Mark Western

Mark Western is Research Director, The Queensland Commitment, UQ, and Professor of Sociology in the Centre for Policy Futures in the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia and the Queensland Academy of the Arts and Sciences. From 2009 to March 2022 he was Founding Director of the Institute for Social Science Research, UQ's university research institute for the social sciences. He has previously worked at the Australian National University and the University of Tasmania, and held visiting appointments at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, the University of Manchester, and the Institute of Education, London.

Mark is an International Fellow of the Centre for the Study of Poverty and Inequality at Stanford University, and a former Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families Over the Life course and the ARC Centre of Excellence in Policing and Security.

He has been a member of the Boards of the Cathie Marsh Institute for Social Research at the University of Manchester, the Leeds Social Sciences Institute, and the Stretton Institute at the University of Adelaide. In recent years Mark Western's external appointments include:

• 2023-2024 Member, National Research Infrastructure Advisory Group, providing long term and strategic advice to the Federal Government on National Research Infrastructure
• 2023- Chair, Group of Eight Equity Working Group, advising the Group of Eight on student equity in higher education.
• 2022- Member, Steering Committee, Academy of Social Sciences in Australia Research Infrastructure Decadal Plan
• 2021-2022 Chair, Expert Working Group reviewing the ERA Rating Scale and Benchmarking for the ARC
• 2020-2021 Chair, Steering Committee for the State of the Social Sciences Report 2021 for the Academy of Social Sciences
• 2019 Member, Advisory Group to the Academy of Humanities Project, Mapping International Research Infrastructures for the Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences
• 2014-2015 Deputy Chair, Review of the Australian Research Training System, Australian Council of Learned Academies.

Mark has also served as Chair and Deputy Chair of ARC ERA and Engagement and Impact Evaluation Committees, and on the ARC College of Experts and various ARC Selection Advisory Committees for other ARC Research Funding schemes.

He has edited and authored 7 books, and over 100 book chapters, journal articles and commissioned reports and held research grants and contracts worth approximately $120 million.