Harvard School of Public Health, as Instructor with the Department of Population and International Health and as Senior Associate with the Francois-Xavier Bagnoud Centre for Health and Human Rights. Of French nationality, Dr Tarantola was involved in the creation of Medecins Sans Frontieres and during a long and distinguished career with WHO supervised the team responsible for eradicating smallpox. As a researcher, he is best known for his work in the area of HIV/AIDS and human rights.

The new Chair will bring together researchers from the Faculties of Medicine, Arts and Social Sciences, and Law. Issues to be investigated include how best to promote the right to health; the rights of refugees and others affected by war and conflict; the tensions between individual and community rights in controlling communicable diseases; and the particular challenges facing indigenous populations in relation to health.

Design is an essential part of the education of engineers, architects and related design professionals, industrial designers and many creative artists. The complementary positions will provide leadership in the scholarship and practice of design, and promote collaboration across design disciplines in the Faculties of Engineering, Built Environment and the College of Fine Arts.

Richard Hough is a Principal with the Arup Group, one of the world’s largest independent multi-disciplinary design and consulting firms. He is a leading structural engineer who works closely with architects to achieve integrated design outcomes. He has been a Director of the firm’s UK practice, Manager of the Californian and the NSW practices, and is presently Arup’s Design and Technical Leader for Australasia. Richard will continue as a Principal of Arup.

Davina Jackson is a prominent architectural writer and curator. Chair of the Venice Architecture Biennale Task Force, she is a former editor of Architecture Australia, co-author of Australian Architecture Now and an Advisory Board member of Architects Without Frontiers. A promoter of progressive architecture and design, Davina has a Masters of Architecture from UNSW.

Vivien Johnson was most recently an Australian Professorial Fellow in the Centre for Cross Cultural Research at the Australian National University. She was previously an Associate Professor in sociology at Macquarie University, establishing one of the first courses on Indigenous Australian art in the university sector. Her influential monographs on Western Desert artists and her work on Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights have had wide social impact.

Professor Johnson will lead multidisciplinary research into new areas of cross cultural theory and practice. Research areas will include Indigenous arts and new media, copyright and cultural sovereignty issues in Indigenous art and a new Australian art history. Professor Johnson currently heads a major collaborative ARC funded project, Dictionary of Australian Artists On-line. The Chair will lead researchers from the Faculties of COFA, Law, Arts and Social Sciences and Built Environment. Professor Johnson’s appointment addresses the pressing need for new narratives of Australian art as a joint Indigenous-non-Indigenous endeavour.


All of the new appointments begin in July.

The first of the new NSG Professorships was announced earlier this year, with the appointment of leading Australian biochemist Caroline (Lindy) Rae as Professor in Brain Sciences. The fifth and final Chair, in Criminology, will be announced in the near future.