What's On at UWA

Peter has worked on the evolution of desert, maritime and symbolic capabilities of Indigenous people from Australia, the Torres Strait, the Aru Islands and East Timor. He has carried out collaborative excavations and dating programs on sites which breach the ‘radiocarbon barrier’ in the Kimberley, Western Desert and on the North West Shelf. He has critiqued the primary data and first round of publications from Madjedbebe in recent reviews. As with his initial review of the stratigraphic association and dating of Homo floresiensis outlined in talks at the University of Arizona and UC Berkeley and then published, in this talk at UWA he will outline the strengths (and limitations) of the case for Australian sites breaking the radiocarbon barrier. As evidence for early modern human and Neanderthal art emerges from Africa and Spain it is time to reflect on the evidence and strategies being employed here.

Anthropologists have long acknowledged the political and affective dimensions of infrastructures, but rarely have they paid attention to their educational aptitudes. Situated at the intersection between the anthropology of waste/infrastructure and environmental education, this multi-method research project interrogates the couplings that exist between waste management infrastructure and environmental education (EE). Waste management systems not only enable the movement and conversion of matter, but also the exchange and circulation of ideas, meanings and values. In contexts where integrated waste management systems are lacking, new forms of sociality, material improvisations and knowledge emerge to find ways to provide infrastructural services. My PhD is an ethnographic study of informal waste management programmes initiated by environmental NGOs (ENGOs) and carried out by youth organisations in rural coastal communities on the island of Sumbawa, in eastern Indonesia. In combination with established ethnographic methods, such as participant observation and semi-structured interviews, the project will employ a community-based art event and public exhibition to provide an ethnographically rich, visually compelling and publicly engaged account of people’s everyday perceptions and experiences of waste and youth-waste management strategies in two rural coastal communities. I shall examine these in the spheres of household, subsistence economy and communal life, with the view to understanding how social and socio-material relations, especially youth-community and state-society relations, and distinct practices of waste and waste-related pedagogies mediate and are mediated by waste management efforts.

This paper draws from my on-going Masters Dissertation in Urban Design (to be submitted 8th Nov 2018). This inquiry considers the role of design in shaping the built environment and thus patterns of human activity and social life. In this inquiry I ask the question “How Can We Design Built Form And Open Spaces In Suburban Contexts In Perth That Engender A Sense Of Belonging For New And Emerging Communities? In an attempt to answer this question a community mapping exercise (n =24) and ethnographic interviews were conducted (n = 10) to understand the places inhabited in people’s everyday and how these places are used. These interviews and maps have been analysed to make meaning so as to develop a place typology for design interventions. While this ‘place typology’ may not be replicable, it is an attempt to tie together the spatial and social sciences.

The exceptional ability of young emerging artists and their passion for music will always create an extraordinary experience for concertgoers.

In Main Stage: Culmination three outstanding performers compete in the finals of the prestigious VOSE Concerto Competition backed by the full forces of the brilliant UWA Symphony Orchestra. Who will win this coveted prize? Have your say and vote for your favourite performance in the People’s Choice Award!

Also on the program, Shumann's Konzertstuck for 4 Horns, and in celebration of the 200th anniversary of the French composer Gounod, the UWA Symphony Orchestra and Symphonic Chorus join forces with a performance of his beautiful, serene St Cecilia Mass.

Tickets from $18

This year’s Open Day will feature interactive displays from a number of LEI research groups showcasing the latest in cutting edge eye science with a focus on eye genetics, DNA testing, stem cell technology, gene therapy and clinical trials. Displays on offer: • Experience being inside the eye using virtual reality technology. • Learn how the LEI uses skin samples to grow eye cells in petri dishes. • Vision impairment glasses will show you how different eye diseases affect eyesight. • Chat with LEI Managing Director Professor David Mackey. • Games prizes and raffles. • Special offers on eye tests with the Lions Optics team. • Learn about the ATOM study and how we’re tackling short-sightedness is children. • Get a close look at a real eyeball. • Make damper with our Outback Vision team and learn more about their work in remote WA. • Learn more about our ‘Surfer’s eye’ clinical trial and many more. The Open Day is free and all are welcome.

UWA Farm Ridgefield and the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR) are hosting a community based festival event to celebrate astronomy and Australian science on Saturday, 20 October 2018!

The event will feature fun and engaging activities in a beautiful rural setting, approximately 2 hours from Perth. Attendees will be able to interact and engage with astronomy experts, enjoy activities run by Scitech, see fabulous astrophotography and learn about some of the local history of astronomy in the Pingelly region.

Don't forget to register and attend the event to go into the draw to win your very own telescope!: ioa.uwa.edu.au/events/register

Bus transport is available and will be leaving UWA campus at 2pm on Saturday 20 October, 2018 and will return to the UWA campus at approximately midnight. Bus charges are $27 per adult and $15.00 for children under 12 and concession holders. Please purchase your ticket through Eventbrite: http://ow.ly/gtJ730lRv64

If you have any questions, please email Debra Mullan ([email protected]) or call 08 6488 1539

Do representations of clouds in Western art and architecture bear out Foucault’s claim of a split in the stable relations of words and images after the seventeenth century with drastic consequences to shared public meanings? This talk offers an answer to this question through an environmentalist survey of the changing significance of clouds in the art and architecture of many cultures over several centuries. From a predominantly religious significance in ancient art, the meaning of clouds shifts towards science in the era of industrial progress and global warming. Thus from clouds as premonitions of an ideal after-life, the man-made clouds of industrial pollution and nuclear warfare create a paradoxical restoration of shared meaning through bleak nostalgia for uncontaminated skies and terror of cloudless ones. The lecture will conclude with a discussion of a Lars Von Triers’ movie Melancholia (2011), invite discussion of An Te Liu’s Cloud (2008) installation and report some responses to the lecture when it was recently delivered in Ekaterinburg and Perm, Russia.

H.G. Wells is best known as ‘the father of science fiction’. However, the bulk of his writing is both non-fiction, and concerned with social justice. While it is widely held that his The Rights of Man (1940) helped shape the drafting of the 1948 Universal Declaration of Human Rights, this article argues that Wells’s influence extended well beyond this. Through his contribution to rights-based debates concerning social liberalism, internationalism, liberal internationalism, and international law, between the late 1890s and his death in 1946 Wells made crucial interventions in emerging discourses around rights, and was a significant actor in rights-based civil society.

Ocean sustainability is a complex challenge facing humanity, requiring a multi-disciplinary approach to understand and tackle. The Master of Ocean Leadership brings together expertise from engineering, science, law and environmental management to equip graduates with the skills to lead teams who will solve these challenges.



Presentation: 6:15pm – 7:00pm



Learn about the course from Dr Marco Ghisalberti, Program Chair of the Master of Ocean Leadership, whose research specialities include ecohydraulics and environmental and experimental fluid mechanics.



Networking: 7:00pm – 8:00pm



Please enjoy complimentary refreshments while you talk to our experts from fields such as oceanography, hydrodynamics, coastal engineering and marine ecology. This is your opportunity to ask specific questions and hear more about what it’s like to study the Master of Ocean Leadership and where the degree can take you.



This event is suitable for current or recently graduated students of undergraduate degree at UWA and other institutions.

A public lecture by Rodney Lokaj, Chair of Italian Philology, University of Enna “Kore”, Sicily.

The lecture will seek to promote understanding of Dante’s Comedy (ca.1307-1321) as an attempt at reconciliation. A poetic text largely conceived and written in exile, reconciliation was a theme as vital to Dante the man as it was to his entire world. Professor Lokaj will guide the audience through two areas in which Dante sought to achieve some degree of reconciliation – the role of women in society and the Western view of Islam. He will do so by looking at Inferno 5, the plight of Francesca, who moves the other-worldly pilgrim to tears and physical distress, and by looking at Paradiso 10, the case of Sigieri, and Paradiso 11, the canto dedicated to St Francis, where the poet attempts to reconcile the Christian and Islamic worlds via discourse, dancing and sheer reciprocal listening. In the case of Francesca, the adulteress, she is damned to Hell but is nevertheless also granted the possibility to spend eternity with her truly beloved. In the case of Sigieri, despite the West’s general condemnation and fear of Islam, Dante chooses to admit into Heaven a man who espoused and promoted the fruit of Islamic philosophical speculation. The lecture, therefore, will present the Comedy as an attempt to act as an iconoclastic model of how reconciliation between supposedly irreconcilable and irreducible positions can indeed be achieved, first of all in the afterlife sanctioned by God then, hopefully, also in the here and now.

Facilitated by experienced Learning Designers, this one-day workshop is a great practical opportunity for new and current teaching staff at UWA to experience the unit design process.

You and your colleagues can participate in a number of sequential collaborative tasks which will allow you to explore ideas for student-centred learning as well as map out and plan the face-to-face and online elements for the unit you want to specifically focus on for this workshop.

The workshop begins at 9:30am sharp and finishes at 4:30pm. There is an expectation that participants will be present for the full day. Please answer as many of the questions at the point of registration. This extremely valuable information will be used to coordinate the best team to assist you at this workshop and during follow-up opportunities.

Tea, coffee and a light lunch will be provided.

To get the most out of this workshop we highly recommend the following:

A Unit Coordinator for the unit must attend. Unit Coordinators are encouraged to invite as many of their unit team members as possible. Please ensure all participants register. Unit Coordinators must bring agreed unit learning outcomes and the current unit outline of the chosen unit. It is important to bring your own laptop or mobile device for online development.

An 'All at Sea' public lecture by Professor Christophe Gaudin, Head of Oceans Graduate School and Director Wave Energy Research Centre.

Energy security is a critical issue in the 21st century and marine renewable energy resources are an important component of the blue economy agenda in Australia and internationally. Compared to other forms of renewable energy, wave energy is more consistent and more concentrated, but this industry is still in its infancy.

UWA is a global leader in ocean engineering and recently received $3.75 million from the Western Australian State Government to establish The Wave Energy Research Centre (WERC) in Albany. This announcement of a wave energy development project and research centre demonstrates a welcome investment by the Western Australian state government into marine renewable energy. WERC will be a knowledge hub for the wave, tidal and offshore wind energy industries and is set to play an active part in Albany’s transformation into Australia’s marine renewable energy capital.

In this public lecture Professor Gaudin will discuss why marine renewable energy is an important component of the blue economy agenda and why Western Australia is one of the most promising wave and tidal energy locations in the world.

Associate Professor of Geotechnical Engineering at UWA, Professor Christophe Gaudin is Director of the newly established Wave Energy Research Centre in Albany and Head of the Oceans Graduate School, a multi-disciplinary research group of about 100 oceanographers, structural, hydrodynamics and geotechnical engineers.

About the 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.

A public lecture by Nick Haslam, Professor of Psychology, University of Melbourne and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Concept meanings refuse to stand still. They move around over time reflecting changes in culture and society. In this talk, Professor Haslam will explore a pattern of conceptual change that originates in psychology and the social sciences but now permeates the culture at large. Concepts involving harm have gradually broadened their meanings so that they now refer to a much wider range of phenomena than they did in previous decades. This pattern of “concept creep” is illustrated by expanding notions of bullying, mental disorder, trauma and prejudice. Professor Haslam will argue that concept creep reveals a rising cultural sensitivity to harm that has ambivalent social implications and sheds light on contemporary debates about ‘political correctness’, campus culture wars and psychiatric diagnosis, among others. Professor Haslam will present findings from an emerging program of of empirical research on these questions.

This lecture is presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies in association with the UWA Medical Humanities Network.

The media is a critical source of information on people seeking asylum and therefore, plays an important role in shaping and reinforcing how members of the public understand the issue. In Australia, few studies have investigated how media audiences respond to news discourses about asylum seekers, and no research has utilised a combination of discursive and audience reception approaches to shed light on the topic. This research employed Fairclough’s (1992) Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) alongside an Audience Reception framework (Hall, 1980) to explore how Australian media audiences conceptualise and evaluate news representations of asylum seekers. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 24 residents of Western Australia (WA), who discussed their general views about asylum seekers, their media engagement preferences and habits, and their perspectives regarding Australian news discourses about seeking asylum.

Most participants cited the news as their main source of information about asylum seekers, with many adding that they choose to engage with content that aligns with their political views. Some reported regularly engaging with news material despite voicing major concerns about its reliability, suggesting a complex relationship with the media. With respect to how Australian media organisations represent asylum seekers, participants emphasised the following concerns: negative and dehumanising representations; bias and sensationalism; limited transparency; a lack of balanced reporting; and bureaucratic influences on news content. Some also pointed out that asylum seekers’ voices are frequently absent from news coverage about their plight. Overall, findings revealed considerable disenchantment among WA media audiences, which carries important implications for the communications and sociological fields, highlighting the importance of transparent, compassionate, and inclusive approaches to news coverage about asylum seekers.

Spring Fair is back again for 2018. Enjoy the entertainment, sample produce from our vendors and sit back and soak in the atmosphere. Lots of activities to keep the kids happy and plenty of stalls to pick up gifts or something to snack.

Facilitated by experienced Learning Designers, this one-day workshop is a great practical opportunity for new and current teaching staff at UWA to experience the unit design process.

You and your colleagues can participate in a number of sequential collaborative tasks which will allow you to explore ideas for student-centred learning as well as map out and plan the face-to-face and online elements for the unit you want to specifically focus on for this workshop.

The workshop begins at 9:30am sharp and finishes at 4:30pm. There is an expectation that participants will be present for the full day. Please answer as many of the questions at the point of registration. This extremely valuable information will be used to coordinate the best team to assist you at this workshop and during follow-up opportunities.

Tea, coffee and a light lunch will be provided.

To get the most out of this workshop we highly recommend the following:

A Unit Coordinator for the unit must attend. Unit Coordinators are encouraged to invite as many of their unit team members as possible. Please ensure all participants register. Unit Coordinators must bring agreed unit learning outcomes and the current unit outline of the chosen unit. It is important to bring your own laptop or mobile device for online development.

A public lecture by Mark Nesbitt, Curator and Senior Research Leader in economic botany at Kew Gardens.

The Museum of Economic Botany opened at the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew in 1847. As a display of useful plants and their products, it met two very Victorian aims: to be a bridge between producers of raw materials around the world and manufacturers in Britain, and to educate the public. Throughout its existence (1847-1987), the Museum grew to fill four large buildings. Today although the collection has grown to 100,000 plant raw materials and objects, including 1700 from Australia, these are in a research store. The very existence of museums of economic botany is mostly forgotten. This talk will explore how their history can be used to shine a powerful light on colonial history, and how historic specimens can take on new functions relevant to the modern world. It will draw on findings from The Mobile Museum: Economic Botany in Circulation, a major research project that is mapping the circulation of specimens across international networks of exchange in the 19th and 20th centuries. Specimens arrived at Kew by way of a complex network of scientific and personal relationships with collectors such as Emile Clement and Ferdinand von Mueller, and with similar museums at Australian botanic gardens. A remarkable number of specimens received by Kew – over 50,000 – were sent on to other museums, resulting in complex journeys for many Australian objects. What is revealed is a rich history of colonial, scientific and personal endeavour over a formative period in the development of Australia.

While the trend toward an increasingly integrated Indo-Pacific was initially viewed from the perspective of economics, trade and energy flows, it is increasingly apparent that the rise of the Indo-Pacific era also has major implications for national defence and regional security. The 2018 Western Australian Indo-Pacific Defence Conference will convene strategic thinkers from the military, industry, academic and government in Perth Australia, home to Australia’s largest naval base, a growing defence industry, and a vibrant civic and academic community. Defence West in the Department of Jobs, Tourism, Science and Innovation in partnership with the Perth USAsia Centre at The University of Western Australia will convene the 2018 Western Australian Indo-Pacific Defence Conference. This event will examine the broader geo-strategic environment of the Indo-Pacific and the important role Australia will continue to play in the region via its expertise in defence capability and resources. We also hope to showcase regional opportunities to WA-based industries, as well as national and international stakeholders. This conference will promote the State’s defence capability to national and international defence stakeholders. The aim is to provide new and relevant information from high-level speakers to educate and inspire our local industry, and to assist them in becoming world class and globally competitive (export ready).

Facilitated by experienced Learning Designers, this one-day workshop is a great practical opportunity for new and current teaching staff at UWA to experience the unit design process.

You and your colleagues can participate in a number of sequential collaborative tasks which will allow you to explore ideas for student-centred learning as well as map out and plan the face-to-face and online elements for the unit you want to specifically focus on for this workshop.

The workshop begins at 9:30am sharp and finishes at 4:30pm. There is an expectation that participants will be present for the full day. Please answer as many of the questions at the point of registration. This extremely valuable information will be used to coordinate the best team to assist you at this workshop and during follow-up opportunities.

Tea, coffee and a light lunch will be provided.

To get the most out of this workshop we highly recommend the following:

A Unit Coordinator for the unit must attend. Unit Coordinators are encouraged to invite as many of their unit team members as possible. Please ensure all participants register. Unit Coordinators must bring agreed unit learning outcomes and the current unit outline of the chosen unit. It is important to bring your own laptop or mobile device for online development.

Xi Jinping’s first term as the leader of the People’s Republic of China (PRC) has witnessed a centralisation of power unprecedented in the post-Mao political life. His constitutional amendments, persecution of political rivals and growing personality cult are just some features of Xi’s highly authoritarian rule. This presentation endeavours to answer the question: to what extent is Xi the new Mao? It systematically compares the leadership styles of Xi Jinping and Mao Zedong, on the basis of their titles, powers, personality cults and goals – benchmarks intended to be representative of leadership within the unique Chinese system. It has become apparent that despite significant similarities between the two leaders such as quasi-identical motivations for their political actions, there remain fundamental and stylistic differences between the two that render it inaccurate to call Xi the new Mao. While Xi and Mao are the same in many ways, what has changed is the economic, political and social context within which they exist, both inside and outside the People’s Republic.