Marnie Hughes-Warrington

Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington is the strategic and operational leader across research activities at the University of South Australia. Her role is to design and deliver approaches that help staff and research students alike to engage with industry, government and community to deliver novel and transformational solutions to problems, and to change the ways that we think about the world.

A graduate of the Universities of Tasmania and Oxford, Marnie has a strong global profile as a philosopher and as an historian who seeks to explain why histories and historical thinking play an important role in making a good, fair and just world. The impact of her work has been broad: her writing has been translated into five languages, over 26,000 copies of her books have been sold, and her theories are taught across the world. She has led or been an investigator on a total of $18 million in grants. Her most recent book is History as Wonder (2018), and her current research investigates the connections between the scales of history and ethics, and the logic at play in machine-made histories. She serves on the editorial board for the Journal of Global History, which is published by Cambridge University Press.

Prior to taking up the role, she was Deputy Vice-Chancellor Academic and Professor of History at the Australian National University (2012–19), where her duties ranged from admissions, academic standards and chairing the revenue committee for edX, through to academic school reviews and promotions. Her achievements included the development of a more diverse researcher workforce through systemic changes to promotion and recruitment; the $260 million Kambri campus redevelopment; and the $106 million Tuckwell gift.

In addition to these contributions, she was the first woman to be National Secretary for the Rhodes Scholarships Australia and she currently serves on the Rhodes Trust Scholarships Committee, which looks after over 100 scholarships worldwide. She is also a member of the National Selection Panel for the Westpac Scholars Trust.