ANU congratulates Australian Laureates

Professor Margaret Jolly is one of the four ANU recipients of the Australian Laureate Fellowships.

The Australian National University congratulates four outstanding researchers who tomorrow will be awarded Australian Laureate Fellowships out of a total of 15 fellowships awarded nationwide.

Professor Margaret Jolly, Professor Amnon Neeman and Professor Hilary Charlesworth are the local recipients; Professor Hanna Kokko will come from the University of Helsinki to pursue her research at ANU. The Fellowships will be awarded at a ceremony in Cairns tomorrow by Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research Senator Kim Carr.

‘On behalf of ANU, I congratulate Professors Charlesworth, Jolly, Neeman and Kokko on being awarded Australian Laureate Fellowships. The awards enable Australia’s finest researchers to conduct studies in areas of national importance, and all four ANU recipients are rightly recognised as among the world‘s best in their areas of expertise,’ said Professor Chubb.

‘These awards are richly deserved by all four researchers - who are at the forefront of international expertise in their chosen fields of evolutionary biology, human rights law, anthropology and mathematics.’

?We are particularly pleased to note that three of the four ANU Laureate Fellows are women, and that Hanna Kokko will come from overseas to join us for her important research.

Professor Jolly, an historical anthropologist, will research the relationship between Christianity and material forces in the emergence of individualism in the Pacific region. The research aims to enhance Australia’s capacity to deliver successful development assistance, especially in regard to gender relations in the region.

Professor Neeman is recognised as a world leading mathematician. His Fellowship research will aim to deepen our understanding of homological algebra, which has a range of uses from physics to coding of information for computer transmission.

Professor Charlesworth is Director of the School of Regulation, Justice and Diplomacy at ANU. She is recognised as a leading researcher on human rights, and her Fellowship will study how to promote compliance with the international human rights system.

Hanna Kokko is an adjunct Professor who is widely published in the field of evolutionary biology. Her Fellowship research project will aim to build a theory of the speed and direction of evolution, and attempt to explain why populations adapt or fail to adapt to novel conditions.