Professor Bernard Hickey AM
Professor Bernard Hickey AM was awarded Australian Catholic University's (ACU National) highest honour, Doctor of the University (honoris causa), at the Sydney Campuses graduation ceremony held at the Sydney Town Hall on 2 September 2004.
"In presenting Professor Hickey with an Honorary Doctorate, ACU National recognises him as a leader in Australian studies, a distinguished teacher and an energetic proponent of Australian literature and culture in its many and varied forms: the living traditions of Indigenous, settler and multicultural Australians," said Professor Sheehan.
"Professor Hickey has been a pioneer of Australian studies in Italy as well as other areas within Europe and is an Honorary Life Member of the European Association for Studies on Australia," he said.
Between 1969 and 1988 Professor Hickey gave generous and distinguished direction to a three-way dialogue between the Australian Embassy in Rome, the Italian and Venetian cultural authorities, and the British Council. Some of the outstanding results of this can be seen in the Australia Council's permanent pavilion at the Biennale in Venice and the permanent B R Whiting Writer's Studio, now located in Rome. He also lectured extensively through the Mediterranean and in Eastern Europe on behalf of Australia's Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
For his services to education and to the study of Australian literature overseas, Professor Hickey was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 1987.
