Giles Pickford - academic manager and epicure

Abstract

Giles Pickford was born in Bombay in 1941 then soon after moved with his family to Albany, WA. He was educated at Albany High School and the University of Western Australia, graduating with first class honours in English in 1963. After a traineeship in the Commonwealth Public Service in Canberra, Giles worked in management at a number of universities in NSW and with the Australia Cancer Council. While at Wollongong University as Public Relations Manager, he was elected an alderman in the Wollongong City Council. In 1988, Giles joined ANU’s public relations unit where his brief was to promote relations between ‘town’ and ‘gown’. Since retirement from ANU in 1998, Giles has been a founder member of the university’s Emeritus Faculty (and is its secretary), and an active member of the secretariat of the national Association for Tertiary Education Managers. He continues his interest in ANU cultural matters as arts patron and philanthropist, and helped initiate revival of the ANU Poets’ Lunch, an annual poetry festival. He is an active poet and inveterate writer-to-newspapers on matters political and educational.