Robert Phiddian is Professor of English at Flinders University. He is author of Swift's Parody (1995) and (with Julian Meyrick and Tully Barnett) What Matters? Talking Value in Australian Culture (2018). He edited (with Haydon Manning) Comic Commentators – Contemporary Political Cartooning in Australia (2008) and (with David Lemmings and Heather Kerr) Passions, Sympathy and Print Culture: Public Opinion and Emotional Authenticity in Eighteenth-Century Britain (2016). He is author or co-author of nearly fifty academic articles or chapters. He was the founding director of the Australasian Consortium of Humanities Research Centres (2011-17) and sits on the board of the international Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes.