Message from the Rector — Professor Michael Frater
In April this year UNSW Canberra launched the Australian Centre for the Study of Armed Conflict and Society (ACSACS). ACSACS consolidates a longstanding tradition of excellence at UNSW in understanding the complex issues surrounding armed conflict and military engagement.
ACSACS is a multi-disciplinary research and teaching Centre. It springs from the strength of our academic research, coupled with the University's close and unique relationship with Defence that spans over forty years.
ACSACS combines major research areas of military history, military ethics and work on fragile states. Military history is about the past but drawing attention to lessons that are relevant to the future. Applied military ethics is about the tensions implicit in ethical failures and ethical conflicts. Fragile states studies explore how you construct interventions, including military interventions, that are likely to have long-term positive impacts.
Professor Jeffrey Grey has been appointed as the Director of ACSACS. Professor Grey is a leading miltary historian with a particular interest in contemporary warfare. UNSW graduate Mr Stephen Loosley launched the Centre in his role as Chairman of the Australian Strategic Policy Institute.
The critical work of ACSACS will feed our insights back into the community through teaching and applied research, as well as via a suite of community engagement programs and outreach activities across Australia. ACSACS will also serve as a significant focal point for academic activity around the Centenary of the Great War.
Whether the Centre's final user is a policy maker, a senior active member of the armed forces, a student or an interested member of the community, ACSACS is a powerful resource that has never before existed in Australia.
Some of the excellent research supported through ACSACS features in this newsletter. I encourage you to take some time to read about the cutting edge research that comes out of the Centre and to be a part of the public events that ACSACS will be offering.