Bella d'Abrera
Director, Foundations of Western Civilisation Program
Dr Bella d’Abrera is the Director, Foundations of Western Civilisation Program at the Institute of Public Affairs. She has BA in History and Spanish from Monash University, an MA in Spanish from the University of St Andrews and a PhD in History from the University of Cambridge.
She has written and illustrated a children’s book, is the author of The Tribunal of Zaragoza and Crypto-Judaism 1484-1515 and a trilogy on the English Reformation. She is currently on the Advisory Committee for the National Archives and is also member of ‘History Reclaimed’ a counter-offensive against “fake history” comprising a group of more than 40 senior UK and Anglosphere academics.
Bella is a regular contributor to The Spectator Australia, the Herald Sun, the Daily Telegraph and The Australian., and appears regularly on Sky News.
22 November 2023
Woke Ideology Trumps Core Literacy And Numeracy Teaching Skills
“We are setting Australian students up for failure by spending so little time teaching our teachers core literacy and numeracy skills, while university courses focus on woke issues and activism,” said Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Institute of Public Affairs’ Foundations of Western Civilisation Program. Today, the IPA released a comprehensive analysis of the content in every education faculty
22 November 2023
Who Teaches The Teachers? An Audit Of Teaching Degrees At Australian Universities
Teaching as a discipline as taught at Australian universities is now dominated by the study of Critical Social Justice, also known as wokeness. Critical Social Justice assumes most human interaction in society is underpinned by oppressive power structures based on group identities, such as race and gender. These theories, now entrenched in Australian universities, were pioneered by Brazilian Marxist Paulo
24 August 2023
Bella d’Abrera At CPAC 2023 On Free Speech At Australia’s Universities – 20 August 2023
On August 20, Foundations of Western Civilisation Program, Dr Bella d’Abrera, addresses CPAC 2023 in Sydney on the attack on free speech at Australian university campuses. All media appearances posted onto the IPA website are directly related to the promotion and dissemination of IPA research. Below is a transcript of the interview. Dr. Bella d’Abrera: I really got the short
25 March 2023
Misleading The Young
In this article, Dr Bella d’Abrera contextualises and disseminates the findings of the IPA’s research into the teaching of history in Australian universities, conducted as part of the IPA’s Foundations of Western Civilisation Program. The Foundations of Western Civilisation Program was established in 2011 to defend and extend Australians’ understanding of the influential, historical role of the West in establishing
21 March 2023
Failing Our Students With A Failed Curriculum
“Australian students should be learning how to read and write, yet the latest version of the National Curriculum is indoctrinating them with identity politics, critical race theory, and radical green ideology,” said Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation at the Institute of Public Affairs. The Institute of Public Affairs today released a new research report, De-educating
21 March 2023
De-educating Australia: How The National Curriculum Is Failing Australian Children
The Australian education system is in crisis, and at the heart of this crisis lies the National Curriculum. The curriculum dictates what every child in Australia should know. Sadly, it is becoming increasingly apparent that it is failing to fulfil its purpose, which is to educate Australian children. Unfortunately, Version 9 of the National Curriculum, which will be implemented in
21 December 2022
Museums Of Vandalism, Doomsayers, And Climate Catastrophe
This article was originally published in The Spectator Australia on or about 21 December 2022 and was written by the author in their capacity as a contributor for that publication. It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone. It is probably fair to say that the last few months in the life
28 November 2022
Australia’s Campus History Crisis – Erasing The Past, Failing The Future
“History, as a discipline taught in Australian universities, is no longer about a study of the past, it has turned into a woke political project to erase our memory,” said Dr Bella d’Abrera, Director of the Foundations of Western Civilisation Project at the Institute of Public Affairs. The IPA has released a landmark audit of the 791 history subjects offered
28 November 2022
Forgetting The Past: How Post-modernist Theory Has Replaced History In Australian Universities In 2022
History as a discipline as taught in Australian universities is no longer about a study of the past, as it has been replaced by post-modernist theory. In The Idea of History, the great English philosopher Historian RG Collingwood wrote that ‘history is for human self- knowledge. The only clue to what man can do is what man has done. The
17 November 2022
Suss-tainable Cuisine
This article was originally published in The Spectator Australia on or about 17 November 2022 and was written by the author in her capacity as a contributor for that publication. It has been republished on the IPA website with permission. The views expressed are those of the author alone. Cover by Sarah Dudley, illustration by Ben Davis Now Marxism is on the menu
