PUBLIC LECTURE: Friends of UWA Albany Sandwich Seminar

The human species evolved and dispersed across the globe as part of small kin-based groups. Family networks and family histories continue to be a crucial way in which people everywhere understand their place in the world and their connections to others, past and present. Notions of relatedness, ancestry, genealogy and belonging are also highly politicized and frequently invoked in postcolonial, national and legal settings. Rapid advances in genetic technologies and unprecedented global movements of people, often against their will, makes it vital to understand the practical and ethical context in which DNA studies, genealogies and family histories are developed and used for a variety of ends. This talk will give an overview of a new summer unit, The Global Family, which will focus on these issues along with the practical skills needed to construct family trees and record biographical information.

Yann Toussaint is an anthropologist who has been teaching at UWA Albany since 2002 and has also worked as a researcher with the Yamatji Land and Sea Council, the University of Melbourne and La Trobe University. He has published on a variety of topics ranging from the politics of threatened species conservation, cultural attitudes towards various ecological restoration scenarios, and various aspects of medical anthropology. He has also recently had a collection of poetry, The Tercel Bird, published by Hallowell Press.