Helen Hill

With a long history of involvement in radical student and development causes within Australia and internationally, Dr. Helen Hill was involved with WUS Australia in its later period. She became involved with Timor Leste, with a Master’s thesis on the independence movement, Fretilin, and with the Pacific through her thesis on Nonformal Education and Development in three countries of the Pacific at the ANU Centre for Continuing Education. As a result of supporting Jose Ramos Horta’s Diplomatic Front at the UN for Timorese Self-determination she was banned from going to Timor for 24 years. She spent two years in Fiji at the Commonwealth Youth Program updating the Diploma Course on Youth and Development at the South Pacific Centre. Much of this became the basis for a new course she introduced at Victoria University a new university in Melbourne. During the UN transitional period to independence in Timor-Leste she was able to return there and assisted Timorese activists to establish a Department of Community Development at the National University. After retirement from Victoria University, she was invited by one of her Timorese former students (by then Minister of Education) to work in the Ministry and has been in Timor-Leste since 2014.