University of Tasmania, Australia

The Inglis Clark Centre for Civil Society – a centre for Tasmanian ideas and values in action – plays a leading strategic and practical role in the University of Tasmania’s thought leadership and community engagement initiatives. The Inglis Clark Centre is located in the Division of the Provost, and is the University of Tasmania’s first dedicated centre for these activities.

Thought leadership embraces, but extends far beyond, exchange of ideas within the academy. It incorporates and enlivens the practice of public intellectualism – the ‘democratisation of knowledge’.

Community engagement embeds and extends the university as a key actor in civil society – defined simply by the London School of Economics as ‘the arena of uncoerced collective action around shared interests, purposes and values’.

Accordingly, the work of the Inglis Clark Centre complements the University of Tasmania’s established and emerging strengths in research and teaching – in connection with the established and emerging agendas of the wider, Statewide Tasmanian community across public policy, business and industry, philanthropy and the non-government sector.

The Inglis Clark Centre is named after nineteenth century Tasmanian democrat Andrew Inglis Clark, an early Vice-Chancellor of UTAS and a founding father of the Australian Constitution.

The Inglis Clark Centre has three strategic aims:

• Lead democratic conversation in Tasmania and beyond, focusing on civil society
  
  
• Deliver consultancy and advisory services that build capacity in civil society, in Tasmania and beyond
  
  
• Develop collaborations between the University of Tasmania and agenda-setters in government, business and industry, philanthropy and the non-government sector, in Tasmania and beyond