Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies

The Coral Bell School of Asia Pacific Affairs (formerly the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies) was founded in 1946 as part of the Institute of Advanced Studies at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. In 2015 it was renamed in honour of Coral Bell, a leading Australian scholar of international politics.

First known as the Research School for Pacific Studies (RSPacS), the research school began as one of the foundation schools of the Institute of Advanced Studies at ANU. In the late 1940s Raymond Firth, an eminent international scholar from the London School of Economics, was asked to join a group of other academics to advise on the creation of the first research schools within the ANU. Other leading scholars in the group included Mark Oliphant (physical sciences), Keith Hancock (social sciences), and Nobel prize-winner Howard Florey (medical sciences). Firth was responsible for advising on regional studies, especially Pacific studies. Following the recommendations of this group, a number of research schools were established at the ANU to serve as national centres of study in Australia in the post-war period.

During the next several decades the RSPacS built up a strong international reputation for work on Pacific studies (including Papua New Guinea) and Southeast Asia. The first Director and first professor of economics in the RSPacS was Sir John Crawford. Crawford's interests in development in Asia set a direction for economics in the research school. He was also widely recognised as an excellent academic administrator who served as both Vice-Chancellor, and later Chancellor, of the ANU. The work of the research school during this period was strongly interdisciplinary. For example, as well as research in economics, international relations, human geography and anthropology in the Asia-Pacific region, another major development of the school was the creation of the Pacific Linguistics publishing unit by Professor Stephen Wurm in the early 1960s. Since the establishment of the unit, Pacific Linguistics has published several hundred volumes of dictionaries, grammars, and other linguistic studies on the Asia-Pacific region, particularly Oceania and Southeast Asia.

In the earlier form of the research school, staff of the RSPacS were frequently involved in public discussion about Pacific and Asian affairs Also the genesis of the RSPAS can be seen in comments by Bruce in 1952 Due to the earlier focus on Pacific studies, the RSPacS supported research locations with housing for visiting researchers; the Suva Flats in Fiji were one such location