We present a summary of our spectroscopic redshift catalogue of 404 sources in the AKARI Deep Field South (ADF-S). We have used the AAOmega spectrograph to target mid-infrared and far-infrared sources selected primarily from AKARI observations in this field for which we were able to obtain optical counterparts. Our sources with identified redshifts include 316 with Hα detections at z  0:345 and 15 sources at z > 1 with MgII or Ly emission lines. About 13% of our z  0:345 sources are dominated by active galactic nuclei (AGN) emission, although many show emission from both star formation and AGNs. The median Balmer decrement is 5.9. Ultra-luminous infrared galaxies (ULIRGs) were found only in the higher-redshift sources. Optical and near infrared data will be available shortly, enabling calibration of the line luminosities and spectral energy distribution (SED) tting for these sources.

The AKARI Deep Field South (ADF-S) is a large extragalactic survey field that is covered by multiple instruments, from optical to far-IR and radio. I summarise recent results in this and related fields prompted by the release of the Herschel far-IR/submm images, including studies of cold dust in nearby galaxies, the identification of strongly lensed distant galaxies, and the use of colour selection to find candidate very high redshift sources. I conclude that the potential for significant new results from the ADF-S is very great. The addition of new wavelength bands in the future, eg. from Euclid, SKA, ALMA and elsewhere, will boost the importance of this field still further.

The preliminary data reduction, analysis and first results from the Herschel survey of the AKARI NEP field are presented. Herschel SPIRE observations of the NEP-Wide region and PACS observations of the NEP-Deep region have yielded galaxy catalogues of 4000 and 900 sources respectively down to ux density levels of approximately 15 mJy at 100-250 microns. Source counts produced from these catalogues reach cosmologically significant depths tracing the evolutionary upturn and turnover in the source counts. The source counts are in agreement with other large area surveys carried out with Herschel bridging the gap between the shallow and deep Herschel surveys.

The importance of multiwavelength astronomical surveys is discussed in the context of galaxy evolution. The AKARI Deep Field South (ADF-S) is a new, well placed survey field that is already the subject of studies at a wide range of wavelengths. A number of ADF-S observational programmes are discussed and the prospects for the ADF-S as a future resource for extragalactic astronomy is explored.