The Fritz Duras Lecture
The Fritz Duras Lecture will be delivered biennially as part of the Dean’s Lecture Series at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.The purpose of this lecture is to both commemorate and carry on the significant contribution Dr Fritz Duras made to the University of Melbourne and to the Australian community, especially in the areas of Health and Physical Education.
It was Professor G. S. Browne, a past Dean of this School, who played a prominent role in pursuing the creation of a Diploma course in Physical Education at the University of Melbourne in the 1930s. Professor Browne was also central to an initiative, involving numerous parties, to offer Dr Fritz Duras the appointment as Director of this course. In kind regards Dr Duras (1937: 905) referred to Professor Browne as ‘the real creator of the course’. Professor Browne and his colleagues showed great foresight in taking the necessary steps to instigate such a course and to finding such an appropriate Director to lead it.
Dr Duras (1937: 906) stated his firm belief in ‘the important relations between physical education and preventive medicine’. The significance of this connection between education and health remains contemporary
Reference: Duras, F. (1937). The Charles Mackay Lecture. The Medical Journal of Australia, 11(21), 899-906.
For further information about Fritz Duras please click here.
The Inaugural Fritz Duras Lecture
Standing up for children's health and education: questioning the sedentary nature of classrooms by Professor Jo Salmon, Deakin University was on Tuesday 27 July.
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2008
From Dr Fritz Duras to the cult of the body and the 'obesity crisis': Observations on the evolution of Human Movement Studies as an academic field.
Professor Richard Tinning
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