Professor Bob Bessant, 28 May 1930 – 2 May 2013
The editorial team of Critical Studies in Education pays tribute to one of the journal's longest serving editors, Professor Bob Bessant, who recently passed away in Melbourne, Australia.
Bob came into his own as an academic at La Trobe. He was appointed in 1970 to a lectureship in the University's School of Education and worked in the Center for Comparative and Policy Studies in Education until 1996, when he retired as a Reader. He remained an Honorary Research Scholar of La Trobe University until 2001.
Bob was a teacher across all levels of undergraduate and postgraduate study and supervised many postgraduate students, seeing nearly 40 postgraduate theses to completion. He was one of Australia's most well known education researchers, publishing 13 books and monographs as well as 30 research papers and 22 book chapters.
During his academic career he served on an array of internal committees at La Trobe, Melbourne and Monash universities including University Councils, Academic Boards and research and publication committees. Among his co-publications was a history of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE). He was also an active unionist, playing key roles in the academic union (FAUSA).
Bob was a great institution builder and he was guided by the idea that if Australia is to have a good future then it is critical that it remembers its history. In 1959, he and a colleague created the Victorian Historical Association (now the History Teachers Association of Victoria) and was its President in 1970. In 1973 he became the foundation President of the History Teachers Association of Australia. He was also active in building Australian History as an area of study, playing a key role in developing the Australian Year 12 secondary school history curriculum.
His institution-building activities extended to the field of publishing. In 1962 with another colleague, he established the Victorian Historical Association Journal, Historian and was its editor until 1975. He was also the foundation editor of the History of Education Review. Then in 1977 he became the foundation editor of the Journal of Australian Studies. In 1986 he was foundation Chair of the Board of Directors of La Trobe University Press.
From 1996 to 2006, in his retirement, Bob served as co-editor of Melbourne Studies in Education (now Critical Studies in Education), the journal's seventh editor. He was very conscious of its place in the Australian research community, as the nation's first journal to provide a forum for qualitative education research, and its history as a leading international education journal. He was one of a select few academics and university libraries with a complete set of the journal's past issues (from 1957), which proved invaluable in ensuring a complete digitised set for the journal's website.
Bob was a hands-on editor, a stickler for accuracy, and he encouraged the publication of research by early career researchers. He lamented the shift to online publication, preferring the experience of the hard copy, but accepted with good grace the journal's need to join the digital age if it was to secure its future as a primary forum for quality articles in a globalising field of educational research.
Bob will be remembered fondly by many, as a colleague, mentor and great contributor to educational research.