It is with great sadness that Flinders University has learnt of the recent passing of former Flinders Professor Riaz Hassan AM.

With an academic career that extends over four decades, including his time with Flinders from 1988 until 2004, Professor Hassan was an icon within Australian sociology and the field of social sciences and his mentorship and teaching has touched the lives of students and colleagues around the world.

Throughout his career, Professor Hassan remained committed to the value of empirical social science to understand pressing problems on national and global levels.  His research covered a wide variety of areas including housing, suicide, euthanasia, organisational culture, urban life, development, demography, and Muslim societies.

Professor Hassan will also be remembered as a strong advocate for academic freedom and the pursuit of knowledge.

In honour of his contributions to his field, Professor Hassan was elected as Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1996, and was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2006.

Professor Sharyn Roach Anleu remembers her colleague as a wonderful, kind, generous, gentle, hardworking, collegial, perceptive, and incisive colleague, and a true scholar, mentor and friend.

“Small things evoke strong memories; and I loved that we shared lunch together from time to time and had deep and intellectual conversations.  He was professor of sociology in the formative days of my career, and I owe him much,” says Professor Anleu.

Our thoughts are with Professor Hassan’s family and friends at this time.