for the winter term of 1971 and attended the first conference of the NZASR
that year.
Links between Papua New Guinea and the Pacific Islands and Australian
universities have been particularly strong. Garry Trompf from the University
of Sydney continued his early connection with the area and has encouraged
the work of indigenous writers in the field of religion. Neil Gunson of the
Australian National University has supervised many postgraduate students from
the Pacific Islands and their work on religion in the 2005 collection edited by
Phyllis Herda, Michael Reilly and David Hilliard is testament to his
encouragement of their studies.
Relations with other fields of study
The establishment of departments of studies in religion in Australia in the 1960s
and 1970s did not herald the beginning of teaching studies in religion. As Victor
Hayes pointed out in his 1976 Guide, by April of that year he had produced
a list of some 530 units on offer in fifty-nine institutions in Australia, and these
programs pre-date the establishment of the more formal arrangements for
teaching this subject in departments.
As Hayes wrote then (1976: v), in some surprise at what he had found
through his search of tertiary institution handbooks:
Religion, it appears, is being considered by any number of ‘non-religion’
departments – departments of Art, History, English, Literature, Philosophy,
Sociology, Anthropology, Asian Studies, Middle Eastern and Semitic and
Malaysian and Indonesian Studies, Aboriginal and Indian and Cultural
Studies, and so on. Australia’s new Religion Studies Departments are
appearing alongside this already existing pattern of activity.
Hayes (1976: vi) outlined a mix of structures under which studies in religion
was being offered: departments of studies in religion that were just beginning
to appear; interdepartmental programs or seminars at places such as Macquarie
University, La Trobe University, and the University of Melbourne; programs
in Catholic teachers’ colleges such as the Victorian Institute of Catholic
Education; programs in ‘non-religion studies’ departments such as Middle
Eastern Studies at the University of Melbourne and the Faculty of Asian
Studies at the Australian National University; and piecemeal offerings where
there are offerings but not coordinated or integrated. The same mix of
structures could also be identified in New Zealand, and remain much the same
in both countries. The first two elements are often strongly linked. Thus, at
the AASR conference at the University of New England in 2000, Benjamin
Penny from the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian
National University, where there has been historically a strong group of experts
1111
2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
1011
1
2
3111
4 5 6 7 8 9
20111
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9
30111
1
2
3
4
35
6
7
8
9
40111
42222
3
411
AUSTRALIA, NEW ZEALAND AND THE PACIFIC ISLANDS
231
