ProfessorAnthony Elliott

Professor Anthony Elliott is Dean of External Engagement at the University of South Australia, where he is Executive Director of the Hawke EU Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and Network, and Research Professor of Sociology.

Anthony Elliott was born in Australia and holds a BA Honours degree from the University of Melbourne and a PhD from Cambridge University, where he was supervised by Lord Anthony Giddens, architect of Third Way progressive politics. Professor Elliott was formerly Director of the Hawke Research Institute at UniSA (2012-2016), Executive Director of the Hawke EU Centre for Mobilities, Migrations and Cultural Transformations, and Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research) and Head of the Department of Sociology at Flinders University (2006-2012). Professor Elliott holds various international research fellowships and professorships, and is currently Visiting Global Professor of Sociology in the Graduate School of Human Relations, Keio University, Japan and Visiting Professor of Sociology at University College Dublin, Ireland.

Professor Elliott is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, a Fellow of the Cambridge Commonwealth Trust, and a member of King’s College, Cambridge.

Professor Elliott is a prominent social theorist, sociologist and public intellectual. He is the author and editor of over 40 books, which have been translated or are forthcoming in seventeen languages. His recent books include Contemporary Social Theory: An Introduction (2009), The New Individualism (2E, 2009, with Charles Lemert), Mobile Lives ( 2010, with John Urry), On Society (2012, with Bryan S. Turner), Reinvention (2013), Psychoanalytic Theory: An Introduction (3E, 2015), Identity Troubles (2016) and The Culture of AI (2019). He is best known for Concepts of the Self, which has been in continuous print for over 20 years and across three editions.

Elliott has held various professorships and fellowships in Australia and abroad. Following two consecutive ARC Research Fellowships at the University of Melbourne, he was appointed to a Research Chair in the UK in 1999. He subsequently became Professor of Sociology at the University of Kent at Canterbury, prior to returning to Australia in 2006 to take up the Chair of Sociology at Flinders University, where he was for a period both Head of Department and Associate Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research).

In 2014, Elliott was Visiting Fellow at the Long Room Hub, Trinity College Dublin. In 2015, he was Visiting Professor at the Université Panthéon Assas – Paris II. University College Dublin has appointed Professor Anthony Elliott as Visiting Professor in the School of Sociology until 2018.

In 2016, Professor Elliott was awarded an Australian Research Council Major Grant for research on robotics, artificial intelligence and the future of employment. This project is conducted with colleagues at the Institute for Social Futures, Lancaster University; the Australian National University and Wollongong University. In 2017 he was awarded a Toyota Foundation Research Programme Grant to research socially assistive robotics in aged care along with Japanese and Australian colleagues, an Australian Research Council Major Grant for research on Industry 4.0 with a German partner investigator, and an EU Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Project for research on robotics and digital skills with colleagues from Germany, Poland, Finland, New Zealand and Australia. In 2018 Professor Elliott was awarded an EU Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Centre of Excellence and an EU Erasmus+ Jean Monnet Network for research on driverless vehicles with colleagues from Germany, Denmark, Estonia, Japan, New Zealand and Australia.

Professor Elliott was appointed to the “Deployment of artificial intelligence and what it presents for Australia” Expert Working Group, Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA)(2018-2019). The Expert Working Group was commissioned by the Chief Scientist of Australia, Dr Alan Finkel, at the request of the Prime Minister’s Commonwealth Science Council, and with support from the Australian Research Council (ARC), the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, and the Department of Industry, Innovation and Science. In 2017 he was a member of ACOLA’s Artificial Intelligence Scoping Project Committee, Academy of Science and the Academy of Technology and Engineering.

Professor Elliott contributes to media worldwide: amongst others, he has been recently been interviewed by the BBC World Service, The Sunday Times, ABC Radio National, The Australian, BBC Radio 4, GMTV Sunday as well as European and North American radio and television networks.