Jack Fuller (TC 2004) is Victorian Rhodes Scholar

Friday 6 November 2009

Jack Fuller, 24, has had a busy week. On Monday he submitted his BSc Honours thesis, and yesterday he became the 37th Trinity College alumnus to win the prestigious Rhodes Scholarship.

Jack, who was also a non-resident tutor in Neuropsychology at Trinity in 2008, will next year commence a Master of Philosophy in International Relations at the University of Oxford.

‘I want to look at civilisation in terms of rediscovering the standards of our own traditions,’ he explained, while being congratulated by the Warden, Dean and other members of Trinity’s Senior Common Room this morning.

‘Jack's win is exciting for us as a College because of his Trinity background,’ Trinity’s Warden, Associate Professor Andrew McGowan said. ‘But it is also inspiring because of his interests and ambitions. Jack exemplifies the versatility and breadth of engagement that embodies Trinity, and the best University education; but he is clearly intent on putting his own talents in the service of fundamental issues that face our world, such as sustainability and the question of civilisation itself. We should all be watching the results with interest and anticipation.’

Passionate about environmental politics, Jack travelled overland from Singapore to Poland with the Australian Youth Delegation to the UN conference on climate change in Poznan. last November. His Honours thesis also focuses on this area, proposing a regime for tackling climate change in the Asia-Pacific, should the world fail to reach agreement in Copenhagan.

‘The reason we’re fighting climate change is that we have civilisational achievements that are worth defending,’ he said.

‘In future I aim to work at the intersection of environmental politics, public policy and political leadership, playing a role in developing institutions for environmental governance and the accompanying cultures we require,’ he said, adding, ‘ I have always wanted to go into public life.’

Jack grew up in Brisbane where, amongst a plethora of achievements, he was School Captain and Cross-Country Champion at Indooroopilly State High School (whose alumni also include Nobel Prize winner, Professor Peter Doherty). He is an award-winning debater and public speaker, volunteers with the Red Cross and various other bodies, and speaks fluent German and Tetum.

He learnt both languages while living overseas. In 2003 he spent a year on exchange in Germany and, during 2006, deferred his studies to spend the year in East Timor where he was working with a local NGO to build sustainable gardens.

A practitioner of karate – he ‘likes the self-discipline involved’ – Jack has run the half-marathon and cycled from Melbourne to Sydney. He is also a keen soccer player, a sport in which he represented Trinity while in residence.

‘I really enjoyed my two years in College – I learnt a lot here,’ he said, recalling how he had decorated the stairwell of the Dorothy building with a huge eucalyptus branch ‘to give it a more natural feel’. He acted in two College plays and a College musical and read The Jaberwocky in Chapel. ‘I enjoy memorising poetry, particularly T S Eliot,’ he said.

Jack currently lives in Sydney where he is a project leader with progressive think tank Per Capita, working on cognitive science and public policy, a job he relishes. ‘We are looking at how to systematically culture virtue in the population.’ Jack, it would seem, is just the man for the job.

Trinity’s last Rhodes Scholar was Harriet Gee (TC 1999) in 2006.