I would like to warmly welcome your interest in the School of Government, one of the oldest political science schools in the country, and on recent indicators, one of the most accomplished. We are a dynamic, diverse, relatively small School, in the beautiful island state of Tasmania, with a wealth of offerings across our four disciplines (Political Science, International Relations, Public Policy and Police Studies). As a School, we were founded in 1956, one of the very first sandstone schools of political science in the country.
Wilfred Asquith Townsley was appointed Chair of Political Science and headed the School from 1956-1975. Some of our early, distinguished students, many of whom were shared with the Faculty of Law, included Enid Campbell, who taught with us for a while, Roger Scott, Peter Underwood, Guy Green, Henry Reynolds and Nick Evers. We continue to remember Prof Townsley and his many accomplishments with a School Resource Room named in his honour, which, in part, houses his own collection of books still today.
However, our earliest historical roots are in Public Administration, which was first taught at the University of Tasmania in 1917 and in part, provided the impetus for the founding of our School. We are proud of our record here because it was not until the 1920s that the teaching of public administration became main-stream in Australian universities. We are also very proud to say that today we have one of the strongest reputations for public policy research in the country at the University of Tasmania. Indeed, in the recent Excellence Research Assessment exercise, we are equal top ranked in the country in Policy and Administration with the University of Melbourne, ANU and Griffith University.
Our Public Policy teaching program is a strong one with our research efforts informing some very exciting teaching programs and offerings. We offer a new Undergraduate Diploma in Public Policy, which is an excellent new course to complement your other studies outside of the Arts Faculty. To launch this Diploma, the University is offering it HECS-free to eligible members of the Tasmanian Public Service for 2012. And our highly regarded Graduate Program in Public Policy (Certificate, Diploma and Masters) continues to be very popular, and is offered both on campus and is moving to be available wholly online.
The teaching of Political Science has been our mainstay for the last half century, and is an excellent choice of majors, as is International Relations, which is now a major in its own right with offerings right across Faculty. Prof Townsley first taught Political Science, Public Administration (now Public Policy), and International Relations here by in 1956. Many of the ideas and concepts he would have shared remain relevant today, although, since 2000, we have added, a major in Police Studies to our offerings. We also house the highly regarded Tasmanian Institute for Law Enforcement Studies.
If you would like to work in the Police force, you can study with us by being selected as a recruit with Tasmania Police, because we are involved in the program delivery. This study will get you two thirds of your way towards a degree and then the Tasmanian Police will support you finishing. Or you can come straight to us, and begin a Bachelor of Social Sciences (Police Studies) and then later apply to the Police force and receive credit for what you have studied. We have a wealth of choices that we are happy to discuss with you particularly if you are not sure of your options or are finding it difficult to navigate your way around the Police Studies offerings.
Our graduate research MA and PhD program is particularly strong, and you can be assured, if you decide to do graduate research, that you will have the very best prospects of finishing if you study with us. If you have a look under Graduate Research on our website, you will see the areas in which our staff have research expertise and can supervise. You will find everything from the community sector and women’s policy, to green politics and environmental governance, political economy, Australian politics, climate change, trade, energy and business politics, and regional development policy. Our capacity to supervise international relations research candidates is particularly strong. We can supervise projects on war, human rights, European politics, transnational activism, international political economy, East Asian issues, terrorism, security, great powers, conflict, defence and much more. We also have a very high level of expertise in environmental politics and policy, Australian and international.
We pride ourselves on the quality of our people, our teachers and researchers. The School is home to very enthusiastic, helpful and inspiring staff. We are a research active School, recently ranked 8th in the country in terms of quality journal publications and 10th in the country in terms of the receipt of Australian Research Council grants*. So you will find your lecturers immersed in their own research questions, which they bring to their teaching as they discuss their ideas with you and as you follow the progress of their projects.
Our staff are also highly engaged in community debate. Honorary Research Associate Richard Herr is a well-known political commentator, now also working part time in his retirement with the Faculty of Law. Tony McCall is a noted commentator on political affairs, Richard Eccleston on political economy, Kate Crowley on climate change policy and Matt Killingsworth is heard weekly on local ABC radio on international affairs. Many of our staff provide policy advice. Kate Crowley, for example, chairs the state government’s Tasmanian Climate Action Council and advises the Minister for Climate Change.
We would love to welcome you as a distance student if you are unable to actually study in Tasmania, or if you can’t get away during working hours, or if you need to be home-based for any reason. Most of our undergraduate and postgraduate courses are now also offered online via distance with the support of the Distance Education Office. We will give you very good support through a web-based platform that includes lecture recordings, lecture notes, and online discussions, as a minimum. We are currently employing strategic funds to greatly enhance the delivery of our online teaching to include a deeper, more diverse set of materials at the cutting edge of online delivery. If you are still at school you may like to consider taking our new Politics and Policy College Program offering which will be available in 2012. We are developing this in consultation with the teaching community and will offer wholly online delivery with the option of a workshop day on campus. So have a look at our offerings in the University handbook or get in touch with our coordinators. Again, we welcome your interest, so please be in touch.
Associate Professor Kate Crowley
Head of School
| Discipline | Contact | |
|---|---|---|
| Political Science | Assoc. Prof. Richard Eccleston | Richard.Eccleston@utas.edu.au |
| International Relations | Dr Matt Killingsworth | Matt.Killingsworth@utas.edu.au |
| Public Policy | Dr Hannah Murphy | Hannah.Murphy@utas.edu.au |
| Police Studies | Dr Isabelle Bartkowiak-Theron | Isabelle.BartkowiakTheron@utas.edu.au |
1 JC Sharman and P Weller 'Where is the Quality? Political Science Scholarship in Australia', Australian Journal of Political Science, 44 (4), 2009: 597-612