Carol Bacchi

Upon her graduation from Loyola College in 1969, Bacchi was the recipient of the Governor General's Academic Medal and The Knights of Columbus Prize For Canadian History.[2] After earning her PhD in 1976 from McGill University, Bacchi emigrated to Australia.[1]

Bacchi was subsequently hired by the University of Adelaide as a tutor in Australian history.[3] She was also appointed to a teaching position in the Department of History at the University of Newcastle, alongside her husband.[4]

In 1979, Bacchi became the first female lecturer appointed by the University of Adelaide in the Politics Department and the first female to be granted tenure.[5] In 1983, Bacchi published Liberation deferred? The ideas of the English-Canadian suffragists, 1877-1918, which was based on her thesis from McGill.[6] The basis of the book centered around the idea that the early English-Canadian suffragists did not fail in their goal to enact a revolution amongst women, but rather were promoting the idea of a civil society consisting of British elite.[7] A few years later, Bacchi published Women and Peace Through the Polls through the Peace Research Centre at the Australian National University.[8]

In 1990, Bacchi published Same difference: feminism and sexual difference through Allen & Unwin.[9] At the end of the 1990s, Bacchi also published Women, policy and politics: The construction of policy problems.[10] She was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 2000.[11] The next year, Bacchi was appointed a Visiting Scholar at the University of Ottawa Research Centre for Women and Politics.[8] In 2003, Bacchi wrote Fear of Food: A Diary of Mothering, which chronicled her struggle with her first sons birth and early childhood.[12] In 2009, she published Analysing Policy: What's the Problem Represented to Be? through Pearson Australia Pty Ltd and retired as an Emerita Professor.[8] In 2010, Bacchi co-edited a book with Joan Eveline titled Mainstreaming Politics: Gendering Practices and Feminist Theory through the University of Adelaide Press.[13] That same year, she was a Visiting Professor at two Denmark university's; University of Aalborg and Roskilde University. While there, she presented her paper titled Foucault, Policy and Rule: Challenging the Problem-Solving Paradigm to the Feminist Research Center in Aalborg.[14]

In 2012 Engaging with Carol Bacchi: Strategic Interventions and Exchanges, an edited collection exploring her work, to which she also contributed, was published by the University of Adelaide Press.[15]

In 2014, Bacchi was granted a Visiting Professor status at Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona.[8] Two years later, she published Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice with Susan Goodwin where they addressed "What's the Problem Represented to Be?" (WRP). They used a post-structural perspective and the works of Foucault to analyze public policy.[16]

In 2017, Bacchi was awarded an Honorary Doctorate from Umeå University in Sweden.[17]

The following is a list of selected publications:[18]

• Liberation Deferred? The Ideas of the English-Canadian Suffragists, 1877-1918 (1983)
• Same Difference: Feminism and Sexual Difference (1990)
• The Politics of Affirmative Action: 'Women', Equality and Category Politics (1996)
• Women, Policy and Politics: the construction of policy problems (1999)
• Fear of Food: A Diary of Mothering (2003)
• Analysing Policy: What’s the problem represented to be? (2009)
• Poststructural Policy Analysis: A Guide to Practice (2016)