Robert Phiddian grew up in Victoria, was educated mostly in Melbourne, and has taught English Literature at Flinders University in Adelaide since 1991. He has written a book on Jonathan Swift (Swift's Parody, Cambridge UP, 1995), scholarly articles on eighteenth-century literature and the theory of parody, and Australian political cartoons. With Haydon Manning he has studied the cartoons of each federal election since 1996. He has been on the advisory committee of the Adelaide Festival of Ideas since its inception in 1999.
