Tony Hughes-D'Aeth

Tony Hughes-d'Aeth is the Chair of Australian Literature at the University of Western Australia and the Director of the Westerly Centre. His research has a particular focus on literature and the environment. His book Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt (UWA Publishing, 2018) won the Walter McRae Russell Prize for best work of Australian literary criticism in 2019. His first book Paper Nation: The Story of the Picturesque Atlas of Australasia, 1886-1888 (Melbourne UP, 2001), won the Ernest Scott and WK Hancock prizes for Australia history.

From 2010 to 2015, Tony was the co-editor of Westerly Magazine, and is now the Director of the Westerly Research Group, which coordinates research in the literatures and cultures of Australia, Western Australia, the Asia-Pacific, and the Indian Ocean Rim. In 2019, Tony and the Westerly Research Group hosted the annual conference of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL) on the theme of 'Dirt'.

Alongside my interest in literature and the environment, my research has particularly concentratred on the emergence of literature in agricultural settler colonies from within the Anglo-sphere. My current project is a comparative history of the farm novel in North America, southern Africa and Australasia in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

I have published essays and chapters on a wide range of Australian authors, including Kim Scott, John Kinsella, Gail Jones, Jack Davis, Julia Leigh and Barbara York Main.

My more general areas of interest are psychoanalysis and psychoanalytic criticism, and contemporary film and television.

I am active postgraduate supervisor, and have supervised 15 students to successful completion.

I am currently the co-ordinator of the following units:

Level 1 'Narrative in the Digital Age'

Level 2 'Netflicks: Cinema & Long-form Television'

Level 3 'Writing the Environment'

Level 4 'Global Cinema and the New Wave'

 As a researcher, I have garnered $671, 700 in research funding, including:

• 2019-20: ‘The Big Picture: Subject English Across Secondary and Tertiary Education in Western Australia’: English Teachers’ Assoc. of Western Australia ($366,700)
• 2015:  Interdisciplinary Wheatbelt Service Learning Unit: Wheatbelt Development Commission ($32,000)
• 2012-15: The Wheatbelt: A Literary History: ARC Discovery Grant ($131,000)