Death of Professor John Carroll

Staff, students and alumni of Charles Sturt University (CSU) were saddened last week to learn of the death of Professor John Carroll, the Professor of Communication at the School of Communication and Creative Industries in Bathurst. Carroll died in the early hours of Thursday October 27 following treatment over the past year for cancer. He is survived by his life-partner, Dr Julie Martello, from the CSU School of Teacher Education, and their son, Jack. The Associate Head of the School of Communication and Creative Industries, Dr Peter Simmons, said, “John’s free thinking intellect and energy have been a wonderful gift to colleagues and students for three decades. As a researcher he was respected internationally. As a teacher and critic he was insightful and supportive in the most empowering of ways.” CSU colleague Dr Jerry Boland said, “John was one of Australia’s greatest theorist/practitioners of drama in education and very much a leading pioneer in that great educational/cultural enterprise. His academic honours were many, he touched all of our lives in a wonderfully positive, transformative way, and he will be sorely missed.” Professor Carroll was one of the University’s longest-serving academics. He started at CSU’s predecessor institution, Mitchell College of Advanced Education, in 1974, and rose from lecturer to Professor. He was a pioneering leader in Australia in the field of drama in education, a founding member of the National Drama in Education organisation (formerly NADIE, now Drama Australia), and was internationally acknowledged as one of the foremost theorist/researcher/practitioners in drama in education. He was course coordinator of the CSU Bachelor of Communication (Theatre/Media) from 1987 to 1996, and more recently he created the Doctor of Communication course at CSU.