A Cohort of Pioneers: Australian postgraduate students and American postgraduates degrees 1949 – 1964.

Dr Sally Ninham

Paperback
305 pages
ISBN: 9781921421853
$39.95

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"What happened to a group of Australian scholars all of whom went to the USA for graduate & related studies? Their immersion into the well resourced USA PhD environment with significant research facilities, libraries and stimulating environments of scholars lasted them a lifetime. All had or could have had scholarships to Oxford or Cambridge, the normal destiny of Australian Masters or post-Masters students. Sally Ninham follows their stories and importantly the stories of their wives. Almost all of these US Graduates returned to Australia to pursue their careers in academia, the law and the corporate world. Their contribution to Australian scholarship, intellectual leadership and Australian society has been significant. Ninham has documented a host of important careers, and the contributions that many made to the transformation of the Australian academy after the Second World War. All of these deserve the analysis in this book."
- Professor Tom Healy AO, a Columbia University, New York PhD, 1963.

"This study is a valuable review of an important era in Australia where the foundations of post graduate education in the rapidly expanding university sector were established. The benefits of this era are still being felt today."
- Emeritus Professor Graham Swain AM, Retired Deputy Vice-Chancellor University of Western Sydney

"The Australian university scene underwent far-reaching changes from the  1950s. This lively and original study throws much light on what happened  and on why it happened."
- Gerald O'Collins, SJ, AC, Australian Catholic University.

"To be educated in Great Britain, especially at Oxford or Cambridge, was the highest pinnacle bright young Australians could aspire to surmount. With meticulous and objective research, Sally Ninham has proved that, after WW11, the United States of America was a worthy alternative. As well as enriching the students, this development often led to genuine reform in, and lasting benefit to, Australian universities in teaching and research."
- Professor John Molony, Formerly of Australian National University.


Dr Sally Ninham is an honorary affiliate with La Trobe University in the school of social sciences. Her interests include seeking out individual recollections  to contextualise historical events, and as a result she conducts much of her research through oral interview. She writes both non-fiction and fiction. This is her first academic book.