What's On at UWA

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.

Representatives from UWA's Exchange Partner institutions, returned students and faculty representatives will be there to tell you all about the fantastic opportunities they have available. Make sure your students come along to the Oak Lawn to check it out!

Publicised amends to the Aboriginal Heritage Act 1972 and in information supplied by the administrating department has stated that the legislative proof of an Aboriginal sacred site (ethnographic place) is that of "active religious use". It is no longer good enough for the place to have a mythological association, sung about in ceremony or enacted in dance. Like the consecrated churches of European culture, services must be held within and people gather at such loci.

In a recent statement by the Prime Minister (11/03/15) concerning people living in remote communities, that it is unreasonable to support them as it is "a lifestyle choice" and they are "not conducive to the kind of full participation in Australian society that everyone should have". Anthropology has been aware of the important connection of people and place, and the specific link in Aboriginal society of Dreaming lore and law. As a nation we have dried annihilation, then assimilation to self-determination and reconciliation, now it seems we are heading into renunciation.

Despite the history of dispossession and dislocation, there remains a vibrant Aboriginal cultural heritage legacy and living connection to sites through inheritance obligations and knowledge. Sacred sites are more than places devoted to religious use; rather they combine mythological stories, songs and beliefs, incorporating natural and anthropogenic features. This paper explores the associations of place with Traditional Ownership and custodial responsibilities, and the physical manifestations of hallowed land. In Australian Aboriginal culture it is not the corporeal presence of people that sanctify, but the knowledge and recital of practice.

Ageing is a significant political and social issue in South Korean public discourses, and current demographic projections suggest that without significant intervention South Korea will become an aged society within the next two decades. Unsurprisingly, then, in much of current research on ageing, the collective body of the elderly population is constructed either as a looming fiscal problem to be managed, or a medicalised object of care that is threatening to turn into a social problem of epic proportions unless urgently addressed. The ageing body in these discourses is therefore constructed as a macrolevel problem to be solved, and focuses on finding solutions to how policy makers should respond to and manage the perceived challenges that the ageing population is seen to pose to future governments. However, the embodied ageing body is by and large absent from these discourses. This presentation will seek to fill this lacuna in existing research by analysing microlevel processes of how the ageing bodies and technologies of the self (such as cosmetic surgery and more invasive beauty enhancements) are linked with macro perspectives on ageing and with broader ideas of emerging biosocial order in Korea in individual contexts.

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

Find out about the benefits of a UWA postgraduate course, how a postgraduate degree can help you to advance your career, gain a promotion or change your career path.

Prospective Student Advisers, faculty staff, academics and current postgraduate students will be on hand to answer your questions, talk you through how you can fit postgraduate studies into your life and discuss entry requirements, the application process and scholarships.