Personalities > Winton Higgins

Winton Higgins

Winton was born in Sydney in 1941. After surviving the Japanese midget submarine attack on Sydney Harbour in 1942, he grew up on a sheep and cattle station 55 km outside Walgett NSW, then in Tennant Creek in central Australia before returning to Sydney. He graduated in arts and law from Sydney University, and practised at the Bar for three years until 1969, when he moved to Europe. He gained post-graduate qualifications in social science at the universities of Stockholm and London (LSE).

After 3 years in Adelaide, Winton returned to Sydney in 1975  as a lecturer in Politics at Macquarie University until 2000. He has been an associate in international studies at UTS, while also engaging in creative writing. He won the NSW Writers’ Centre’s short story competition in 2002.

Winton has a wide range of interests but three dominate: social-democratic theory and practice, especially under the aegis of the Swedish experience 1928–76; genocide studies, with special reference to the Holocaust; and standardisation. He has been a board member of the Australian Institute of Holocaust and Genocide Studies since its inception in 2000 until 2018, and has taught at the Aquinas Academy on ethical, social and political topics.

Since 1987 Winton has also been a Buddhist practitioner, and a teacher of insight meditation since 1995. As a member of the Tuwhiri editorial board, he has contributed to the development of secular Buddhism internationally and is a senior teacher for Sydney Insight Meditators.

He now lives in Pyrmont and was a founding member of the Pyrmont History Group when it was established in 2011. His 2016 deeply researched historical novel, Rule of Law, captured the drama and the ambitions of the US and its allies as they attempted to establish an international rule of law amid the ruins of WW2. The first Nuremberg trial of 1945-6 uncovered the atrocities of the Third Reich for a world-wide audience for the first time. Concepts such as crimes against humanity, a world court, an international criminal justice system were born and nurtured in Nuremberg.

Further Reading

Journey into Darkness,  Winton Higgins, 2003

Engine of Change, Standards Australia since 1922, 2005

Politics Against Pessimism, Winton Higgins, 2013

Rule of Law, Winton Higgins, 2016

The Magnitude of Genocide, Colin Tatz and Winton Higgins, 2016

After Buddhism: A Workbook, Winton Higgins, 2018

Love, Death, Chariot of Fire, Winton Higgins,  2020

Revamp: Writings on Secular Buddhism, Winton Higgins, 2021

Men of Pyrmont, compiled by Donald Denoon and Barbara Thompson, 2024

Ambivalence: glimpses of an Australian life, Winton Higgins, 2026