Special Achievements

Australian adult educator. With the assistance of a grant, Allsop was able to attend Columbia University in New York, where she became the first Australian to obtain a doctor of education degree in the field of adult education. Joan Allsop became a staff tutor for the Department of Tutorial Classes in Sydney University at Newcastle (1946), and later served as senior lecturer in the Department of Adult Education (1960 – 1977).  She was the editor of the Australian Journal of Adult Education, and was appointed delegate to the third UNESCO conference in Tokyo (1972). For her services as an executive with the Australian Association of Adult Education (1967 – 1976) and as a boardmember for Beehive, an organisation dedicated to education for the disabled, she was awarded an AM (Order of Australia Medal (1981). Though she officially retired in 1977, Allsop continued to lecture, tutoring daytime and suburban adult education classes at the Pymble Uniting Church for a further twenty-five years (1977 – 1991). 

Image details: Mrs C. Tranberg (nee Hazel Harrold), Dr Joan Allsop, and Mrs Freda Freeman (nee Winifred Alice Oxnam) at the First Alumni Reunion and Commemoration, 19-21 May 1967, Fryer Library, The University of Queensland Library.