Australian Awards for University Teaching — 2008

Awards for Teaching Excellence — Humanities and the Arts — Recipient

Associate Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington
Macquarie University, New South Wales

Synopsis

Associate Professor Hughes-Warrington’s passion is history and in the ten years she has taught at Macquarie University she has worked to create learning environments in which students of all levels can be historians. Her courses seek to expand the breadth of students’ historical thinking, taking them from thirteen billion years of history in thirteen weeks in a first-year, first semester course, to the sometimes acrimonious debates about the role of history in society today in upper-level undergraduate and post-graduate courses. Students use metaphor, creative research tasks and self-assessment to shape and reshape narratives about the world and about themselves, and to reflect upon their learning so that they are able to grow as historians for the rest of their lives. The students’ experiences, in turn, have inspired her research and publications on the nature of history, world history and historical films. One of her chief goals is not only to develop excellent programs, but also to inspire and enable others to develop their own resources in national and international contexts, working with a range of organisations from individual schools to the History Teachers’ Association of Australia and the United Nations.