Beryl Rawson - Emerita Professor, classicist and historian

Abstract

This interview, with Emerita Professor Beryl Rawson, is part of the Emeritus Faculty's Oral History Program, involving retired staff members of the A-N-U- who were part of the university in the early decades of its life. The program was initiated and developed by ANU Emeritus Faculty as a contribution to university and community understanding of the beginnings and development of ANU over the past sixty years. Emeritus Faculty has a special interest in this era, since the Faculty's membership includes or included many of the people who helped shape ANU in its early days, to make it the pre-eminent university it is today.

Born in Innisfail in Queensland in 1933, Beryl Rawson is a graduate of the University of Queensland and has a PhD from Bryn Mawr College, in the USA. Beryl first came to ANU in 1964, as a senior lecturer in classics in the Faculty of Arts. She was elected Dean of Arts in 1981, and appointed Professor of Classics in 1989. Since retiring as professor in 1998 she has been a Visiting Fellow, then Adjunct Professor, in the Faculty of Arts, from where she continues her research and writing, and engaging actively with university life.

In the past, Beryl has been an appointed member of the Australian Research Council, and President of the Australian Historical Association and the Australian Society for Classical Studies.

Beryl has written a number of multi-edition books on the general topic of family life in ancient Rome. She has organised three international meetings on this aspect of classical studies over the past 20 years, and has actively promoted and supported the teaching of classics, history, and languages in Australian secondary schools.