The JASA calendar has events nearly every month, with meetings in Sydney and other capitals and regional areas, an annual Conference, and a Christmas lunch. There are also two online events – an international lecture and a study morning.
calendar of events
Please note that the below calendar does not include all regional meetings. Full details are provided for Sydney meetings; for some regions dates are included but not details; and others are not on the calendar. If you are interested in a particular region, you can find contact details on the regional meetings page of this site.
Monthly Weekly Daily List
JASA Trivia Event
Click here for booking form
Join us for an afternoon of Jane Austen trivia. You can form a team in advance, or join with others on the day. A glass of prosecco and cheese platters provided. Bookings are open now, please use the form here.
ONLINE International lecture
Being Anne Elliot
Susannah Fullerton interviews actor Amanda Root

Sydney meeting
Why Jane Austen abandoned The Watsons, but then adapted it for Pride and Prejudice
Dr Joanne Wilkes
The Watsons, Austen’s incomplete novel from about 1804, predates her published fiction by several years. This talk discusses the possible reasons why Austen did not finish this text, suggesting that she reworked salient elements of The Watsons into Pride and Prejudice, but in a way that transformed the bleak and arguably intractable aspects of the […]
Sydney meeting
Mr Darcy’s Niece
Penny Ashton
Join award-winning – globetrotting Kiwi and comedy performer, Penny Ashton, as she takes JASA members through the trials and tribulations of bringing Austen’s works to stages around the world. The brain behind three separate Austen inspired theatrical shows (Promise and Promiscuity, Austen Found and Sense & Sensibility), Ashton is also the 5th great-niece of Austen’s […]
Sydney meeting
Annotation and Inscription: Jane Austen, Unmarried Women, and the Austen-Knight Family Library
Francesca Kavanagh
Francesca Kavanagh is a Lecturer in English at La Trobe University and a PhD candidate in the Department of English and Theatre Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on eighteenth- and nineteenth-century women’s reading and writing practices. Her other research interests include the Gothic, and cultures of celebrity and fandom from […]
Sydney meeting
‘You will be an old maid! and that’s so dreadful!’: The single woman in Austen’s era
Dr Joanna Penglase
Marriage, as Charlotte Lucas knows, is ‘the only honourable provision for well-educated young women of small fortune, and…must be their pleasantest preservative from want’. But what if a woman didn’t marry, thus becoming – like Jane Austen herself – an ‘old maid’? This little-discussed topic – a significant undercurrent in Austen’s work – is given […]
Weekend conference
250 Glorious Years: Jane Austen’s Legacy
Our weekend conference, celebrating 250 years since the birth of Jane Austen, will be held in Canberra. Venue and full details to be advised.
JASA Christmas Lunch 2025
Details and cost to be advised.
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