Fellows of Senate
Professor Margaret A Harris
Professor Margaret Harris has been a Fellow of Senate elected by and from the academic staff of the University of Sydney since 1 December 2001. Her third two year term of office as a Fellow of Senate commenced on 1 June 2009 and will conclude on 31 May 2011.
She is currently a member of Senate's Advisory Committee for Honorary Awards and Chair Appointments Committee.
Profile
PhD Lond MA Syd
Fellow of Senate: 2001 -
Director of Research, Faculty of Arts
Professor Harris is Director of Research, Faculty of Arts.
She held various positions in English between 1969 and 2007 (ultimately Challis Professor of English Literature) and has been a member of academic staff of the University of Sydney since 1969. She was Acting Director of the Sydney College of the Arts from 2000 to 2002, and Director of the Research Institute for Humanities from 1998 to 2004.
In the 2009 election, Professor Harris said: Dictionary definitions of “academic” use terms like “scholarly” (fine), “merely theoretical” (just tolerable) and “unpractical” (plainly pejorative). Academic staff Fellows have the responsibility to represent the positive dimensions of “academic”, to make clear what we see as the University’s core business. It is fundamental that policy should be generated by a commitment to learning in all the senses of that word: as a process of research, interpretation and understanding, and as a body of knowledge constantly augmented and critically examined. Such considerations must be to the fore at a time when national higher education policy is under review, and this University is charting its course under a new administration.
Senate includes Fellows with varying experience and expertise, who contribute their different perspectives to its deliberations and decisions. My experience as a committed teacher, vigorous researcher and inveterate administrator at the University of Sydney underpins my commitment to participating in as constructive and reasoned a way as possible to the business of Senate.