Campus Review Volume 28 - Issue 6 | June 2018 | Seite 22

VC’s corner
campusreview.com.au
Policy clout
UWA’s second female VC
wants to develop policy of
reach and significance.
Dawn Freshwater interviewed
by Conor Burke
D
awn Freshwater has an eye towards
the future. The University of Western
Australia’s 18th vice-chancellor
believes her institution can be an agent for
change in WA, and beyond, by contributing
to good policy and discussion.
Hailing form the UK, Freshwater was
previously the deputy vice-chancellor at
UWA, as well as pro-vice-chancellor for staff
and organisational effectiveness, professor
of mental health and head of the School of
Healthcare at the University of Leeds.
Freshwater received her doctorate at the
University of Nottingham in 1998, and was
elected to a fellowship of the Royal College
of Nursing in 2001. She was also a panel
member of the UK’s inaugural Research
Excellence Framework.
This experience, coupled with her role as
deputy chair of the Group of Eight board, has
given her a clear vision for where she wants
UWA to be and how she can achieve it. Key
20
to this vision are international engagement,
delivering world class research and engaging
with business and government.
“One of the critical issues for a vice-
chancellor these days is maintaining the
balance between the internal and external
focus. We are a social enterprise, but we
have to have a sustainable business model.”
Campus Review spoke with Freshwater to
discuss her vision for UWA, her first year in
charge, and the relationship between China
and Australia.
CR : UWA recently launched its Public
Policy Institute. You billed it as a world
class research and expertise centre, with
decision makers and community leaders.
Run us through the thought process from
the inception of this project.
DF: One concern I had during the initial
part of my vice-chancellorship was the lack
of any regional think tank or policy institute
to take account of the concerns around
developing an evidence-based approach
to informing and generating good policy,
underpinned by strong research and
which can link to innovation. Particularly
in the context of the Indo-Pacific, the
shifting geopolitical focus of the world,
and our influence in Western Australia, and
the increasing importance of our Indian
Ocean neighbours.
So, one of the things that we’ve been
working on for the last year, building
on decades of initiatives, is partnering
with government, business, industry and
community organisations to develop and
deliver that high quality, independent,
impartial response of a practical evidence-
based approach to policy generation and
implementation.
Importantly for us, this is also bringing
together the work we currently have housed
within our Perth USAsia Centre, which has
this extremely high profile in Indonesia,
India, Southeast Asia and, of course, the
US. Linking it with our affiliation with the
Australia India Institute, the work that we’re
doing with ACICIS, our Indonesian study
centre, Australian studies, we’re linking
again with the Menzies Institute and King’s
College, and of course we have the first
Confucius Institute in Australia on our
campus. But building on that, and to create
something that’s more than the sum of
its parts, and linking it to what we believe
now is our position as the fulcrum point
of what’s happening in the ASEAN region,
and providing no