Australian Dictionary of Biography

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Award of ADB Medal to Chris Cunneen for long and distinguished service (2015)

Citation

In 1974 the Australian Dictionary of Biography’s (ADB) general editor Bede Nairn examined Christopher Cunneen’s PhD on the role of the Governor-General in Australia (ANU, 1973). On its strength, dealing with biography, fame and reputation, Nairn promptly recruited Chris to his staff. In this way, the ADB secured the services of Chris for four decades (to date) as a salaried, and then, a voluntary worker. Under the editorship of Nairn and Geoff Serle, Chris came to perform most of the managerial tasks, the ‘day-to-day management … of the project, allocation of duties to the research staff, liaison with working parties outside the ANU and supervision of the office of the project’. He also oversaw the research assistants in the states and in Britain. At the same time he wrote entries, conducted research, and assisted the general editor in editing all entries and preparing the manuscript for publication. In the performance of all his duties, he set the highest standards of dedication and scholarship. In addition, he was a kindly and considerate supervisor who enjoyed the deep respect and affection of the staff. 

Chris’s role evolved over the years with his becoming the ADB’s deputy general editor (1982-96). On leave in late 1986, he embarked on a comparative dictionary tour visiting not only our American, Canadian, British and Austrian equivalents, but also the fledgling Irish, Malaysian and New Zealand enterprises. He had published King’s Men: Australia’s Governors-General from Hopetoun to Isaacs in 1983 but his ‘sticking to the editorial grind’ meant he had little time to write work of his own.  Only in retirement was he to have time to complete William John McKell: Boilermaker, Premier, Governor-General (2000). Chris became a loyal deputy when John Ritchie was appointed general editor in 1987. He retired from the ADB in December 1996 and moved to Sydney. 

Chris’s loyalty, dedication, patience, tact and diplomacy exercised on behalf of the ADB did not end there. His contribution to the ADB flourished after 1996. Chris had been a member of the ADB’s NSW Working Party since 1975 and his contribution there continued seamlessly. Jill Roe recruited him to be an Honorary Research Fellow at Macquarie University. In this congenial company and in ‘retirement’, he led the team that produced the supplementary volume of missing persons. There was a great need for such a volume but no resources amid budget cuts. In 2000 Stephen Garton, Jill Roe and Beverley Kingston submitted an application to the ARC as the chief investigators with Chris as the production manager. He was soon the editor, following the ADB system and form, and working closely with ‘headquarters’ on the project. Indeed, when published, it was easily interleaved into the ADB Online. At Macquarie he became the face of the ADB in NSW, fielding queries and complaints from the many authors whom he had come to know personally. The NSW Working Party could not function without his devoted record-keeping and unofficial secretarial work. Chris joined the ADB Editorial Board in June 2011, embodying institutional memory as the ADB culture transformed towards a digital future. In 2014 he embarked on a revision project of volumes one and two. Most of the corrigenda enquiries that the ADB has received have been for those first two volumes, which were published in 1966 and 1967, at a time when it was operationally difficult and too expensive to obtain birth, death and marriage certificates, and other biographical sources were scarce. Chris’s decision to undertake this huge voluntary task reflects extraordinary and unsurpassed devotion to the ADB. 

To date he has written 78 ADB articles, putting him in the top ten of our Authors’ Roll of Honour, and he has made an editorial contribution to countless others and continues to do so. Chris was an exemplary member of the ADB’s salaried staff and he has been virtually an unpaid staff member for the past 18 years. He is one of our longest-serving and greatest voluntary workers.