What's On at UWA

Join Berndt Museum Associate Director, Professor Sandy Toussaint, Associate Registrar Kelly Rowe and Archivist Eve Chaloupka as they discuss the preparation of the works in the current exhibition Yirrkala Drawings at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery.

An astonishing collection of crayon drawings on brown paper was first created by Yolngu artists in late 1940s north-east Arnhem Land.

Now part of the Berndt Collection of Australian Aboriginal cultural materials, this talk brings together insights from a museum perspective about the artworks and their history, conservation and presentation.

FREE Event. Registration required.

Perth USAsia Centre CEO Gordon Flake will discuss the progress of and prospects for the MIKTA grouping of Mexico, Indonesia, Korea, Turkey, and Australia. The convening of the MIKTA Foreign Ministers on the sideline of the G20 in Brisbane this past November marked the fourth such meeting since the initiative was launched in 2013. Questions remain about the relationship between MIKTA and the G20, likely next steps for MIKTA beyond the three joint statements issued to date, and broader implications for the construct of middle-power diplomacy. Gordon will also review the second volume of the Perth USAsia Centre's "Smart Power" series, "MIKTA Narratives: Prosperity, Persuasion, and Projection."

L. Gordon Flake is the founding CEO of the Perth USAsia Centre, a position he assumed in January of 2014. He was previously Executive Director of the Maureen and Mike Mansfield Foundation, a Senior Fellow and Associate Director of the Program on Conflict Resolution at The Atlantic Council of the United States and prior to that Director for Research and Academic Affairs at the Korea Economic Institute of America. Mr Flake is editor of the companion volumes One Step Back? Reassessing and Ideal Security State for Northeast Asia 2025 (Mansfield Foundation, March 2011) and Toward an Ideal Security State for Northeast Asia 2025 (Mansfield Foundation, September 2010) co-editor with Park Roh-byug of the book New Political Realities in Seoul: Working toward a Common Approach to Strengthen U.S.-Korean Relations (Mansfield Foundation, March 2008) and co-editor with Scott Snyder of the book Paved with Good Intentions: the NGO Experience in North Korea (Praeger, 2003). He has authored numerous book chapters on policy issues in Asia and is a regular contributor to the press on Asia issues. He serves on the Board of the United States Committee of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (USCSCAP) as co-Vice Chair of the Board of the U.S. Committee for Human Rights in North Korea the Advisory Council of the Korea Economic Institute of America, and on the International Advisory Board of the David M. Kennedy Center at Brigham Young University. Mr Flake was born in Rehoboth, New Mexico. He received his BA degree in Korean with a minor in international relations from Brigham Young University in Provo, Utah. He completed his MA at the David M. Kennedy Center for International and Area Studies, also at B.Y.U. He speaks both fluent Korean and Laotian.

Ensemble in Residence: Ensemble Vagabond

Tickets Entry is free, no bookings required.

You're invited to attend a free public event with Mr Patrick Suckling, High Commissioner to India. 2014 was an important year for Australia - India relations with Prime Minister Tony Abbott's visit to India in September and Prime Minister Narendra Modi's historic address to Parliament during his official visit to Canberra in November. Come hear what 2015 holds for bilateral relations from Australia's High Commissioner to India. We look forward to seeing you there!

The current sea change in Aboriginal funding represented by the Indigenous Advancement Strategy cements the reorientation of national policies from self-determination toward "closing the gap." At the same time, Aboriginal media is in the midst of a golden era. As of February in Broome, for example, there are four free-to-air Indigenous channels, in addition to regular content on the ABC and SBS, providing viewers with an unprecedented diversity of representations from polished cinema to raw remote footage. My dissertation seeks to understand the changing stakes of broadcasting Aboriginality through an 18-month ethnography of two Indigenous media organizations located in the same building in Broome. In this talk, I ground discussions of the current paradoxical state of Aboriginal media by contrasting how these outlets have produced two radically different films through the same "Songlines on Screen" NITV/Screen Australia grant program.

Lena Dunham's series GIRLS is a cultural phenomenon. Dunham herself writes the majority of the show, has directed some of the episodes and plays the main character Hannah Horvath. She has stated that she wants to investigate a neo-liberal and postfeminist world in which young women are coming of age in the era of social networking, readily available medication for depression and financial crisis as well as the significance that: "this is the first generation who can expect to do less well than their parents did." The show examines, then, the detrimental effects of this climate and, as such, can be read as a critique of postfeminist thinking. Having previously only made two feature length films CREATIVE NON-FICTION (2009) and TINY FURNITURE (2010), Dunham was championed by filmmaker and producer Judd Apatow, famous for controversial films that investigate masculinity in crisis. Much has been made of Dunham's artistic and middle-class background as well as her link to Apatow, which enabled her to collaborate with a team of writers and show runners at HBO. She has fought back against this charge of elitism and privilege by stressing both the relative normality of her upbringing and decrying her need to answer such accusations as a woman working in a male-dominated industry. GIRLS premiered in May 2012 to mostly positive reviews and Dunham herself went on to be nominated for eight Emmy awards and two Golden Globes for her work on the series. She is only twenty-eight years old. Despite its popularity, the show has also received opprobrium from critics who have accused Dunham of white-washing, superficiality and myopia. This talk intends to take this criticism as a starting point in order to unravel some of the ways in which, on the contrary, the show can be viewed as a critique of the postfeminist culture it palpates. Denunciations of the show, then, will be taken as valid but from the perspective that Dunham reflects on and subverts the tenets of the postfeminist lifestyle. Moreover, the show's limited outlook draws attention to the myriad social groups and alternative ways of living that must be suppressed in order to strengthen the hold of neo-liberal values recuperated as feminist choice.

Anna Backman Rogers is a senior lecturer in the film studies department at Gothenburg University in Sweden. She is the author of "American Independent Cinema: Rites of Passage and the Crisis-Image" (Edinburgh University Press) and the co-editor with Laura Mulvey of "Feminisms" (Amsterdam University Press). She has written and published on the cinema of Sofia Coppola, Jim Jarmusch, Gus Van Sant, Miranda July, Nicolas Winding Refn and The Maysles Brothers.

If you're a Year 12 student (or a parent of a Year 12 student), this session will provide information about UWA's courses, admission requirements and how to achieve your study and career goals.

UWA Prospective Students Office staff will be on hand to answer your queries following the presentation.

The recent 'ideational turn' in political science has seen some scholars working with positivist and rational choice approaches taking the role of ideas more seriously in their analytical frameworks. While this openness to considering the role of ideas in political processes is an important advance, the empirical scope and theoretical sophistication of this ideational turn remains, to date, quite limited. Empirically, the emerging consensus within this field is that ideas matter only at times of institutional crisis. Theoretically, this field has not engaged with the substantive analysis of ideas themselves, rather than their instrumental usage. This paper seeks to contribute to this turn by bringing insights from the field of comparative ideology to the literature on the 'ideational turn'. Our main contention is that a central element that is missing from the ideational turn is an understanding of the relationship between ideas and political power and that careful study of the conceptual constellation of ideas can illuminate this relationship and show how ideas matter not just at times of institutional crisis. We illustrate this example with an analysis of discourses of affirmative action and group rights in Malaysia.

Pinata Percussion

Tickets Entry is free, no bookings required.

Curators, critics and academics have various approaches to framing exhibitions of Aboriginal art and material culture, their review and critique.

Join Dr Vanessa Russ, Associate Professor Darren Jorgenson of ALVA, The University of Western Australia and Glenn Iseger- Pilkington, Curator, Content Development New Museum Project, Western Australian Museum as they discuss the changing appreciation of protocols and strategies in relation to curating and writing about Aboriginal art and culture.

Stay on for refreshments and further informal discussion. FREE Event. RSVP required. http://lwag1503.eventbrite.com/?aff=uwacal

One consequence of globalization is the mixing of people of different cultures and races through migration, tourism, study abroad, and trade and business relations. One of the results of global population mobility is a rise in intermarriage, forming partnerships among people from different nationalities, races, ethnicities and cultures. In migrant nations such as Australia, there has been a steady increase in the population of mixed cultural/racial heritage. My thesis explores various ways in which migrant families of mixed backgrounds engage in the acculturation and socialisation processes, negotiate multiple cultures and develop identities to integrate into Australia. It investigates various aspects of family life, which emerged from the semi-structured interviews with all family members. These include negotiations in parenting practice in education, food and language practice at home, school life for children and children's perceptions of 'mixedness' (bi-cultural/tri-cultural/intercultural/interracial). In this presentation, I focus on food and education, examining them through the lens of the concept of "habitus" and "cultural capital" by Bourdieu, and the "acculturation theory" by Berry. The research findings demonstrate the complexity of the relationships between interactions within the family and the social/political environment in which they occur, suggesting such families reflect, in miniature, broader processes of cosmopolitanisation. As such, they offer evidence of the structuration processes that translate macro-level multiculturalism into 'multiculturalism at home'.

Under the leadership of Helpman award winner Andrew Foote, Fridays@Five showcases the UWA voice students. From the Vocal Consort, solo song in recitals, public workshops, mixed instrumental and voice ensembles, or public Masterclasses with Q&A, Fridays@Five are an ideal way to start your weekend.

Entry is free, no bookings required

School of Music is proud to present: Andrew Foote (baritone) and Caroline Badnall (piano) present Schumann's "Dichterliebe"

Tickets: Entry is free, no bookings required.

As the work of Schrag and Stark has demonstrated, the need for a specific ethics of research arose in response to the perception that the professional ethics of medical practice and practitioners might conflict or even be incompatible with the forms of biomedical research - including research conducted on 'normal patients' (healthily volunteers) and placebo controlled trials - that were being developed at the US National Institutes of Health circa 1950-1960. Whilst a system of 'expert review' of research proposals was implemented in response to these concerns it was not until the advent of bioethics and the Belmont Report that 'research ethics' came to be seen as an autonomous domain of 'the ethical.' Having come to be understood in this way its purview has been subsequently expanded to cover all 'human subjects research,' with social scientific research being the most prominent example. However, we might question whether the original motivation for the development of a specific research ethics is applicable to all domains and disciplines. In most cases it seems there is no potential conflict between a researchers responsibilities and their professional ethics as these are one and the same. This paper presents the case for rethinking research ethics as being the professional ethics of researchers. Paying particular attention to social scientific research and the idea(l) of confidentiality, I will argue that we are mistaken in thinking that the ethics of research as external to the practice of research. Instead they should be understood as part of the professional commitments of researchers and research communities. I will consider what it might mean to rethink 'social science research ethics' in terms of professional ethics and examine some consequences this view has for the ethical governance of research.

School of Music is proud to present: UWA Piano

Tickets Entry is free, no bookings required.

In this collaborative presentation, the Aboriginal Heritage Action Alliance's (AHAA) four cofounders share their differing perspectives on the role research has played in Aboriginal heritage campaigns in Western Australia, and present some findings on the evolving Aboriginal heritage legislative and administrative landscape. Some of these campaigns have drawn on conventional archaeological, anthropological, ethnographic and legal knowledge and research, but have also made use at times of less academically mainstream research methodologies and information sources to create a better understanding of the complex political, administrative and human landscape in which these campaigns have been situated. Some of these information gathering and investigative methodologies include the use of Freedom Of Information requests, Department of Aboriginal Affairs (DAA) Aboriginal Heritage Inquiry System database, professional and Aboriginal cultural networks, peer review of heritage reports and documents, parliamentary questions, investigative journalism, questionnaires and interviews, collation of media data, confidential human intelligence sources, Corruption and Crime Commission covert intelligence data, and others. The compilation of various sources provides an important advantage to public advocacy campaigns such as AHAA's current campaign against the WA State Government's Aboriginal Heritage Act Amendment Bill 2014, and recent highly controversial changes to the administration of WA's Aboriginal heritage by the Department of Aboriginal Affairs.

The University of Western Australia Berndt Museum holds a number of important collections including a significant collection of Australian Aboriginal cultural material. It includes donated and acquired paintings, artefacts, photographs, archives, and audio-visual records.

Join Berndt Museum Collections Manager Natalie Hewlett to learn more about the wonders of the Berndt Museum collection of Aboriginal material culture and strategies for its management.

FREE event. Registration required. Limited seating.

Cultural traditions in China go back 7,000 years. With that long history, and in such a large country, colours have accumulated a great richness of meanings. Meanings can be subtly different in different parts of the country and in different strata of society. And the meanings of colours in China can be quite different from those in the West. Traditions were all but destroyed during the Cultural Revolution as new layers of meaning were added. Today China faces the new challenges of preserving traditions in a market economy and dealing with the forces of globalisation. This paper will describe how the meanings of colours evolved in different eras of Chinese history and will analyse their use in different spaces, including architecture, graphic design and ceremonies.

Two pre-fieldwork seminars:

Charmaine Lim, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Sociology, UWA Imagining home and constructing identity: Transnationalism and diaspora amongst Filipino migrants in Australia and Singapore

This project aims to understand how men and women of Filipino background experience migration and how they construct belonging in a new country. More specifically, this project seeks to understand how these experiences influence forms of identity constructed between settings, how memory is used in the shaping of these identities, and how emotions are experienced across distances. This project will look at the constructions of belonging and identity from a care perspective, looking at how the "language of care" travels across families, markets, communities and nation-states. This project will present a clearer picture of how Filipinos situate themselves not only in relation to concepts of care inherited from their country of origin, but also on how Filipino migrants situate care-based orientations to accommodate or resist the nature of their overseas employment.

Ashleigh Louise Haw, PhD Candidate, Anthropology and Sociology, UWA

Public Discourse and the News Media: The Relationship between Mainstream Media Content and the Attitudes of Western Australians towards Asylum Seekers and Refugees

The proposed research will adopt a qualitative design using Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) to investigate the relationship between media and societal discourses on asylum seekers and refugees in Western Australia (WA). There is no Australian research to date that has directly focused on the relationship between media discourses and the views of the wider community. The overarching principle guiding the proposed study is that news media plays a key role in informing the Australian electorate on highly politicised topics such as asylum seekers and refugees and therefore, has considerable potential to influence, and be influenced by, societal perspectives on the issue. Examining this relationship is critical to addressing Australia's controversial treatment of asylum seekers and refugees as the dominant discourses within a society can significantly impact on the policy directions of the Australian government regarding humanitarian entrants. The proposed research will provide insight into how societal discourses are formed and reinforced by the information presented to the public about the asylum seeker issue, enabling for a more critical understanding of these discourses and how they can be addressed.

Find out which of our undergraduate mature-age entry pathways are most appropriate to you based on your individual study history, and learn more about what to expect from student life.

Our staff will also be on hand to answer any questions you have about studying at UWA.