LGBTIQ+ activist and human rights scholar, Emeritus Professor Baden Offord, has been presented with his Order of Australia award by the NSW Governor, Margaret Beazley AC QC.
The award was announced in 2021, but the ceremony had been postponed due to COVID outbreak in 2021, but finally took place recently in Sydney at Government House.
Following the presentation of the medal by the Governor at a COVID safe distance at the ceremony inside Government House, Baden’s husband of 39 years, Christopher Macfarlane placed the medal around Baden afterwards on the terrace.
The citation read at the presentation highlighted the academic’s lifelong work in the field of human rights.
Emeritus Professor Offord was the Director of Curtin University’s Centre for Human Rights Education, the Dr Haruhisa Handa Chair of Human Rights and Research Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights. He was the convener of the LGBTIQ Research Network, the co-convener of the Curtin Critical Disability Studies Research Network and Director and Senior Researcher at the Australia-Asia-Pacific Institute.
Prior to joining Curtin University, he was previously at Southern Cross University, where he was Professor of Cultural Studies and Human Rights, Director of Community Engagement and Centre for Peace and Social Justice Co-Director.
Professor Offord is an Executive Committee Member of University of Barcelona’s Centre for Australian and Transnational Studies, and was Vice-President (International) of the Cultural Studies Association of Australasia. Professor Offord was twice Visiting Scholar at Indiana University’s Kinsey Institute for Research into Gender, Sex and Reproduction.
A member of the Activating Human Rights project for nearly two decades, Professor Offord was an expert adviser (pro-bono) to the New York Immigration Task Force for Gays and Lesbians.
He is the author, co-author and co-editor of essays, articles, books and chapters on cultural studies, social justice and human rights including the book Homosexual Rights as Human Rights: Activism in Indonesia, Singapore and Australia which won the George Duncan Memorial Award.
His awards include Southern Cross University’s Academic Impact Award and the Manning Clark House Honourable Mention for an Outstanding Contribution to Australian Culture.
After receiving the award the couple celebrated by catching up with another legend of human rights in Australia, former High Court Justice Michael Kirby.
OIP Staff
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