Harry Oldmeadow

Kenneth "Harry" Oldmeadow (born 1947) is an Australian academic, author, editor and educator whose works focus on religion, tradition, traditionalist writers and philosophy.

Life and career

Oldmeadow was born in Melbourne in 1947. His parents were Christian missionaries in India and he spent the first nine years of his childhood there and developed an early interest in the civilisations of the East.

Oldmeadow studied history, politics and literature at the Australian National University, graduating in 1968 with First Class Honours in History, and the University of Sydney, as well as working as a history tutor at La Trobe University in Melbourne. In 1971 a Commonwealth Overseas Research Scholarship allowed him to study at the University of Oxford, followed by extensive travel in Europe and North Africa. This study was awarded the University of Sydney Medal for excellence in research and was eventually published by the Sri Lanka Institute of Traditional Studies under the title Traditionalism: Religion in the Light of the Perennial Philosophy (Colombo, 2000). Under the auspices of this institute, Oldmeadow delivered the Inaugural Ananda Coomaraswamy Memorial Lecture in Colombo on "The Religious Tradition of the Australian Aborigines".

Oldmeadow was the Co-ordinator of Philosophy and Religious Studies at La Trobe University, Bendigo, where he also taught Literature and Cinema Studies. He has published extensively in such journals as Sacred Web (Vancouver), Sophia (Washington DC) and Asian Philosophy (Nottingham, UK). In late 2001, he was a key speaker at a large interfaith gathering in Sydney organised by the Australian Centre for Sufism; the theme of the meeting was the need for interreligious understanding in the wake of the 11 September 2001 attacks.