This year’s Oration will feature Emerita Professor Emerita Prof. Carol Johnson, PhD, FASSA, Discipline of Politics and International Relations, School of Society and Culture, Adelaide University.
Title: Faith in Politics and the Role of the Religious Right.
Catherine Helen Spence’s support for progressive reform and social justice was underpinned by her faith. This lecture discusses the role of religion in politics, providing some historical background but mainly
looking at the current day. In particular, the lecture looks at the role of the religious right’s political attempts, here and overseas, to resist and even turn back contemporary social reforms in areas ranging
from welfare provision to racial, sexual and gender equality. As a consequence, the lecture argues that faith itself has become an increasingly important site of political contest,
Carol Johnson is an Emerita Professor of Politics at Adelaide
University, in the School of Society and Culture and a long-term member
of the Fay Gale Centre for Research on Gender. She has published
extensively on Australian and comparative politics with a particular
interest in ideology, social democracy and the politics of gender and
sexuality. Her most recent books are: The Politics of Gender Equality:
Australian Lessons in an Uncertain World, open access, Palgrave
Macmillan, 2024 and: Social Democracy and the Crisis of Equality:
Australian Social Democracy in a Changing World, Springer 2019.