Beryl Rawson (née Wilkinson; 24 July 1933 – 22 October 2010) was an Australian academic. She was Professor and Visiting Fellow in Classics at the Faculty of Arts of the

Australian National University The Australian National University (ANU) is a public university, public research university and member of the Group of Eight (Australian universities), Group of Eight, located in Canberra, the capital of Australia. Its main campus in Acton, A ...

(ANU). Her work "made ANU a significant centre for classical studies".

Early life and education

Rawson was born in

Innisfail, Queensland Innisfail (from Irish language, Irish: Inis Fáil) is a regional town and Suburbs and localities (Australia), locality in the Cassowary Coast Region, Queensland, Australia. The town was originally called Geraldton until 1910. In the , the town o ...

, and grew up in a small town nearby where her father was the schoolteacher. She won a full state government scholarship to the

University of Queensland The University of Queensland is a Public university, public research university located primarily in Brisbane, the capital city of the Australian state of Queensland. Founded in 1909 by the Queensland parliament, UQ is one of the six sandstone ...

, where she excelled in classics and graduated with first-class honours. She accepted a

Fulbright Scholarship The Fulbright Program, including the Fulbright–Hays Program, is one of several United States cultural exchange programs with the goal of improving intercultural relations, cultural diplomacy, and intercultural competence between the people ...

to the United States and completed a doctorate at

Bryn Mawr College Bryn Mawr College ( ; Welsh language, Welsh: ) is a Private college, private Women's colleges in the United States, women's Liberal arts colleges in the United States, liberal arts college in Bryn Mawr, Pennsylvania, United States. Founded as a ...

, under

Lily Ross Taylor Lily Ross Taylor (August 12, 1886 – November 18, 1969) was an American academic and author, who in 1917 became the first female Fellow of the American Academy in Rome. Biography Born in Auburn, Alabama, Lily Ross Taylor developed an interest ...

Academia

Her career at the Australian National University began in 1964, when she was appointed senior lecturer in classics. She served as Dean of the Faculty of the Arts from 1981 to 1986 and in 1989 was appointed Professor of Classics, retiring in 1998. As well as her academic duties, Rawson won five research grants between 1979 and 1991 and served on the Australian Vice-Chancellors' Committee and the Australian Research Council. She was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2006. The administrative offices of the College of Arts and Social Sciences at ANU was named after her following her death. On 13 December 2010, Vice-Chancellor of ANU, Professor Ian Chubb officially recognised the naming of the Beryl Rawson Building in her honour.

Publications

In the late 1970s she began using computers to analyse "the mass of funerary inscriptions commemorating slaves and freedmen, their spouses and children" and to better understand the lives of the lower classes in the early Roman Empire. She organised a number of conferences in Canberra on the Roman family (1981, 1988, 1994) and published collected papers resulting from these which included her own contributions, such as ''Children and childhood in Roman Italy'' (2003) and ''A companion to families in the Greek and Roman worlds'' (2010).

Personal life

Rawson's first marriage was to political scientist Don Rawson, the son of politician Roy Rawson. They later divorced and she remarried in 1983 to historian

A. W. Martin Allan William Martin Member of the Order of Australia, AM Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia, FASSA Australian Academy of the Humanities, FAHA (1926–2002) was an Australian historian. He wrote numerous works on Australian political his ...

. She was widowed in 2002.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Rawson, Beryl 1933 births 2010 deaths Australian classical scholars Women classical scholars People from Innisfail, Queensland University of Queensland alumni Historians of ancient Rome Australian women historians Academic staff of the Australian National University 20th-century Australian historians 21st-century Australian historians Fellows of the Australian Academy of the Humanities 21st-century Australian women writers 20th-century Australian women writers Bryn Mawr College alumni