About

Management Institute for Contributory Economy (Research and Community Education via The Philosophy Café)

Dr Neville Buch works with Drs Neil Peach and Drs Michael Macklin in the emerging Management Institute for Contributory Economy (MICE), Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Dr Neville Buch works with Dr Neil Peach on The Philosophy Café. The Philosophy Café is an informal, non-technical group that encourages philosophical debate and provides a forum for the active exchange of ideas within the loose and broad traditions of philosophy. The achievements are comprehensive education and the principles and philosophy of the Management Institute for Contributory Economy. This is a process of generally unheard-of ideas and scholars bouncing ideas off on the thinking from past and famous scholars, assisted through artificial intelligence. Broad themes include the “post-post-postmodernist” (the spiral historiographical direction) philosophy and its sources in tradition, e.g. Existentialism, Lebensphilosophie, Phenomenology, Compatibilism, etc.

 

Sole Trade Business (Research and Community Education via Classics Book Club)

Dr Buch was a Q ANZAC Fellow at the State Library of Queensland (2015-2016). He has recently published on the influence of Charles Strong in Queensland conservative, radical and liberal progressivism. Dr Buch is a certified member of the Professional Historians Associations (Queensland) Incorporated and had previous responsibilities as the PHA (Qld) e-bulletin editor. He is well-published and recognised for his contribution in the histories of both Catholic secondary and state primary education in Queensland, as well as histories in the cultural and religious shaping of Protestant and Catholic organisations.   He is a thematic group Convenor, in Sociology of Education, for The Australian Sociological Association (TASA). Dr Buch was a registered director and the Communities Program Manager for Humanist Australia (HA). Dr Buch is a local historian and Managing Director of the Brisbane Southside History Network and the Mapping Brisbane History Project, assisting voluntary local history societies on the Brisbane to work together to gain a regional history perspective. Since the end of 2011 Dr Buch has been a member of the Professional Historians Association (Queensland) Management Committee and the PHAQ e-bulletin editor. In his role in the Professional Historians Association (Queensland), he produced a 20-point Strategic Plan document. The work involved research, consultation, and time management planning over several months. The achievement in all of this work are large volume of academic and ‘grey’ literature informative to a substantive international audience.  

 

Causal Appointments to Queensland Schools (Secondary and Middle School Teaching)

Dr Buch had three semester contracts teaching the middle school curriculum at Stretton and Whites Hill State College, and a semester contract teaching history and social science at Runcorn State High School. As a former secondary school teacher, he had to interpret a school work program into individual lesson plans, mostly done within the day or with only a day’s notice. Dr Buch had published two school histories, one a 125-year-old state primary school, and the other, a 40-year-old Catholic secondary college, and another unpublished manuscript for Seton College, Brisbane. The achievements in secondary education for myself and my students has been in training, knowledge and skill-sets related to student learning.

 

Queensland University of Technology, Law Faculty (Research and Teaching via Learning and Teaching Quality Assurance)

Dr Buch was Senior Administration Officer (Teaching and Learning Quality) in the Faculty of Law at the Queensland University of Technology. He performed duties in eight different roles where the achievements have been the preparing and distributing the agendas, minutes, and post-meeting action items, and perform secretarial duties just prior and during the Committee meetings; supporting, through administration, the faculty QA system in annual reporting on course development; supporting processes, through administration, for unit approvals in the Academic Database, and through the Faculty Teaching and Learning Committee; monitoring of budgets for the Faculty Teaching & Learning Grants Scheme, the Faculty Teaching and Learning Conference Funding, and grants and fellowships to faculty award-holders provided from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council; evaluating management of, and reporting on, the faculty’s data within a series of annual cycles of QUT and external survey publications; evaluating administration of faculty sections within the QUT databases; production in an assortment of tasks which are major or minor projects involving the communication of faculty teaching and learning matters, including i) working as a part of the faculty teaching & learning team or as a member of the faculty office; and ii) taking on small projects for the Assistant Dean Teaching and Learning, such as preparing a PowerPoint presentation. These are all achievements.

 

The University of Melbourne, Office of Vice Chancellor (Research: Higher Education Policy)

Dr Buch worked as a Research Officer for three Vice-Chancellors at the University of Melbourne (Gilbert, Lee Dow, and Davis), producing many research reports on educational issues.  Most of these report involved complex reviews of the academic and government literature.  The major achievements include the Briefing Paper on Backing Australia’s Ability; and The 1999 academic paper “Defining a Public University in the Entrepreneurial Age”. He worked directly with three Vice-Chancellors at the University of Melbourne (Gilbert, Lee Dow, and Davis) as the Research Officer during the major institutional strategic changes of the “Melbourne Agenda’ and ‘Growing Esteem’. When Dr Buch left the University of Melbourne to return the family back to Brisbane in 2008, the Vice-Chancellor said, “You made a most worthwhile contribution – not just to the specific tasks undertaken, but in helping think through some of the big issues confronting this and every other university. I hope you’ve seen some of your ideas conveyed in speeches and publications over the past three years.”

 

Griffith University, Office of Vice Chancellor (Executive Support)

Dr Buch began his career as a Research Assistant for the Vice-Chancellor, Professor Roy Webb. One of the first projects he successfully completed was an institutional report reviewing various issues in each of the schools, based on a program of interviews with unit heads. In January 1998, as Acting Manager in the Office of the Vice-Chancellor, Griffith University, Dr Buch had proven his ability to make good judgements as well as demonstrating professionalism and personal initiative. An important achievement is, on one occasion, Dr Buch prevented the Vice-Chancellor completely missing an inaugural professorial lecture.

 

Causal Appointments to Queensland Schools (Secondary Teaching)

Dr Buch worked as a teacher at the Brisbane Girls Grammar School and Toogoolawah State High School for short period of time. As a secondary school teacher, he was daily active in delegating, supervising, and motivating students. The achievement is that he was, for many years, a qualified secondary teacher.

 

University of Queensland (Academic Training)

Dr Buch worked as tutor and post-doctoral scholar in the Department of History at the University of Queensland. This involved five semesters at the University of Queensland in first year units, an Australian social history subject, an Australian contemporary intellectual history subject, and an early European history subject. When Dr Buch completed his Ph.D. in the Department of History at the University of Queensland in 1995, he completed post-doctorate work, which resulted in the publication of three international historical essays. A major achievement is the excelling demonstration in the capacity to travel and network between international schools and archives. In 1991-1992 he had organized a two-month research tour of the United States, which criss-cross the country from West to East Coast, down to the South, and back again to the West Coast via Texas. The purpose was to gather research material for his Ph.D. and involved undertaking interviews with senior academics and university managers, as well as archival research. During this tour he also had the pleasure of delivering a lecture on Queensland history to undergraduate students at Sam Houston State University, and discussing with them the nature of his research. In February 2023 Dr Buch returned to the United State for further research, organized as one-month research tour of the West to East Coast, and across to the Mid-West, and back again via Colorado.

 

Overall

Dr Buch is an expert in cognition histories and cognition sociology; on histories and historiography of big belief and doubt, educational theories and practice, within the scope of Queensland intellectual history and policy. He has worked as higher education policy researcher for the Vice-Chancellor, Professors Roy Webb, Glyn Davis, Kwong Lee Dow, and Alan Gilbert, along with work for Chancellors, Mr Ian Renard, and Sir Edward Woodward (1998-2008). As a scholar with over 30 years’ experience writing on Christianity as religion and society, from both Christian and Post-Christian perspectives, he is Queensland’s foremost historian on belief and doubt. His recorded achievements are in published academic articles and online essays for the journals of the Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society, Australian Association for the Study of Religion, Australian Policy and History Network, Brisbane Catholic Historical Society, and Brisbane History Group Inc. He has participated in many conferences, providing well-received papers for the Australian Historical Association, Australian and New Zealand History of Education Society, International Society of Intellectual History, and International Standing Conference for the History of Education, and for other scholarly organisations.