Jean Buckley Moran

Dr Jean Buckley was one of the brilliant conceptual thinkers in science and technology policy in Australia.

She entered the field from a background in journalism and editorial publishing as a Research Assistant at the Science Policy Research Centre, Griffith University, under the directorship of Ann Moyal, 1978-9, and later of Ian Lowe, and completed an MA with first class honours for her extensive study and thesis on The Australian Association of Scientific Workers. Her trenchant interest in comparative science policy approaches took her for independent research to Japan, South America and Canada, and in the late 1980s, she became a lecturer on a three year contract in the School of Science and Technology Studies, University of New South Wales where she developed innovative courses in Technology and Development and other policy areas. She completed her PhD at the University of New South Wales in 1992 with a probing thesis into the roots of our industrial and technological development in the twentieth century, entitled The Flightless Bird: A History of Australia's Industrialisation and Technological Development, 1901-1990.

Over my long acquaintance with Jean, I have been keenly aware of her rare capacity to focus and conceptualise themes relating to policy issues which were far-reaching, stimulating and fresh. She early perceived that with each new set of technologies, whether High Tech, Information Technology, or science and industry policy, the process of monitoring such developments in policy studies took precedence over conceptualisation and theorising leaving these studies without sophisticated tools of analysis. Jean Moran's skills lay in shaping such tools and it is critical nationally that, with her originality, competence, and special qualifications, she could find no position in academia or in the policy departments of the bureaucracy where her contribution could have proved so illuminating.

Eloquent, independent-minded, and creative, Jean Buckley Moran took her own life in Sydney on 9 October, 1994.

- Ann Moyal

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