Dr Rebecca Huntley
Dr Rebecca Huntley is one of Australia’s foremost researchers on social trends.
She has a background in publishing, academia and politics and holds degrees in law and film studies and a PhD in Gender Studies. For nearly 9 years Rebecca was the Director of The Mind & Mood Report, Australia's longest running social trends report. She currently heads Vox Populi research, as part of the CIRCA research group.
She is the author of numerous books including Still Lucky: why you should feel optimistic about Australia and its people (Penguin 2017) and Australia Fair: Listen to the Nation, the first Quarterly Essay for 2019. Her next book will be published in 2019 by Murdoch Books on climate change and emotion. She has delivered The John Button Oration (2012) at the Melbourne Writers’ Festival and the MSSI Oration at the University of Melbourne (2019). Rebecca writes occasionally for The Guardian and co-presented the Guardian’s podcast Common Ground with Lenore Taylor in 2017. Rebecca is a broadcaster with the ABC and presents The History Listen each week on RN. She was a presenter of RN Drive on a Friday.
In addition to books, Rebecca has written extensively for essay collections, magazines, newspapers and online publications. She was a feature writer for Australian Vogue and a columnist for BRW and writes a column twice a month for ABC Life.
Rebecca co-hosts with Sarah Macdonald a comedy storytelling night and podcast called The Full Catastrophe. The Full Catastrophe is also a book (Hardie Grant, May 2019).
Rebecca has researched the social and political dimensions of food and cooking throughout her career and has published on this topics in books and articles. She has written and presented two episodes of RN’s Future Tense, on climate change and food and ageing and food. She presented at MAD Syd in 2017 with Rene Redzepi and David Chang. She is on the Advisory Group of MAD Sydney.
She is on the board of The Bell Shakespeare Company and a board member of The Whitlam Institute. Rebecca was also an adjunct senior lecturer at the School of Social Sciences at The University of New South Wales. Rebecca is a registered Commonwealth marriage celebrant and lives in Sydney with her three daughters.