What's On at UWA

A public lecture by Veronique Florec, Research Associate, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, The University of Western Australia.

Plastic pollution in the ocean has become one of the most challenging environmental issues of our time. In 30 years, there will be more plastic in the ocean than fish! Thousands of marine animals and seabirds are being killed every year, either due to entanglement or from ingestion of plastic waste. To tackle a problem of this magnitude, we require a global solution. But in some circles where some of the most important decisions that affect our planet are made, women are either absent or only present in small numbers. Globally, women hold less than 15% of leadership positions in STEMM (Science, Technology, Engineering, Mathematics and Medicine) despite research showing that gender-balanced teams are more effective.

Homeward Bound wants to change this and, over a period of 10 years, it’s planning to build a global network of 1,000 women in STEMM and equipping them with leadership skills so that they can heighten their influence in policy circles. A global initiative, Homeward Bound is an intensive 12-month leadership program for women in STEMM that culminates in an expedition to Antarctica. The program aims to enhance the impact of women in science in order to influence policy and decision making as it shapes the future of our planet.

As part of the program, we conducted research on plastic pollution in the ocean and are now looking to bring about change in this area. So what happens when you put 80 women — all passionate about science, gender equity and the state of our planet — on board a ship for 22 days in Antarctica? In a visually beautiful presentation, Veronique will share her experience of participating in the program, the lessons learned throughout the year, her research on plastic pollution in the ocean, and the amazing visit to the white continent.

About this Series: All at Sea - Restoration and Recovery.

Our Oceans and coasts provide us with food, energy, livelihoods, cultural and recreational opportunities, yet they are coming under increasing pressure. This UWA Institute of Advanced Studies - Oceans Institute Lecture Series explores the wonders of our seas, the challenges they face and how research at UWA- in a diverse range of fields including marine science, ocean engineering, health, humanities and social sciences- are contributing to sustainability.

A public lecture by Elizabeth Reid, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UWA.

Between 1494 and 1559 two major European powers, the French Valois and the Austro-Spanish Habsburg fought a series of wars in a competitive bid to expand their territory into the Italian Peninsula. This period was characterised by ever-shifting allegiances, conspiracies, battles, and peace treaties. Major military victories or new alliances forged, and sealed by marriage, often occasioned a kind of ‘victory-lap’ whereby the triumphant ruler or his bride-prize entered allied territory and were treated to carefully orchestrated festivities. Artists, composers, poets and performers utilised gendered allegories to honour the entering party and to communicate the rich cultural identity of the city itself. Entries were just one level at which the politics of peace played on culturally engrained ideas of masculine strength juxtaposed with feminine vulnerability. This talk will contextualise and discuss key entries in light of this gendered framework. It is supported by a new ARC research project that aims to reconsider the events and cultural output of the Italian Wars through the lens of gender.

This talk is part of the lecture series - Peace and War: Representations in European Art and Literature. The three lectures in this series, offered by UWA academics associated with the UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, focus on representations of war and peace in European art and literature. Collectively, they will examine the contexts and reception of cultural and political practices of war and peace in the medieval and early modern era from the perspectives of emotions history, medievalism, and gender studies. In this way, the series stands to challenge conventional interpretations of European life in wartime from the sixteenth- to the nineteenth century.

A public lecture by Frans Swanepoel, Research Professor, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Currently there are 1.3 billion people in Africa; more than five times the population in 1950. By 2050, Africa’s population will double to 2.6 billion, eventually reaching 4.2 billion by the end of the century – just about the entire world population in 1977. Africa is also the world’s most food insecure continent, with relatively low levels of agricultural productivity, low rural incomes, high rates of malnutrition, and a significantly worsening food trade balance. Ironically Africa has sufficient land, water and human resources to be a substantial contributor to the world’s food balance sheet, and to contribute to the growing global demand for both food staples and higher value added food, as well as to energy markets. Agriculture and the food sector also present significant opportunity for employment and wealth creation. This critical role of agriculture in fostering sustained competitiveness and profitability in the sector, in the face of a world economy that is rapidly transformed into a knowledge and network economy is acknowledged both within the scientific community and in Governments at large. Without question, agriculture and capacity strengthening are now back on the development agenda as Africa refocuses towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). African agriculture has a number of major strengths, but also faces a significant number of challenges, a set of unique opportunities. Africa has now entered a development stage where some analysts are taking a more positive outlook and narrative as opposed to the traditional ‘Afro-pessimism’ of the last five decades. A new school of thought is emerging, one that recognises that Africa is in a better position to help itself be food secure moving forward – agriculture has started growing, albeit slowly but sustainably over the last decade. However, a number of interesting trends distinguish the economic growth of Africa from other continents. The dominant growth detected here is by small intermediary groups who are responding to rapid urbanisation and the growing ‘middle-class’. Strategies to support growth in sustainable agriculture should thus be responsive to these trends in order to vastly improve food security on the African continent.

A public lecture by Hilary Carey, Professor of Imperial & Religious History, University of Bristol; Conjoint Professor of History, University of Newcastle, NSW and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation (Acts 17:26. KJV).

Until challenged by Darwinian evolution, Christians believed on excellent biblical authority that ‘all nations of men’ were God’s creation and there could be no fundamental division between them. From this it followed that all the extraordinary cultural diversity exhibited by the peoples of the world disguised an essential unity: they were ‘one blood’. This talk will examine the work of the Scottish schoolteacher Dr John Fraser (1834-1904) who sought to prove that the languages of the Australian Aborigines demonstrated that they were descended from the Dravidian peoples of southern India and were, ultimately, Babylonian in origin. Fraser’s views were published as part of his 1892 edition of the works of the missionary Lancelot Threlkeld (1877-1859) which was prepared as part of the New South Wales contribution to the World’s Columbian exhibition in Chicago in 1893. Fraser was both an able linguist and a skilled editor but those who have encountered the important work of Lancelot Threlkeld and his collaborator Biraban through his edition have found his biblical arguments distracting, if not bizarre.

This lecture will consider John Fraser as a representative of a Calvinist rear guard who sought to use the science of linguistics to defend the literal and scientific value of biblical narratives. Far from being a marginal figure, Fraser was at the centre of an extensive network of missionary linguists seeking to harmonise knowledge of Pacific and Aboriginal languages with scriptural deep history.

A public lecture by Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH), University of Leeds.

It took Griselda Pollock sixteen years to complete the monograph on an artist whose single monumental art work - Life? or Theatre? - comprising 784 paintings and 320 transparent overlays, using image, text and music was created in one year in 1941-42, before being placed in hiding in 1943. First exhibited in 1961, this work is still finding its place in the histories of modern art. Where can we situate a single work by an artist exiled from her own country and living under the threat of effacement from life itself? Why did she undertake this project? How has it been interpreted in ways that further exile it from being considered art historically? What resources are needed to makes its project and its work legible to us now?

Professor Pollock first encountered this work in 1994. Some elements of it were exhibited in Perth in 1997 as part of the benchmark feminist exhibition Inside the Visible curated by Catherine de Zegher. Why has writing this book taken so long? What challenges had to be met theoretically and art historically before she could resolve, in however preliminary a fashion, the issues posed by a single work created in one year in the darkest of European fascism by an artist who was murdered by her own government at the age of twenty-six and who created an unprecedented artwork as grand in scope and as deep in psychological penentration as a Thomas Mann novel, as edgy and sardonic as a Brechtian operatta, and as affecting and sonorous as an opera by Gluck?

This lecture will explore the challenges posed to art hstory by the artworking of Charlotte Salomon and reflect on the ethics of writing on this work and on journey to its completion.

A public panel presented by the Limina 13th Annual Conference and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies.

There are 65.6 million people in the world displaced by war, poverty, and environmental disaster, who have been forced to give up their homes in search of safety and hope for themselves and their families (UNHCR Figures 2016). Of these, 27,626 were accepted as refugees in Australia in 2016, to begin their new life in rural and urban communities. How do you foster a sense of home in another country when you may be faced with trauma, cultural barriers, bureaucratic insecurity, and a political discourse of distrust?

In this panel as part of the 2018 Limina Conference – Home: Belonging and Displacement, we invite you to hear from three speakers who will share their insight, knowledge, and ideas about what it means to work for and create a new home in Australia. The panel will draw from their perspectives as community leaders, researchers, and individuals with lived experiences as refugees.

Facilitator: Fadzi Whande is the Inclusion and Diversity Adviser for The University of Western Australia. She is a Global Diversity and Inclusion Strategist and award winning Social Justice Advocate.

Panellists:

Sara Shengeb recently graduated from UWA with Bachelor of Science. She works part time for the Youth Affairs Council of Western Australia (YACWA). Currently she serves as a Ministerial Advisor to the Hon. Paul Papalia (Minister for Citizenship and Multicultural Interests). At YACWA she coordinates two major programmes, Catalyst Youth Summit and ShoutOut. Sara continues to work for young people of WA which led her to be recognized as a finalist for the Australian Young People’s Human Right Medal in 2016, WA Young Achiever Award 2018 finalist and she was named Young Citizen of the year 2017 by her local government.

Bella Ndayikeze grew up in a refugee camp in Tanzania, with her mother working for UNHCR and father working as a teacher. She lived in the refugee camp for seven years before her family was granted a humanitarian visa to Australia. They arrived in 2005. It was a difficult transition, compounded when her family was torn apart by domestic violence and her mother was left to raise five children. In 2009 Bella began with the Edmund Rice Centre’s Youth sports program and was invited to be a youth leader in 2010. In 2011 she became the first black African female AFL coach in Australia, as the assistant coach of the Edmund Rice Lions, and also began a traineeship at the WA Football Commission in 2012. In 2014 she became co-ordinator of the Edmund Rice Lions team and debuted as an AFL player with West Perth Football Club. In that same year she also coordinated the Edmund Rice Youth leadership and Arts Program. In 2016 she launched her business Ignite Creative Media, joined the Global Shapers team in Perth and coached at the Female AFL Diversity Championships. In 2017 she was employed by the Federal Member for Cowan and became a member of the first ever Youth Ministerial Advisory Council.

Associate Professor Caroline Fleay teaches human rights and conducts research into the experiences of people seeking asylum in Australia at the Centre for Human Rights Education. She has been a regular visitor to some of WA’s sites of immigration detention and written extensively about the impacts on people seeking asylum of indefinite detention and being released into the community with minimal supports. Caroline has also been involved with a range of community groups and human rights campaigns over the past three decades. In 2011 she was awarded the Amnesty International Australia (WA) June Fassina Award for her contributions to human rights activism, and in 2017 she was a finalist for the United Nations Association of Australia Award for the Promotion of Human Rights. Caroline is currently a Board Member of the Refugee Council of Australia and continues to liaise with WA, national and regional refugee support organisations and activists to campaign on the rights of people seeking asylum.

The 2018 George Seddon Memorial Lecture by David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.

Over less than two human lifetimes, discoveries in physics transformed the world and our sense of place in the universe. We harnessed electromagnetic waves, thereby shrinking our planet to a village; an infinitesimal speck in a vast and inflating universe. After a long struggle, we learnt how to detect waves of space, gravitational waves, which allow us to hear the universe, thereby changing our sense of the universe once again. Each wave of discovery re-emphasises our transient and improbable existence in an equally transient universe. Our treasure, which is our life and our planet, grows in value as each successive discovery uncovers more and more threads on which our existence depends.

Gravitational science has linked Western Australia to the world and to the whole universe. Einstein’s revolutionary theory of gravity was created while Western Australians were fighting in the first world war. In 1920 while Western Australia was still mourning those killed and wounded, Professor Alexander Ross, Foundation Professor of Physics at UWA campaigned for an international expedition to test Einstein’s extraordinary new theory during an eclipse of the Sun, best seen at Wallal Downs in the Kimberley. Two years later under instructions from Prime Minister Billy Hughes, a Trans Australian steam train carried a team of US astronomers and huge telescopes through Kalgoorlie and Guildford, en route to Wallal Downs. They provided the first indisputable proof of Einstein’s prediction that space is warped by matter.

On 15th September 2015, a vast explosion of gravitational waves was detected by an International team that included more than 20 West Australians. They shared in the world’s richest science prize. The gold that enriched Western Australia was itself a mystery: where is gold created? In 2017 the same team heard a long drawn out siren sound of rippling space - the signature of colliding neutron stars. In their final crash, they slung out blobs of neutrons that exploded like a vast atomic bomb. The Zadko telescope at UWA’s Gingin Centre and many other telescopes observed this explosion and the tell-tale signature of gold.

The annual George Seddon Lecture is sponsored by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and UWA’s Friends of the Grounds.

The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture by Ann McGrath AM, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor, School of History, Australian National University

In this memorial lecture, Professor McGrath will focus upon the story of how ‘Terra Australis’ or ‘Sydneia’ - Linnaean classifications for Sydney’s ‘primitive earth’ – became an agent in the importation of Anglo-Hellenic antiquity. What might such clay stories, replete with alluring female figures, reveal about plans to transform a strange earth? How could a fantastically storied antiquity, with it super-corporeal characters, co-exist with the Enlightenment’s fascination with science? Do Indigenous songlines provides clues? And how might such questions relate to the more recent articulations of deep human pasts associated with ancient places like Lake Mungo and the many sites currently being researched in Western Australia?

The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture - This memorial lecture commemorates the exceptional contribution made by Professor Tom Stannage (1944-2012) to the Western Australian community. Professor Stannage was a prominent Australian historian who worked hard to foster a wider understanding of Western Australian history and heritage. He is remembered as an inspiring teacher and a passionate advocate for the study of history.

A panel discussion presented by the UWA School of Human Sciences (Exercise and Sport Science) and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies.

Why Tamper? Understanding the aerodynamics of a cricket ball - Professor Andrew Cresswell, Head, School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences and Professor of Biomechanics/Neurophysiology at The University of Queensland and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Professor Cresswell will present an overview of how a cricket ball behaves in flight. Particular focus will be on the material properties and characteristics of the ball. This will lead to a description of the aerodynamics of a stationary and rotating cricket ball. The aerodynamic effects of the ball’s surface properties and speed will be discussed.

The Law: caught and bowled - Dr Tony Buti, Member for Armadale, WA State Parliament and Honorary Fellow, Law School, The University of Western Australia.

In this talk Dr Buti will provide a commentary on the law of cricket and the process leading to the sanctions imposed on Steve Smith, David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, then move on to discussing issues of sporting contracts, sports tribunals and behavioural misconduct by athletes.

Caught out: a perspective on ethical behaviour in sport - Associate Professor Sandy Gordon, The University of Western Australia, Registered Sport Psychologist.

Dr Gordon will present a critical perspective on the topic, which explains behaviour in professional sport from a rarely considered ideological viewpoint, and comment on social psychological factors such as apparent misuse of power, group think and risky shift phenomena. Suggestions for sport organisations on value-proofing will be offered and also his personal opinion on the ‘character-building and sport’ relationship.

A public lecture by Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, Senior Fellow Brasenose College, University of Oxford and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Our internal 24 hour biological clock (circadian clock) and daily sleep processes interact to play an essential, yet poorly recognised, role in our lives. Sleep is not just the simple suspension of physical movement but is an active state when the brain coordinates indispensable activities that define our ability to function whilst awake. The quality of our sleep profoundly influences our cognition, levels of social interaction, empathy, alertness, mood, memory, physical strength, susceptibility to infection, and every other aspect of our waking biology. We are beginning to understand how these critical processes are generated and regulated and many surprising findings have surfaced. For example, until recently it seemed inconceivable to most vision researchers and ophthalmologists that there could be an unrecognised type of light sensor within the eye. Yet we now know that there exists a “3rd class” of photoreceptor in the eye that detects the dawn/dusk cycle and which sets the internal clock to the solar day. The past decade has witnessed remarkable progress in understanding how the brain generates and regulates our daily patterns of sleep and wake. In parallel with this understanding, there has been a growing realisation that our sleep and circadian rhythms cannot be ignored in our headlong dash to generate a 24/7 society. This presentation will review the biology of sleep and circadian rhythms, what happens when these systems go wrong and how recent discoveries are allowing new therapeutics to be developed that will help correct abnormal patterns of sleep and wake.

A public lecture by Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Assistant Professor of Black Diasporic Art, Princeton University.

This talk examines the visual relationship between the cotton trade and the representation of blackness in American culture, using historical case studies and contemporary art. Juxtaposing contemporary interventions with historical moments, it examines how cotton materially influenced the way black Americans were seen, and represented themselves, as both enslaved and free. It argues that tracing this relationship deepens our understanding of the intersections of vision, value and subjectivity in the production of racial identity in nineteenth-century America, and also today.

An 'All at Sea' public lecture by Professor Anas Ghadouani, Head, Aquatic Ecology and Ecosystems Studies and Programme Chair, Environmental Engineering, The University of Western Australia.

Do you think you’re water literate? More than 80% of Australians know little about the most important thing keeping them alive. Where do you think you use the most water? Washing? Flushing? Watering the garden? Wrong – and Professor Anas Ghadouani, a passionate and self-confessed water geek, has some surprising news for you. But if you love chocolate he has some not-so-great news too… Anas is passionate about all aspects of water engineering and management. With more than 20 years of experience, which took has taken him all over the world while researching water in a wide and diverse range of environments, Anas has developed a unique, integrated and solution-focused approach for the study of water issues. In this public lecture Anas will discuss ways to reduce your water footprint and close the loop on the water cycle at a local level.

All at Sea: Restoration and Recovery Series- Our oceans and coasts provide us with food, energy, livelihoods, cultural and recreational opportunities, yet they are coming under increasing pressure.

This UWA Institute of Advanced Studies - UWA Oceans Institute Lecture Series explores the wonders of our seas, the challenges they face and how research at UWA- in a diverse range of fields including marine science, ocean engineering, health, humanities and social sciences- are contributing to ensure sustainability.

Permittitur tamen - It’s Ok to Grow Artichokes There. The ‘Civitas Pia’ of Pope Pius IV (1561-1565)

A public lecture by Roger Vella Bonavita, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia

The Medici Pope Pius IV (1559-1565) built the suburb now called Borgo Pio (originally named Civitas Pia) and the third enceinte of Castel S. Angelo, also completing the enceinte around the Vatican (unfinished since 1532). He also planned to replace Aurelian’s ancient walls (18 kilometres long) around Rome with gunpowder fortifications.

Capitano Francesco Laparelli da Cortona, a brilliant but obscure Tuscan engineer, was put in charge of these projects by his patron and friend Gabrio Serbelloni; a nephew of Pius IV, governor of Rome, and superintendent of the fortifications in the papal states who was himself a distinguished soldier and military engineer. The role of the pope himself, even in technical discussions, is important too. These projects must be seen in the context of the crying need for up to date defences to enable the papacy to maintain its independence against pressures from Spain (and France).

This illustrated public lecture will highlight the fascinating story of the preparation of the new urban area: which involved levelling the site, demolishing the ninth century church of S. Maria Traspontina and its adjacent Carmelite monastery besides laying out the streets, sewers, water supply and civic buildings and finally the building regulations promulgated by Pius IV for his Civitas Pia in the Bull Romanorum decet Pontificem (August 1565), which for very good reasons specifically permitted the cultivation of artichokes outside the walls of the new city.

Pius sent Laparelli to Malta in November 1565 to assist the Order of St John after it survived a four month siege by the Ottoman Turks. There he designed and built a new fortified capital called Valletta.

A public lecture by Professor Maria Gough, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art, Harvard University.

This talk focuses on a corpus of presentation drawings for new media-driven structures for the revolutionary street: radio-orators, projection screens, advertising stands, slogan signs, and newspaper kiosks. Executed in the early 1920s by Gustavs Klucis (Gustav Klutsis), a Latvian immigrant to Moscow who would later enjoy renown as the leading Soviet photomonteur of the interwar period, these striking drawings have long captivated artists, architects, and designers due to their optical dynamism and graphic presence, explicit intertwining of radical aesthetics and agitational politics, and perspicacious concatenation of media and small-form architecture for revolutionary purposes.

Professor Gough is in Australia as a Visiting Professor at Edith Cowan University and this guest lecture is sponsored by the Edith Cowan Centre for Global Issues.

A public lecture by Professor Maano Ramutsindela, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Peace parks are not unique to Africa but have a salient character in the continent as a result of Africa’s socio-political, economic and environmental conditions. This talk will analyse how the idea of peace parks was developed, and how it took root on various sites in twenty-first century Africa. It will argue that the idea of peace parks gained legitimacy by assembling together environmental issues, archaeological findings, segments of colonial histories, post-independence development challenges, and local and global aspirations into a meta-discourse of peace and development. This discourse also chimed with pan-Africanism and decolonial thinking. The creation of peace parks in Africa raises questions about how African landscapes are re-imagined by various actors ranging from African governments, business, and donor agencies. Peace parks not only reignite historical images of Africa but also present a contested vision for the future of the continent and its people.

A public lecture by Professor John Paterson, Professor in Law, University of Aberdeen and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

The petroleum licensing regimes of the UK and Australia were created in the1960s at a time when the offshore petroleum potential of the North Sea and Australia’s offshore was untested and those areas were immature. Over the intervening 50 years the offshore fields of both countries have matured and there is now a more complex, diverse and crowded landscape; where, for example, several small fields with different ownership need to share common infrastructure to be economic. In 2016 because of declining production the UK made a radical change by introducing an independent regulatory authority the Oil and Gas Authority and an overarching obligation on industry to “maximise the recovery of UK petroleum”, or MERUK, meaning that industry had to consider the national interest as well as its own commercial interests. This brought with it what might be called a “use it efficiently or lose it” approach. Now, some two years after this radical change Professor John Paterson will reflect on whether MERUK is working and what the problem areas are. Will the UK win as a result of this daring approach?

Professor Paterson will be introduced by Professor John Chandler from the UWA Law School. Professor Chandler is the Co-Director of the UWA Centre for Mining, Energy and Natural Resources Law and researches how Australia, Norway and the United Kingdom are dealing with the challenges of a mature petroleum environment.

The 2018 Ian Constable Lecture by Professor Andrew Dick, Director, UCL Institute of Ophthalmology.

Our immune system does not operate solely to protect against infection, cancer and tissue damage. The immune system has evolved so that many cells, both of the immune system and non-immune cells in all tissues, have an ability to generate immune responses that regulate and maintain normal cellular, tissue and organ function. Activated and overactive immune responses are observed in many blinding non-infectious disorders. The eye is endowed with an exquisite network of cells capable of regulating function of the ocular tissues compartments (such as the retina and cornea). However, two diseases I will discuss demonstrate how the dysregulation in the immune system generates blinding disease. The first is uveitis, a general and non-specific clinical term to describe inflammation inside the eye and the second is age-related macular degeneration. This talk will describe how our understanding has led to step changes in treatments in children and adults with uveitis and the current research on how the diseases inform our understanding of immune responses that maintain normal tissue function by regulating metabolism and cell function.

Professor Andrew Dick is a clinician scientist and immunobiologist. He is Director of the UCL-Institute of Ophthalmology where he is Duke Elder Professor of Ophthalmology. He is also Chair and Professor of Ophthalmology at the University of Bristol, UK.

The annual Ian Constable Lecture lecture is presented by the Lions Eye Institute and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and honours the work of Professor Ian Constable. Professor Constable is recognised as one of the world’s leading ophthalmic surgeons. He was appointed the Lions Foundation Chair of Ophthalmology in 1975. In 1983 Professor Constable established the Lions Eye Institute (LEI) dedicated to the prevention and treatment of blindness and eye disease. Today the LEI is a not-for-profit centre of excellence that combines world class scientific research into the prevention of blindness with the highest level of eye care delivery, combining the expertise of researchers and ophthalmologists.

A public lecture by Rob Wilson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Familiarity with the eugenic past, particularly that associated with the Holocaust, has primed a wariness about the potential misuse of new ventures in biology, such as the Human Genome Project and the emerging gene-editing technology of CRISPR. That critical perspective, shared by academics and lay persons alike, has sometimes cast a skeptical shadow over future uses of existing reproductive technologies both to create designer babies and to discard embryos or fetuses that do not measure up to some ideal or standard of normality. In his preface to the second edition of In the Name of Eugenics, the historian of science Daniel Kevles cautioned that the “specter of eugenics hovers over virtually all contemporary developments in human genetics”. And in his Backdoor to Eugenics the sociologist Troy Duster viewed contemporary technologies utilizing individual choice as a pathway to a eugenic future. The message here has been clear: understand past eugenics, critique present eugenics, avoid future eugenics.

Yet, for Professor Wilson, eugenics doesn’t feel like that. Not because it’s not a danger, but because its more than a mere possibility lurking in current and future technologies. That feeling stems in part from his work in oral history with eugenics survivors in the Canadian province of Alberta over the past ten years.

In this talk Professor Wilson will share his reflections on eugenics, disability, and attitudes towards human variation, adopting what he calls a standpoint eugenics, eugenics from the standpoint of those who have survived it.

Rob Wilson returned to Australia as professor of philosophy at La Trobe University in 2017 after teaching previously at Queen’s University and the University of Alberta in Canada, and the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, in the United States. His philosophical work ranges across the cognitive, biological, and social sciences, as well as metaphysics, ethics, and the history of philosophy. Amongst his award-winning books are 'Boundaries of the Mind' (2004) and 'The MIT Encyclopedia of the Cognitive Sciences' (1999), of which he was general editor, together with the developmental psychologist Frank Keil. Graduating with first-class honours from UWA in 1985, Rob completed his PhD at Cornell University in 1992. In 2009, Rob’s contributions to academic philosophy were recognized with his election to the Royal Society of Canada. Over the past ten years, Rob’s time and energy has been invested primarily in a number of community-focused philosophical initiatives, including founding Philosophy for Children Alberta (2008-2015), serving as the principal investigator for the internationally recognized project Living Archives on Eugenics in Western Canada (2010-2016), and most recently organizing the Melbourne-based network Philosophical Engagement in Public Life (PEiPL). His most recent book is 'The Eugenic Mind Project', published by the MIT Press in March 2018.

The UWA School of Social Sciences Annual Social Sciences Week Public Lecture by John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney.

Democracy urgently needs reimagining if it is to address the dangers and opportunities posed by current global realities, argues leading political thinker John Keane. He offers an imaginative, radically new interpretation of the twenty-first century fate of democracy.

In this talk Professor Keane will discuss why the current literature on democracy is failing to make sense of many intellectual puzzles and new political trends. His talk will focus on a wide range of themes, from the growth of cross-border institutions and capitalist market failures to the greening of democracy, the dignity of children and the anti-democratic effects of everyday fear, violence and bigotry.

Professor Keane will discuss the idea of ‘monitory democracy’ to show why periodic free and fair elections are losing their democratic centrality; and why the ongoing struggles by citizens and their representatives, in a multiplicity of global settings, to humble the high and mighty and deal with the dangers of arbitrary power, force us to rethink what we mean by democracy and why it remains a universal ideal.

A public lecture by Dr Jo Jones, Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies, Curtin University.

Questions of narrative and linguistic form have preoccupied novelists, historians and theorists for at least a century and, most particularly, since the 'Crisis of the Representation' in the post-war period. This was a response, among other things, to widespread atrocity. When confronted with a national past framed by acts of atrocity, Australian novelists have taken on challenges of history and form that have yielded varied aesthetic and political results.

The relative formal freedoms offered through historical novels, when compared to conventional history writing offer the chance to confront the past in all of its contradiction and complexity. The terrain of the postmodern and historical sublime — of loss and uncertainly — is one in which historical fiction can perform an important political and ethical role.

Here, Jo Jones discusses the way novels engage Australian history, from novels written in the Bicentenary year to the present time. Jones explores the journeys that authors have made, through one or more novels, into both openly recognised and hidden histories. These authors include Richard Flanagan, Rodney Hall, Kate Grenville, David Malouf and Kim Scott.

Jo Jones is a lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. She has a PhD on Australian historical novels and the History Wars and has taught extensively at various universities including the University of Tasmania and The University of Western Australia. At present, Jo is working on recent versions of Australian Gothicism and, also, the connection between literature, modernity and place. She has recently published an co-edited volume, Required Reading: A History of Secondary English Syllabus Lists with Tim Dolin and Patricia Dowsett, Monash UP, 2017.

This talk is based on the topic of Jo Jones’ latest book, 'Falling Backwards: Australian Historical Fiction and the History Wars', published by UWA Publishing.

Copies of the book will be available on the night, or pre-order your copy from uwap.uwa.edu.au

Jo's talk is presented by UWA Publishing and the Institute of Advanced Studies.