Hannah Gadsby Full Graduation Address - 14 August 2021 | University of Tasmania

The University Council has elected to bestow this honour on Hannah Gadsby for her outstanding work of as an international ambassador for the lives of all LGBTIQ+ people world-wide, and her profound impact on contemporary popular culture, especially given her Tasmanian upbringing and the unique interweaving of Tasmania into her work and stories.

In 1998 Ms Hannah Gadsby studied at the University of Tasmania. She is now an internationally renowned comedian, actor, and ‘closet art scholar.’ Her ground-breaking stand-up show, Nanette, ran for 18 months through 2017 and 2018 to sold-out houses across Australia and in London, Edinburgh, New York and Los Angeles. It won the 2017 Best Comedy Show at the Edinburgh Fringe Festival, and, when it was launched on Netflix in June 2018, became the most widely discussed comedy special in years. In it, Gadsby deconstructs stand-up comedy from the inside out, while simultaneously shining an unflinching light upon homophobia, sexism, violence, and misogyny – all pertaining to her own lived experience.

Analyses and commentary on the show and on the impact Gadsby had and continues to have on informing national and international conversations on such matters have appeared in The New Yorker, The New York Times, The Atlantic, Slate, The New Republic, The Guardian and Rolling Stone, among others. Truly Hannah Gadsby can be described as an international ambassador for the lives of all LGBTIQ+ people world-wide. But of crucial importance for Gadsby’s work is the fact that she was born in Smithton and grew up in regional Tasmania. Never does she let her audience forget that she is Tasmanian while she single-handedly changes the art form that is comedy, to enact a profound impact on contemporary popular culture.

In 2014 ABC TV aired a three-part series called Hannah Gadsby’s Oz. Drawing on her studies in art history, in this series Gadsby travelled across Australia “on a mission to debunk the myths of the Australian identity as defined by Australian art.” She was in search of a more inclusive national identity, which proved elusive. Nonetheless, along the way Gadsby gently yet incisively revealed to the viewers, in her words, “a dream Oz; a forgery made up of myth and ignorance.”

In all her work, Hannah is intent on helping to humanise the human race, which means helping all of us to acknowledge painful truths while never giving up on the possibility of healing – and whether that healing comes from laughter or from anger is an open question.

By the authority vested in my office, I admit you to the degree of Doctor of Literature honoris causa.

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