The Asian Studies Association of Australia (ASAA) is delighted to announce that its Council has recently approved two new Honorary Life Memberships: Emeritus Professor Robert Cribb (Australian National University), and Emeritus Senior Professor Vera Mackie (University of Wollongong).

Honorary Life Membership is the highest honour that the ASAA can award its members, and Professors Cribb and Mackie join a select group of scholars who have received such an award over the 50 years of the Association’s life.

Professor Cribb is a renowned expert on the history of Southeast Asia, and particularly Indonesia, as well as being a former President of the ASAA.

Professor Mackie, meanwhile, is ‘one of the world’s foremost scholars of Asian history, gender and sexuality studies, and cultural studies’, and her expertise in Japanese Studies has been recognised in numerous ways, including in her appointment as the Foundation Professor of Japanese Studies at Curtin University (1998–2004).

You can learn more about both of these scholars here and here.

David Hundt

President, ASAA, 2025/26

Photo by Erwan Hesry on Unsplash