What's On at UWA

News media often portray Canadian Muslim youth as alienated from society and prone to radicalisation. This lecture focuses on a more complex reality of alienation and engagement, seen through the lens of perceptions of political participation. Using qualitative interview data from 30 Muslim youth in the Greater Toronto Area and London, Ontario, the findings demonstrate a similar pattern to other Canadian youth with respect to political participation, but surprisingly with very high participation rates in the voluntary sector.

Katherine Bullock is a Lecturer in the Department of Political Science, University of Toronto at Mississauga. She sits on the boards of The Tessellate Institute and the North American Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies. She is also President of Compass Books, dedicated to publishing top-quality books about Islam and Muslims in English. Her teaching focus is political Islam and her research focuses on Muslims in Canada, debates on the veil, and media representations of Islam and Muslims. Originally from Perth, she lives in Oakville, Canada with her husband and children. She embraced Islam in 1994.

In the past months there have been several claims about the declining figures in the public transport patronage. This seminar envisages analysing public transport trends over the last decade using Perth Transport Authority (PTA) datasets. Through this analysis, the aim is to determine the validity of the assertion that train patronage is declining. The results were published in the first “PATREC Perspective” in June 2014.

Firstly, the success story of bus, train and ferry patronage in metropolitan Perth is considered. The figures are compared to other Australian metropolitan regions and, in addition, are shown in the most dis-aggregated scale available (per individual train line). In addition, a correlation is made between population change and patronage expansion, showing that in the metropolitan region of Perth train patronage has been dependant on population growth.

Secondly, a particular analysis is devoted to the drop in train patronage in 2013, in general and on specific train lines. This drop was mainly caused by the shutdowns of parts of the network for a few days due to the sinking of the Fremantle line at Perth Central Station in both mid-July and early August 2013. Our main conclusion in this analysis is that passengers seem to have returned to the train after the disruption, contrary to several alarmist views that were raised in the public arena.

Some research orientations are offered at the end of the seminar as a way of engaging in further discussion. One of the suggestions is that the 2014 datasets need to be monitored carefully, so we may better understand whether the levels of the railway system patronage decrease, remain stable or if they accordingly perform to the previous years’ figures from 2008 to 2012.

Bio,

Valerià Paül is currently a Research Development Officer at the Planning and Transport Research Centre (PATREC) and Assistant Professor at The University of Western Australia.

Graduated in Geography (University of Barcelona, 2001), with Honours, University of Barcelona Special Award for Bachelor Studies (2002) and 1st National End of University Studies Award (2002), conferred by the Spanish Ministry of Education.

Did his PhD (2006), University of Barcelona Special Award for Doctoral Studies (2007). Doctoral thesis title: The Planning of Metropolitan Agricultural Spaces. Strategies, Management and Land-Use Conflicts in the Barcelona Region. He has benefited from research periods at six universities: Zululand (South Africa) in 2002; Western Australia (Australia) in 2003; Toulouse-2 (France) in 2005; Girona (Spain) in 2009; and Curtin (Australia) in 2010; Toulouse-2 (France) in 2012.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

Professor Knight has published over 110 papers and 4300+ citations and a H-index = 36, and is focused on his research interests of pulmonary pharmacology and pathology and how they impact on airway and lung function.

The Pop West research project will analyse a range of popular media–film, music, radio, television, storytelling, maps and novels–to explore how different political formations come to popularise and understand their own wests.

The Pop West Project began in late 2013 when researchers from The University of Western Australia and the US Studies Centre at the University of Sydney began discussing the role that popular culture plays in our understanding of political geography. In 2014, the newly-established Perth USAsia Centre provided seed-funding to propel this exciting new research inquiry.

On Thursday 24 and Friday 25 July, UWA will host a series of panel papers and lectures on the issue of how political geographies are mediated by the popular imagination. The symposium offers a special triangulation of Australian, Chinese and American wests, suggesting that the west is a migrating geographic and cultural concept.

The Pop West Symposium is open to the public. If you'd like to attend the opening lecture (Thursday 24 July) or the Symposium (Friday 25 July), please RSVP by emailing [email protected]

The Institute of Advanced Studies is pleased to be a co-sponsor of a series of events as part of the 'Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum, Kabul' exhibition, presented by the WA Museum.

This lecture by Professor William Maley, AM FASSA, Professor and Director of the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy, Australian National University is the first of this series.

Afghanistan has long been famous for its rich material culture, a product of its history as a crossroads of diverse civilisations. Its diverse cultural norms have also long been recognised by researchers, although perhaps less by those responsible for popular images of what Afghanistan is like. What is arguably less appreciated is that it is currently undergoing a phase of very rapid sociocultural change, casting doubt on some of the simple verities that have often underpinned such images.

In this lecture, Professor William Maley will explore how forces of globalisation are generating patterns of modernisation very different from the ideologically-driven modernisation promoted by Marxist activists after the April 1978 communist coup, and will argue that these are likely to be the most durable legacy of the years since the overthrow of the Taliban regime in 2001.

Dr William Maley has served as a Visiting Professor at the Russian Diplomatic Academy, and a Visiting Research Fellow in the Refugee Studies Programme at Oxford University. He is a member of the Australian Chapter of the Council for Security Cooperation in the Asia Pacific (CSCAP). A regular visitor to Afghanistan, he is author of Rescuing Afghanistan (London: Hurst & Co., 2006), and The Afghanistan Wars (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2002; 2009); co-authored Regime Change in Afghanistan: Foreign Intervention and the Politics of Legitimacy (Boulder: Westview Press, 1991), and Political Order in Post-Communist Afghanistan (Boulder: Lynne Rienner, 1992).

Attendees at this lecture will receive a discount voucher for admission to the exhibition.

COST: FREE, but RSVP essential to http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/afghanistan

Winthrop Professor Ted Snell, Director of the UWA Cultural Precinct, invites you to the Dr Harold Schenberg Art Centre, UWA for the opening of three new exhibitions - HERE&NOW14, Glitter: Pat Larter vs Lola Ryan and Wildflower Dreaming.

To attend, RSVP via email ([email protected]) or 6488 3707. Light refreshments will be served. For more information on the exhibitions, visit the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery website - www.lwgallery.uwa.edu.au

On 22 July, Indonesia's national election commission announced Joko Widodo as the winner of the 2014 presidential election. He defeated former army general Prabowo Subianto by a slim margin of about 8.4 million votes. The Perth USAsia Centre is proud to host an expert panel to discuss the result of the election and the outlook for politics and foreign policy in Southeast Asia's largest democracy.

Expert panellists include:

Winthrop Professor Krishna Sen, The University of Western Australia

Winthrop Professor Krishna Sen, an internationally recognised scholar of contemporary Indonesian and media studies commenced her appointment as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia in January 2009. She has held teaching and research positions at Murdoch and Curtin Universities, and was the Executive Director for Humanities and Creative Arts at the Australian Research Council in Canberra, just prior to taking up her position at UWA. Krishna is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities (FAHA), a Member of the Hawke Research Institute Advisory Board, and President and Chair of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH). She serves on the editorial boards of several national and international journals.

Associate Professor David Bourchier, The University of Western Australia

David Bourchier's main interest is in the politics of Indonesia and Southeast Asia. He has taught courses on Asian politics and Indonesian language at Flinders University, the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology, Murdoch University. Since 1998 he has been at UWA where he has taught in courses including Contemporary Indonesia , Identity and Politics in Asia and Democratisation in Asia as well as Intermediate, Advanced and Specialist level Indonesian.

David has written on many aspects of Indonesian society and politics, with publications on law, labour, ideology, human rights and the military. Recent publications include "Habibie's Interregnum: Reformasi, Elections, Regionalism and the Struggle for Power" in Chris Manning and Peter van Diermen (eds) Indonesia in Transition: Social Aspects of Reformasi and Crisis (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2000: 15-38); "Conservative Political Ideology In Indonesia: A Fourth Wave?" in Lloyd Grayson and Luke Shannon (eds) Indonesia Today: Challenges of History (Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, Singapore, 2001); and, together with Hamish McDonald, Desmond Ball, James Dunn, Gerry van Klinken, Douglas Kammen and Richard Tanter, Masters of Terror: Indonesia's Military and Violence in East Timor in 1999 (Canberra Papers on Strategy and Defence No.145, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University, Canberra, 2002). He has also recently completed a major textbook on Indonesian politics, with Vedi Hadiz, titled Indonesian Society and Politics: A Reader (Routledge-Curzon, London and New York, 2003).

Professor Vedi Hadiz, Murdoch University

Vedi Hadiz is a Professor of Asian Societies and Politics at Murdoch University and is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He received his PhD at Murdoch University in 1996 where he was a Research Fellow. In 2000, he became an Associate Professor in Sociology at the National University of Singapore. He is currently conducting research on State, Class and Islamic Populism.

His most recent book is Localising Power in Post-Authoritarian Indonesia: A Southeast Asia Perspective (Stanford University Press 2010). He is also the author of Workers and the State in New Order Indonesia (Routledge 1997), and (with Richard Robison) Reorganising Power in Indonesia: The Politics of Oligarchy in an Age of Markets (Routledge Curzon 2004), as well as editor or co-editor of several books, including Empire and Neoliberalism in Asia (Routledge 2006). My articles have appeared in journals such as Development and Change, Journal of Development Studies, Pacific Review, Pacific Affairs, Third World Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Asia, Democratization, Critical Asian Studies, Indonesia, New Political Economy, and Historical Materialism.

The panel will be moderated by Gordon Flake, CEO of the Perth USAsia Centre.

Please RSVP to [email protected]

A public lecture by Peter Jones, Senior Lecturer in the Department of Geography, University College London.

There are growing societal concerns about the health of our seas and increasing interest in the potential of marine protected areas (MPAs) to help address these concerns. However, whilst MPAs are firmly established in theory, they are much less firmly established in reality, as too few MPAs have been designated and many of these lack effectiveness in achieving their conservation objectives. Against this background, this presentation will explore the argument that the key to the resilience is diversity, both of species in ecosystems and incentives in governance systems. It will draw on the findings of 20 marine protected area (MPA) case studies from around the world, employing a novel governance analysis framework to address some key questions: How can top-down and bottom-up approaches to MPA governance be combined? What does this mean, in reality, in different contexts? How can we develop and implement governance approaches that are both effective in achieving conservation objectives and equitable in fairly sharing associated costs and benefits?

The many issues that these questions raise will be explored, as will options for addressing them.

Cost: Free, but RSVP essential to www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/jones

Dr. Meso is a Research Fellow at the Institut de Neurosciences de La Timone, a Laboratory of the CNRS in Marseille, France, which he joined in 2011. He is part of a small team of researchers who probe the mechanisms underlying visual function (specifically dynamics and probabilistic computations) empirically and theoretically in human and non-human primates. He combines an expertise in Psychophysics with eye movement recordings to ask questions about visual motion processing and links the mathematical and computational analysis of the data to the construction of theoretical models of neural processing. Dr. Meso initially studied Physics (BSc, Imperial College London) and Medical Physics (MSc, UCL) before shifting to Visual Neuroscience, combining psychophysics with modelling to study visual motion integration (PhD, Royal Holloway), where his key published contributions outlined the role of edges and other features in perceived speed estimates and transparency perception. Following his PhD, he joined a leading psychophysics lab at McGill University where he published work using psychophysical sensitivity to characterise unseen hierarchical cortical neural mechanisms mainly processing so called second order visual motion stimulation. He continues to study the role of cortical hierarchy in visual processing in his current role, with a largely multi-disciplinary approach in collaborations with Psychologists, Biologists, Engineers and Mathematicians in France and internationally. The interests and collaborations more recently look at the common attributes of dorsal and ventral stream hierarchical processing, thus extending beyond motion processing to symmetry and shape sensitivity.

Abstract:

Perceptual multi-stability occurs when a sensory input has multiple interpretations and the resolution of this ambiguity by the brain results in dynamic shifting between these alternatives. This phenomenon has largely been studied using bi-stable stimuli such as binocular rivalry, ambiguous figures and motion plaids, which alternate between two alternatives in the form ABABA. As such, switches have been proposed to be driven by neural noise and adaptation - served by mutual inhibition between the representations of the alternatives. In our work, we seek to further characterise the role of these driving mechanisms using a tri-stable barberpole motion stimulus in which the presence of three alternatives, ABC, means that at each perceptual transition, two choices are possible instead of only one, so we can study the changing probabilities of the different classes of transitions across parametric manipulations. In addition, the perceptual space of perceived direction in which this competition occurs is a continuous one which permits us to use smooth eye movements as a dynamic probe of instantaneous perceived direction. This probe in turn can be well modelled by the dynamical systems mathematical framework, which allows one to extract key signatures of the dynamics. We discuss how we use the patterns of participant responses and the fluctuations within the eye movements to dissociate the roles of noise and adaptation inferring with the help of modelling the relative contributions of each, which depend on the strength of the input.

A remarkable skill that is often taken for granted is the ability of the human cognitive system to distinguish between multiple simultaneously active speakers. In fact, in 1953 a challenge was proposed to the engineering community:

"How do we recognise what one person is saying when others are speaking at the same time? On what logical basis could one design a machine for carrying out such an operation?".

Blind source separation (BSS) is one such approach to solve this problem, where BSS is the recovery of original source signals from a given set of mixed observations with minimal a priori information on the environment. There are numerous methods to BSS, from those with a highly statistical basis to those motivated by the human auditory system.

In particular, the auditory phenomenon of masking, where components in the perceived speech mixtures with lower energy are suppressed whilst the higher energy components are emphasised, has been of interest to researchers of BSS. This phenomenon has been realised within the time-frequency masking approach to BSS, and this concept of masking for source separation has emerged into its own field of research.

This seminar explores the clustering-based approach for estimation of such separation masks. We present a comparison between different clustering algorithms and investigate their suitabilities in a range of simulated and real-world environments. Furthermore, the majority of BSS methods assume that the number of sources is known to the system. As such, we also consider the automatic detection of the number of sources by introducing some novel clustering-based approaches to the problem.

Short bio:

Ingrid graduated from UWA in 2009 with a Bachelor of Engineering and went on to study a PhD with the Signal and Information Processing Group of UWA. She competed a research internship at Nippon Telephone and Telegraph Corporation in Kyoto, where she worked under the supervision of Dr. Tomohiro Nakatani in the Signal Processing Research Group of the Media Information Laboratory. Ingrid submitted her PhD thesis recently in 2014, where the focus of her thesis was on the clustering-based approaches to blind source separation and source number estimation. She is currently at the Centre for research experience, and she is working in the field of directional analysis for ocean waves.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****

Experience the wonder of language and stories told through the drama of dance for this UWA WinterArts finale event.

Author and travel writer Stephen Scourfield will read excerpts of his writing, distilled from his travels in WA and abroad. These readings will then take the physical form through short, powerful performances created by Ochre Contemporary Dance Company in a fascinating exploration of the creative process as text is interpreted through dance.

The readings and performances will be interspersed between courses from a specially designed menu based on Australian bush cuisine. An experience not to be missed, this will be an evening of singular beauty.

Ticketed event, includes performance, three-course meal and selected wines. Please call The University Club of Western Australia on 6488 8770.

Public Workshop - an open workshop for 3-4 senior students. where the audience gets in on the feedback action!

Hit the ground running this semester with the Semester 2 winter Recreate® program. Most courses run for seven weeks and include yoga; pilates; paddling; tai chi; tennis; badminton; sailing; first aid accreditation and heaps more. Courses begin next week (Monday 4 August), so get your enrolment in to the UWA Recreation and Fitness Centre to secure your spot.

A public lecture by James W. Fourqurean, Director, Marine Education and Research Initiative at Florida International University and 2014 Institute of Advanced Studies Professor-at-Large.

Humans are limited in their ability to study the health of the coastal ocean. While robots, cameras and sensors allow the gathering of lots of data, the capabilities of these instruments are limited by their design. Manned exploration of the oceans allows scientists to make first-hand observations that can be much richer than the observations collected remotely. However, the time a scientist can spend underwater is severely limited by physiology. Specially-designed facilities that allow humans to acclimate to life at high pressures allow for essentially unlimited time for scientist to work under the ocean.

Aquarius is an underwater laboratory and home to scientists for missions up to 31 days long. Aquarius is made to withstand the pressure of ocean depths to 40 meters deep. She is located in a sand patch adjacent to deep coral reefs in the Florida Keys National Marine Sanctuary in the US, at a depth of 20 meters.

Aquarius provides a unique vantage point for scientists, an unparalleled training facility for divers and astronauts, and a compelling platform for education and outreach. This talk will provide a tour of Aquarius and her capabilities, and highlight the research advancements and exciting training missions conducted of the past few years.

Cost: Free, but RSVP essential via http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/fourqurean

The Seminar: As Chief Scientist of Western Australia I had the privilege of seeing many examples of terrific science, technology and engineering across the length and breadth of our great State. They represent major opportunities and challenges, spanning the resources sector, agriculture, education, IT, the environment, energy, health and more. I will use such examples to illustrate that we must communicate science well and will discuss how we can become more effective science communicators.

The Speaker: After graduating from Oxford and Edinburgh Universities, Lyn built an internationally renowned research team in Neuroscience that focused on recovery from brain damage, much of her investigations undertaken as Winthrop Professor at The University of Western Australia.

Lyn was honoured to be Chief Scientist of Western Australia from 2006 to 2013, advising the Western Australian Government on science, innovation and technology as well as acting as an Ambassador for science locally, nationally and internationally. She has extensive experience serving on advisory bodies, including the Federal Government’s Bionic Vision Australia and the State Government of Western Australia’s Technology and Industry Advisory Council.

In 2009 Lyn was awarded Officer of the Order of Australia and elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Technological Sciences and Engineering later that year. In 2011, she was inducted into the inaugural Western Australian Women’s Hall of Fame, followed by being elected a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and a Companion of Engineers Australia. Lyn has worked to promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics to the community, especially to young people, and in 2012 Lyn was thrilled to become the second recipient of the Governor’s Award for Giving, in recognition of her enthusiastic philanthropy.

Although the women’s driving movement in Saudi Arabia has gained tremendous visibility in recent years, it has failed to meet its basic objective: winning women the right to drive. While there is no question that the movement has encountered sustained resistance to its agenda, resistance alone does not determine failure. Instead, Dr. Foley argues that we should look at how the movement’s leaders understand the principles that guide politics in the Kingdom, since it is that understanding which shapes the strategies that they employ to bring about change.  He concludes by discussing alternative approaches that might work for Saudi women in the future, approaches based on the success of the Saudi artistic movement and the insights of one of the Kingdom’s foremost Western-educated women who is not a member of the movement: Thuraya al-Arrayed.

Dr. Foley is an American professor of Middle East and Islamic studies in Tennessee and is a Visiting Fellow at the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies, Australia National University. He speaks Arabic, has published widely, and has delivered public presentations to audiences around the world.  He has also held Fulbright fellowships in Syria, Turkey, and Malaysia. From April 2013 until February 2014, he lived and researched extensively in Saudi Arabia for a new book on the Kingdom entitled A Kingdom of Many Colors. His website is www.seanfoley.org.

The 2014 George Seddon Memorial Lecture by Anas Ghadouani, Professor of Environmental Engineering at The University of Western Australia.

Throughout the history of humanity there has always been a strong link between water and society. The most successful of our past civilisations are the ones that developed a good understanding of water management. Water and its impact on society will continue to be one of the key challenges for future generations struggling with droughts, floods and the availability of clean drinking water. In this lecture, Professor Ghadouani will outline some of the key challenges for water management in contemporary society. An articulated cross-disciplinary approach for achieving the best outcomes is especially required in a world where urban environments have been developing at a fast pace. Strategies to deal with overall change in economic and financial trends, ecological, environmental and climatic are essential for the future prosperity of our society.

This lecture will explore some of the social transformations needed to support water sensitive cities, including community attitudes and behavioural change, governance and economic assessment practices, management systems and technological innovations.

Cost: Free, but RSVP essential via http://www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/ghadouani

Contemporary Performance Masterclass

UWA students in masterclass with Lisa Moore and Martin Bresnick. This Masterclass is open to the public, all welcome. THIS IS A FREE EVENT

Described as “brilliant and searching...beautiful and impassioned...lustrous at the keyboard” by The New York Times, Lisa Moore’s performances combine music and theatre with expressive and emotional power - whether in the delivery of the simplest song, a solo recital or a fiendish chamber score. Pitchfork writes "She's the best kind of contemporary classical musician, one so fearsomely game that she inspires composers to offer her their most wildly unplayable ideas". Having won the silver medal for her solo piano performances in the 1981 Rockefeller-Carnegie Hall International American Music Competition Lisa Moore moved to New York in 1985. From 1992-2008 she was the founding pianist for the Bang On A Can All-Stars - the New York based electro-acoustic sextet and winner of Musical America's 2005 Ensemble of the Year Award.

The School of Population Health are running a ‘community conversation’ for people who have had, or care for someone, with heart disease, heart failure or atrial fibrillation. We are really interested in people coming along to tell us how they manage their heart disease and medicines.

Heart disease is still the number one killer of Australians. However there is strong evidence that certain medications are successful in preventing a second heart attack and improving survival. The problem is that we do not know if people continue to take their medicines for a long time after being discharged from hospital.

For practice to be evidence based, researchers need to understand what is happening with medications and heart disease. To do this it is important to hear about your experiences. We want to hear about any issues you may be experiencing as well as what you think needs to be researched in the area.

Our community conversation will take place on Wednesday 6 August 2014 between 12pm and 2.30pm in the Niche at the Queen Elizabeth Medical Centre in Nedlands. RSVP Essential.

Payment of out-of-pocket expenses and light lunch are provided. For more information or to RSVP for this event, please e-mail [email protected] or call 6488 8176 Mon – Wed or 9489 7742 Thur – Fri.

We reserve the right to make changes to the events and the right to determine the confirmed registration list.

Lakes are often referred to as “the test tubes of oceans”, but how much of the geochemical information is transferable between marine and freshwater systems? Should relationships such as those developed for the mineralization rates of marine organic carbon or marine rates of denitrification be applicable in freshwater? Can lakes help us quantify the processes in the Ocean?

This talk will describe sediment geochemistry in two very different large lakes: cold and well-oxygenated Lake Superior and tropical meromictic Lake Malawi. It will explore the geochemical cycling of carbon and nutrients and will compare the results to metrics developed previously in marine systems.

Bio,

Sergei Katsev is an Associate Professor at the University of Minnesota Duluth where he is a faculty member at the Large Lakes Observatory, the only institution dedicated to studies of large lakes worldwide.

He is a physicist and geochemist with interests in sediment and water-column geochemistry, lake hydrodynamics, and tropical limnology. His professional experiences include studies of marine coastal and deep sediments, the Great East African Lakes Kivu and Malawi, Indonesian Lake Matano, North American Lake Superior, and using lake systems as modern analogues for the ancient oceans of the Earth.

Professor Katsev is a 2014 UWA Gledden Visiting Fellow.

PS* This seminar is free and open to the public & no RSVP required.

****All Welcome****