Australian Dictionary of Biography

Doctor Joan Allsop, no date

Newcastle Libraries, 104 010215

Joan Winifred Allsop (1912–2000), adult educator, was born on 10 November 1912 at Eagle Junction, Brisbane, elder daughter of English-born Frank Maiden Allsop, public servant, and his Queensland-born wife Elfriede (Ella), née Reinhold, who had been one of the first women to work in the Queensland Public Service. Joan was educated at Sherwood State and Brisbane Girls’ Grammar schools, at the latter receiving the Lady Lilley silver medal, the Old Girls’ Association prize, and the Wight memorial prize for music. She won a scholarship to the University of Queensland (BA Hons, 1934; MA, 1940; DipEd, 1943; BEd, 1946), where she shared the Kate McNaughton scholarship. After achieving first-class honours in history, she began teaching at South Brisbane Intermediate School. When World War II broke out in 1939, she was due to leave for England to research Canadian constitutional history. Instead she stayed at her alma mater, comparing aspects of ancient and modern history for her master of arts thesis and completing her qualifications in education.

Appointed a staff tutor in the University of Sydney’s department of tutorial classes (later department of adult education) in 1946, Allsop was based in its Newcastle office under Harry Eddy, and worked in collaboration with the Workers’ Educational Association (WEA). She thus became one of the first women in Australia to gain a permanent job in adult education. At Newcastle she specialised in teaching international affairs; ancient and modern history; and appreciation of music—she believed that ‘everyone has a feeling for music’ and ‘all that is needed is an environment to foster and develop the interest’ (Newcastle Morning Herald and Miners’ Advocate 1951, 5)—in face-to-face lectures or through the discussion group scheme for the Hunter region. With the lifelong education of women in mind, in 1952 she initiated residential adult education courses for mothers and children.

From childhood Allsop herself had had a ‘precocious’ (Telegraph 1921, 3) talent for the piano, and in 1931 had gained an associate diploma in pianoforte from Trinity College, London. A member of the Queensland University Musical Society, she also sang with the Brisbane Handel Society under the direction of Robert Dalley-Scarlett, including in an early Australian performance of Handel’s Dettingen Te Deum. She was a member of the WEA music subcommittee at Newcastle, organiser of a recorded music club and many concerts, and secretary of the regional branch of the Arts Council of Australia and for a period in the 1950s of the Australian Broadcasting Commission’s celebrity concerts committee.

After gaining a Fulbright travel award for 1956 and 1957 and an award from the American Association of University Women, Allsop spent a year at Columbia University, New York (EdD, 1957), writing an appraisal of the discussion group scheme. Her thesis earned her the degree of doctor of education, one of her proudest achievements. Back home, she faced challenges from the ‘machinations of the “old boys” network’ (University of Oklahoma [2011]) in her field, and one reason given for the refusal to promote her in 1958 was that she had not done enough research. In contrast to that chauvinism, she was widely respected for piloting liberal education courses for trainees and apprentices in the male-dominated Newcastle steel industry.

In 1960 Allsop transferred to the university’s campus in Sydney, where she administered the discussion group scheme. After promotion to senior staff tutor (later senior lecturer) in 1962, she prepared and taught programs on history and international affairs, paying particular attention to the South-East Asian region; administered intensive courses from 1966 to 1970; and drafted and taught seminar courses on adult education offered through the master of education program at the University of Sydney from the early 1970s. She was assistant (1968, 1969–73; acting 1968–69) and then sole (1974–76) editor of the Australian Association of Adult Education’s Australian Journal of Adult Education. The extent and ‘quality of its overseas contributions’ during her tenure ‘owed a great deal to’ her ‘awareness of overseas … developments and her very extensive international contacts’ (Crowley 1976, 60).

Following her retirement in 1977, Allsop and a colleague pioneered adult education classes in the suburbs. In 1981 she was appointed AM. A board member for Beehive, a Darlinghurst organisation dedicated to education for seniors and the disabled, she had herself coped with exacting physical challenges. When she was seven, overexposure to radiotherapy treatment for infantile eczema had badly burnt her legs, resulting in chronic ulcerations. She endured a number of hospital stays over the years and was on sick leave for much of 1948 for skin graft operations, some of which failed to take. Having to treat her damaged legs throughout her life never deterred her from overseas travel. In her last years the ulcerations became cancerous and she had a leg amputated.

An attractive, well-dressed woman of medium stature who wore glasses from an early age, Allsop never married. Highly intelligent, she was never ‘backward in expressing’ (Gordon Davis, pers. comm.) what was on her mind, and ‘tireless’ (Waterhouse 2000, 29) in her profession and service to the community. She symbolised the changing ambitions of women in post-World War II Australia and was proactive in creating learning opportunities for women, as well as men. Having lived most of her Sydney years in her unit at Wollstonecraft, she died on 12 October 2000 in a Roseville nursing home, and was cremated. She left bequests providing for an annual prize for an outstanding essay on Queensland history by a Year 9 student of Brisbane Girls’ Grammar School, and a scholarship for postgraduate candidates in the department of history at the University of Sydney to travel for research on an Australian-related project. A long-time benefactor, she had sponsored a prize for history honours students at the University of Queensland since 1960. In 2011 she was honoured by the International Adult and Continuing Education Hall of Fame at the University of Oklahoma as a leader in the field.