PROFILE
Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth
Started at UWA: 2002
Acclaimed Australian author and historian using literature to study social and environmental change
I love connecting with people through literature. Literature brings out dimensions to life that are sometimes missed in the transactions of everyday discussions. But it also opens a door to our deepest beliefs, fears and hopes. Professor Tony Hughes-d'Aeth
Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth is a respected historian and author of significant Australian literature. Professor Hughes-d’Aeth has lived around the world, from Australia, to Europe and the United States, giving him a sense of how important the land on which we stand is in relation to our sense of identity.
It is this experience that sparked his lifelong interest in the societies created in the global movement of people known as settler-colonialism that helped produce the modern settler nations of Africa, Australasia and the Americas. He believes it is literature, more than any other document, that tells us what the past felt like because it offers a record of interior life experiences.
Professor Hughes-d’Aeth’s published works on Australian literature and cultural history have attracted national acclaim, receiving the Ernest Scott and the WK Hancock prizes for Australian history for his book Paper Nation: The Story of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1886–1888 (Melbourne University Press, 2001). He has completed research on comparative media studies, including new media theory, film and television studies, on Australian literature and film, and on psychoanalytic criticism.
Professor Hughes-d’Aeth is Director of the Westerly Research Group, a member of the UWA EcoPeoPle (Ecology, People, Place) research cluster, and is currently working on the creation of an Environmental Humanities Laboratory
Qualifications:
- BA, PhD W.Aust
Positions held:
- Member of The Association for the Study of Australian Literature
- Member of The Association for the Psychoanalysis of Culture and Society
- Co-editor of Westerly magazine from 2010 to 2015
Chair in Australian Literature 2020
Student Choice Award, UWA Student Guild, 2017
Consistently Excellent Award, Students’ Unit Reflective Feedback, 2017
Nominated for Excellence in Research Supervision, 2016
Two units nominated for Excellence in Teaching, 2016
Author of Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt, UWA Publishing, 2017
Author of Paper Nation: The Story of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, Melbourne UP, 2001
Winner of the Ernest Scott and W.K. Hancock prizes for Australian history for Paper Nation, 2001
Professor Tony Hughes-d'Aeth talks about his book, Like Nothing on this Earth
New Chair in Australian Literature appointed
A multiple-award-winning literary history author has been appointed Chair in Australian Literature at The University of Western Australia.
Read morePodcast: a literary history of the Wheatbelt
Tony Hughes d'Aeth studies the work of 11 writers to explore the experiences and feelings of living and working in Western Australia's Wheatbelt area, a region that is almost as large as Britain.
Read morePodcast: Like Nothing on this Earth
In his book, Like Nothing on this Earth, Tony Hughes-d’Aeth explores the work of 11 writers who lived in the Wheatbelt of south-western Australia. Delving into the creative writing of authors like Albert Facey, Peter Cowan, Dorothy Hewett, and Jack Davis, he helps us understand the human effects of this massive-scale agriculture.
Read moreUWA’s awards and achievements
The book Like Nothing on this Earth by Dr Tony Hughes-d’Aeth, Discipline Chair of English and Literary Studies, was shortlisted for the inaugural Australian University Heads of English prize for Literary Scholarship.
Read moreFunding
2015
Wheatbelt Development Commission
- Interdisciplinary Wheatbelt Service Learning Unit
2012 – 2015
ARC Discovery Project
- The Wheatbelt: A Literary History
2013 – 2014
LIEF Grant
- The Austlit Database
Teaching
Professor Hughes-d’Aeth’s teaching style aims to connect students to real-life problems and promote interactive discussion and real-time analysis of literary, cinematic and televisual examples. He’s taken groups of students to Beijing Foreign Studies University to learn and experience Chinese literature while immersing themselves in the Chinese culture and way of life – an essential element to really understanding a country or region’s literature.
WAtoday’s Perth Festival Top 10 picks, 2018
Perth Festival will launch on Friday with yet another spectacular opening event, Siren Song, filling city streets at dawn and dusk.
Read moreSpectacular illustration depicts rails
The recently rediscovered rail lines running out to Nobbys are at the centre of one of the most dramatic images ever made of colonial Newcastle.
Read moreWriting the WA Wheatbelt, a place of radical environmental change
What can creative literature tell us about radical environmental change? Author and UWA Associate Professor Dr Tony Hughes-d’Aeth explores the interconnectivity of literature to places.
Read moreLike Nothing on this Earth
During the 20th century, the southwestern corner of Australia was cleared for intensive agriculture. In the space of several decades, an arc from Esperance to Geraldton (an area of land larger than England) was cleared of native flora for the farming of grain and livestock. Today, satellite maps show a sharp line ringing Perth. Inside that line, tan-coloured land is the most visible sign from space of human impact on the planet. Where once there was a vast mosaic of scrub and forest, there is now the Western Australian Wheatbelt.
Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth examines the creation of the Wheatbelt through creative writing. Some of Australia’s most significant writers wrote about their experience of the Wheatbelt. Each gives insight into the human and environmental effects of this massive-scale agriculture. Through examining their writing, Professor Hughes-d’Aeth demonstrates the deep value of literature in understanding the human experience of geographical change.
Find out more
EcoPeoPle
This group brings together scholars in the humanities, social sciences and natural sciences at UWA who share an interest in the relationships between societies and environments, past, present and future.
Read moreWesterly Centre
The Westerly Centre is a national and international centre for publication and research in Australian and Asian writing.
Read moreSupervisor opportunities
Professor Tony Hughes-d’Aeth has been supervising PhD students since 2002 and is keen to supervise students interested in exploring literary history and our relationship with place, people and environment. Previous PhD topics supervised have included:
- Representing psychiatric illness in mid-twentieth century Australian poetry
- Humanitarian discourses in Dominique Lapierre’s writing on India
- The history of curricular control: literary education in Western Australia, 1912–2012
- The discourse of war: Australian political speech and armed conflict
- Houses in modern Australian fiction
If you are interested in studying a PhD with Professor Hughes-d’Aeth, get in touch using the details below.