Rebecca Huntley is an Australian social researcher and expert on social trends. She is an author and researcher with degrees in law, a first class degree in film studies and a PhD in Gender Studies. She has been a regular columnist for Business Review Weekly, a feature writer for Vogue and a radio presenter for ABC'sABC Radio National. She regularly features on radio and TV.
Early life and education
Huntley was born to her mother, schoolteacher Marisa Crawford, and her father, lawyer James Crawford, in Oxford, England. Until her early teenage years, she moved frequently between Adelaide, Sydney, Cambridge and Oxford. Huntley attended secondary education at Sydney Girls High School, before studying law at the University of New South Wales, spending one year of her degree at the University of British Columbia. She also attained an honours degree in film studies, writing her thesis on the political debate around the un-banning of Pier Paolo Pasolini’s controversial film Salo. From 1997 to 2002, Huntley studied at the University of Sydney to obtain a PhD in Gender Studies, exploring the campaign for the women’s vote and the Australian Labor Party campaign in the 1983 and 1993 federal elections.
Career
Huntley worked briefly in legal publishing before she attended the University of Sydney to obtain her PhD. During this period, she worked with several federal politicians in the ALP, acting as an active member of the National Committee of EMILY’s List Australia and the ALP’s federal policy committee. Simultaneously, she worked as an academic, teaching public law, film studies, politics and communication part-time. Huntley left the ALP in 2006, saying that she wished to be politically neutral in her research. While working in politics and publishing, Huntley authored her first book, The World According to Y: Inside the New Adult Generation. She was the director of The Mind & Mood Report at Ipsos Australia, a market research firm, from 2006 to 2015. In 2006 she gave the 2006 National Republican Lecture in Canberra, her talk entitled "Trust Matters: Politics, Trust and the Republican Cause". Dr Huntley is a committed republican and worked for the YES campaign during the 1999 Australian republic referendum. In 2015 she gave the John Button Oration at the Melbourne Writer's Festival on perceptions on inequality in Australian public life. She has written for numerous publications including The Australian, The Sydney Morning Herald, Marie Claire and Griffith Review. She has been a regular columnist for Business Review Weekly and was a feature writer for Australian Vogue from 2004 to 2012. She is the author of numerous books. In 2013, Huntley appeared at TEDxSydney, talking about truth in social research. Huntley has been on the board of directors of Campaign Action and the Dusseldorp Forum. She is on the Bell Shakespeare Company's Artistic Advisory Board. She is also on the board of The Whitlam Institute. She was a member of the UNSW Arts and Social Sciences Advisory Committee. In 2016 she was appointed as an adjunct senior lecturer at the School of Social Sciences at University of New South Wales. She has been a regular guest at the Festival of Dangerous Ideas and numerous writers' festivals across Australia. She has also appeared as a guest on many television shows including Q&A, Gruen Planet, Media Circus, The Drum, Meet the Press, The Observer Effect, Paul Murray Live, ABC’s News 24 and One Plus One. Huntley hosted the Drive show on ABC Radio National in 2014. In 2015 she co-hosted a weekly podcast called Just Between Us with journalist Sarah Macdonald. In 2016 Huntley produced and presented a podcast series for the digital radio station Kinderling, called "Where Parents Fear to Tread". She has a regular spot on James Valentine's show on ABC's 702 called "Research or Rubbish". Huntley also presents The History Listen each week on Radio National. Huntley has co-hosted a storytelling event at The Giant Dwarf in Sydney, called The Full Catastrophe with broadcaster Sarah Macdonald. Huntley hosted a panel discussion on "the present and future of the nation" for the 2017 Brisbane Writers Festival at the State Library of Queensland, Australia. Since 2017 Huntley has been the director of research at Essential Media. Rebecca is also a principal at Vox Populi Research.
Personal life
Huntley currently lives and works in Sydney with her husband Daniel Yarrow and their three daughters.
Janet Ramsey & Rebecca Huntley, "Never Made to Follow, Never Born to Lead”: Women in the NSW ALP in Deborah Brennan & Louise A. Chappell, “No Fit Place For Women”? Women in New South Wales Politics, 1856–2006
Rebecca Huntley, ‘Bending Over Backwards’ in Griffith REVIEW 45: The Way We Work
Rebecca Huntley, ‘A Taste of Home’ in Griffith REVIEW 27: Food Chain
Verity Firth & Rebecca Huntley, Who’s Afraid of a Public School? Public Perceptions of Education in Australia
Rebecca Huntley, Censuring Salo: The Unbanning of Pier Paolo Pasolini's Salo
Rebecca Huntley, Still Lucky: why you should feel optimistic about Australia and its people
Rebecca Huntley, "Australia Fair: Listening to the Nation"
