— Alice Garner, Anthony Forsyth, Mary Leahy, Renee Burns, Michael Beahan, Max Ogden, John Polesel
Yesterday we said good-bye to our colleague and mentor, Professor Stuart Macintyre. Stuart was a Chief Investigator on our ARC project on trade union education. He was involved in the early phases of the project, contributing the intellectual rigour and vision to ensure we obtained funding, and establishing the connections between the research team and partner organisations.
Stuart provided invaluable advice on secondary sources and archives and was a sounding board on labour history questions arising during the initial research. He always answered emails quickly and with extremely useful detail.
We all experienced his generosity, most notably in the time he gave to us and to the project, but also in the gesture of footing the bill for coffees at team meetings and for a celebratory meal at University House when we won the ARC grant.
This is a great loss. We will miss Stuart’s extraordinary intellect, wise counsel and gentle humour.
He was, despite illness, able to complete his history of the Communist Party of Australia which will be launched early next year.
Many people are writing about Stuart’s influence. Here is a selection of articles:
https://arts.unimelb.edu.au/news/vale-professor-stuart-macintyre-ao
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2021/11/stuart-macintyre-was-australias-foremost-left-wing-historian
Vale Stuart Macintyre.
