What's On at UWA

In this seminar Juliana La Pegna will be presenting on her PhD Proposal (abstract below) and Nina Savic will also be outlining her Honours research project.

Juliana’s presentation:

Title: Beyond ‘Dullsville’: An Interpretive Policy Analysis of Culture and Arts based Policy surrounding the Perth CBD’s Identity and Growth, 2008–2018.

Abstract: Using the City of Perth as a case study, this research project explores competing discourses about the CBD. According to Susan Galloway and Stewart Dunlop (2007) “the arts and culture have been subsumed in a creative industries agenda” with the effect of bolstering support and justification for culture based agenda in a knowledge based economic climate. This trend, known as “The Cultural Policy Moment” (O’Regan, 2002) describes a situation where culture and arts policies intended to improve liveability and lifestyle within spaces have become part of a creative industries agenda, driven by economic imperatives. Drawing on these understandings of cultural policy, the objective of this research is to understand how discourses surrounding the Perth CBD have changed through the shifting of policy strategies to represent new political agendas around culture. These changes reflect feelings of uncertainty, anxiety and often competing visions for what the city should become are widely represented within the ways in which the city is talked about, which do not align with cultural policy agenda discourses represented within and through policy and its related artefacts. Using Interpretive Policy Analysis (IPA) established by Dvora Yanow (2000) this project will identify discursive trends within policy documents, annual reports, planning documents, newspaper articles and interviews which highlight the various and often contradictory feelings about the changes happening within the CBD space. The context of this research is considered to be a crucial moment in time for the Perth City space, as it is experiencing unprecedented and rapid growth and change.

Nina Savic’s Honours presentation:

Title: Examining the Relationship Between Televisual Rape Depictions and Rape Myth Acceptance in Television Viewers Brief: Through the lens of post-structural feminism, I examine the rape myths enforced through television rape narratives, particularly in the HBO series Game of Thrones. Three major rape scenes will be evaluated for their presence of rape myths. Using Stuart Hall’s (1980) Encoding/Decoding audience reception theory, I investigate viewer responses to rape narratives and the myths they enforce. By assessing comments made on online forums surrounding each major rape scene, I will allocate each participant to the Dominant, Negotiated, or Alternative reading group. This shall make inferences into the viewing attitudes of a wide section of viewers.

A free weekly seminar series, with presenters from within UWA and from the wider community.

Since Darwin, evolutionary explanations of the role of vocal communication in the development of human cultural universals have received fluctuating levels of attention. While during the early 20th Century ethnomusicologists such as Sachs and von Hornbostel sustained an interest in the distribution of musicality as an inseparable feature of the human condition, little progress was made for more than a century after Darwin in examining the material evidence for musical origins. A key feature of this from an animal behaviour perspective – especially in terms of the application of Darwin’s sexual selection model to human musicality – is the gendered nature of the anatomy that permits us to engage in music. Comparisons across species indicate considerable sexual dimorphism in terms of such features as: range; role; interaction; and purpose. Humans, like Pied Butcher Birds, have equal and complementary capacities for musical generativity and participation, with a clearly superior role for the female in employing music in child-rearing. Studies in linguistics have remarked on the assumed universal whereby the vocal ranges of human adult males and females lie on average exactly an octave apart: a feature plainly evident in cultural practice. Yet an explanation for this in the voice and music literature is strangely absent. This paper reports on the initiation of a research project aiming to address this lacuna in the research landscape, and to set out some of the definitions and other factors that need require consideration.

Further information at music.uwa.edu.au

A public lecture by Dr Mark Holton, Lecturer in Human Geography, School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences, University of Plymouth and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Accommodating university students has become one of the most pervasive forms of contemporary urban change, with increasingly mobile networks of higher education students altering, beyond recognition, the landscape of UniverCities – cities that host universities – across the world. This is particularly pertinent in relation to how students access and engage with institutions and their term-time host communities and initial UK and US-centric studies in the 1990s and 2000s sought to understand how students’ lifestyles might re-shape residential neighbourhoods. More recently, and as a response to increasingly neoliberalised global higher education networks, the appetite for student accommodation provisions has become somewhat ‘vertical’. This is witnessed in UniverCities across the world through the proliferation of large-scale purpose built student accommodation (PBSA) developments that package and marketise ‘student experiences’ through high quality hotel-style living. Drawing on an analysis of PBSA-sector literature that compares various global histories and contexts of student accommodation provision, this lecture recognises Australia specifically as an important emerging contender in the globalised higher education market – a location where domestic students predominantly live at home but that is witnessing increasing internationalisation. This literature has identified some of Australia’s main achievements in this sector to be the initiation of effective branding of PBSA developments and recognising students as a sophisticated consumer group. A key message here for other emergent and established PBSA markets is that increasing investment into the quality and accessibility of higher education institutions through strategic partnerships, developing overseas recruitment strategies and increasing student accommodation provision is fundamental in increasing the appeal of a UniverCity as a global education destination.

A bunch of highly educated and religiously inspired middle or upper-middle-class Muslims belonging to the extremist National Tawheed Jamaat based in the township of Kattankudy and linked to ISIS has carried out a highly coordinated attack on Christian churches in Sri Lanka killing nearly 300 worshippers, children and bystanders. This, in essence, is the story told by the media. However, there are too many unanswered questions at this stage and this topic goes behind this story and looks at how the country’s ethno-religious democracy had come to a dead end since October 2018 and whether this carnage opens a way out for the caravan to move.

Dr. Ameer Ali, (B. A. Hons, Ceylon, M.Phil, London, Ph.D., W.Aust) is a retired academic in economics but holding an Honorary Research Fellowship at Murdoch University, is a Sri Lankan Muslim, writing regularly on Sri Lankan affairs in academic journals and popular publications. Colombo Telegraph and Daily Financial Times in Colombo carries his pieces almost weekly. He also contributes to Australian newspapers. The Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, Journal of South Asia, Journal of Security and International Affairs are three of several academic journals that carried his research output. He is the author of Economic Development of Brunei Darussalam, 1906-2000, Murdoch University, 2001. Currently, he is engaged in a three-part analysis of recent developments in Sri Lanka focusing on the Easter Carnage a week ago.

A public lecture by Dr Nicolo Zingales, Deputy Director, Centre for Information Governance Research, University of Sussex and Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Personal Data Stores aim to help individuals and communities to be the beneficiaries of insights from their data. Some think it will redress the current power asymmetry with major digital platforms like Google and Facebook. But at the same time, Personal Data Stores lay the foundations for a new type of economy based on very specific personalised marketing, which makes consumers more transparent and prone to behavioural nudging. Will Personal Data Stores set us free, or lock us further into digital dependency?

This lecture will tackle these questions, offering a blueprint for the sort of legal and governance structures that could promote trust and accountability in the development of these services.

Let us tell you about one of the stories that has been swept under the Australian carpet for far too long……. During the nineteenth and twentieth centuries many Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people were removed from their homelands and interned in medical and government facilities. Within these systems of racially-based removal and incarceration, people were often interned for years and deprived of certain liberties and decision-making powers. These places and practices led to the dislocation of generations of people from their families, communities and country, and were part of a pattern of events and policies that served to interrupt people’s ability to care for country and to undertake cultural practices and responsibilities. Although these practices were largely portrayed at the time as benevolent humanitarian interventions, instead they caused physical, social, emotional, cultural and spiritual loss to the individuals directly affected and their decedents. In addition, many places and objects associated with these activities, particular burial areas and Aboriginal stories remain unrecorded and even hidden. Community members and researchers want preservation, protection and acknowledgement of these sites, associated cultural artefacts and stories. This presentation provides an opportunity to hear about one such story the Bernier and Dorre Island Lock Hospitals (operating from 1908 -1919) and its associated centenary memorial project direct from researchers and community members, with a view to inform future policy on best practice heritage protection, acknowledgement of past acts and truth telling.

Join us at 5.30pm on Thursday 2nd May in the Murdoch Lecture Theatre (Arts G58) at The University of Western Australia.

The forum will feature NTEU National President Dr Alison Barnes and guests:

Senator Louise Pratt

Senator Pratt is the Shadow Assistant Minister for Universities, Shadow Assistant Minister for Equality and an ALP Senator for Western Australia. Louise has a long history of fighting for justice across the Australian community. Louise is passionate about quality and access to higher education, an interest sparked through university student activism in the 1990s. Before entering Federal Parliament in 2008, Louise served in the Western Australian Parliament as a Member of the Legislative Council. Louise was previously the Shadow Assistant Minister for Families and Communities and Shadow Parliamentary Secretary for the Environment, Climate Change and Water. Louise believes that investment in education, skills, research and innovation will deliver sustained economic growth and higher standards of living.

Senator Jordon Steele-John

At just 23, Jordon is Australia’s youngest ever senator and first with a lived experience of cerebral palsy. Prior to taking up the post of Senator for Western Australia in November 2017, Jordon dedicated his time to youth and disability advocacy and was also a student of politics at Macquarie University. An active member of the Greens since he was 16, Jordon is passionate about using his time in Parliament to act on climate change, reduce youth unemployment and implement a full NDIS. He is committed to helping break down some of the barriers holding back young people and disabled people from engaging with politics, and ensuring that we make progress towards true representation; he does not want to be the last. Jordon is one of 10 Australian Greens in the Federal Parliament and has portfolio responsibility for Disability Rights, Youth, Communications and Sustainable Cities.

We also invited the Hon. Dan Tehan MP, Minister for Education (Liberal Party of Australia), though unfortunately, Dan is unable to attend.

UWA and WASO have a relationship that brings together the highest-quality music education with some of the State’s most talented and experienced professional musicians.

In 2019, the International Artist Masterclass Program continues to welcome world-class visiting artists as they inspire, challenge and celebrate some of Western Australia’s finest young musicians.

Andreas Ottensamer has held the coveted position of Principal Clarinet of the Berlin Philharmonic since 2011. Through his orchestral work, concerto, recital and chamber music performances, he is now one of the most in-demand clarinettists on the planet.

Free entry - bookings essential

Contact details: [email protected]

Further information waso.com.au/education

The 2019 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture by Amanda Nettelbeck, Professor in History, University of Adelaide.

The desire for humanitarian reform had multiple targets in the post-abolitionist British Empire, and its impacts on imperial policy have been subject to considerable recent interest amongst historians. A major focus of this reformist agenda in the years immediately after the abolition of slavery was an official commitment to deliver Indigenous peoples with rights that could be protected in law. The 1830s policy framework of ‘Aboriginal protection’ that emerged from this moment, designed to build the civil rights of Indigenous people as British subjects, is often considered to be the most important, if flawed and short-lived, expression of imperial humanitarianism. This is particularly so in Australia, where three formal departments of Aboriginal protection operated throughout the 1840s (and into the 1850s), alongside one in New Zealand. Yet the policy of ‘protection’ was not only driven by humanitarian principles, and nor did it uniquely address Indigenous people. Rather, it sat within a larger set of legally-empowered policies designed to regulate the treatment and status of new or newly-mobile colonial subjects.

This lecture explores how the early policy of Aboriginal protection functioned within a wider field of protection policies which worked to manage colonized peoples in an expanding British Empire, where demands for labour and land jostled with the imperatives of humane governance. Over the course of the nineteenth century, protection policies proved remarkably flexible. On the one hand, they served to imprint a vast Empire with the apparent guarantee of even-handed governance. On the other, they served to build new colonial foundations by reinforcing the Crown’s authority over subject peoples. They drew colonized peoples within the embrace of colonial law and labour markets; they managed the Empire’s post-abolition labour needs; they promoted the superiority of British civilisation over competing systems of law and social governance; and they set conditions on people’s lawful conduct and mobility. Yet while they had wide application, protection policies have also carried unique legacies for Indigenous people. Not only did they endure longest in the context of Indigenous policy, but there they also held the most complex role in seeking to create a new kind of legal subjecthood, one which imperial humanitarians hoped would establish Indigenous people as British subjects and workers with reciprocal responsibilities to the settler world.

The Religious Entrepreneurship of Humanistic Buddhism

This dissertation explores the concept of religious entrepreneurship in the context of the Humanistic Buddhist movement. Religious entrepreneurship as a theoretical framework facilitates a focus on the production of religious capital by Humanistic Buddhists, which has seen it become one of the most important influences in Han Buddhism over the last century. I outline three generations of religious entrepreneurship within this tradition, beginning with the early reformers of Taixu and Yinshun and then highlighting the Taiwanese Humanistic Buddhist organisations, who adopted corporate structures and developed a new style of congregational Buddhism in the second half of the 20th century. Lastly I discuss the third generation of religious entrepreneurship, which centres around the case study for this dissertation: the Stonefrog Foundation. I argue that the Stonefrog Foundation is finding new ways to generate religious capital, which has allowed it to succeed where previous Humanistic Buddhists failed, in the transnational religious marketplace.

Illness in culture: the social construction of mental disorders in Korea and China

This project aims to analyse how mental illness is socially constructed and culturally constituted in Korea and China. Adopting social constructionism as its theoretical framework, this project argues that mental illness is embedded within cultural discourses that give meaning to and shape the way society responds to individuals who experience that illness. The conventional psychiatric knowledge does not come from the nature of the condition but is developed within a particular sociocultural context. Moreover, the concept of mental illness is produced to facilitate the exercise of power. Much of the existing scholarship has tended to focus on Western cultures, whereas little work has been done on the social construction of mental illness in Asian culture. Through an analysis of Korean and Chinese cultural beliefs in relation to mental illness, this project shows how some discourses are produced to govern and regulate people’s knowledge of mental illness in Korea and China.

Be transported from the everyday by our free lunchtime concert series, featuring the best musical talent from within the UWA Conservatorium of Music and around the country.

The Darlington Ensemble are one of Perth's premier chamber music ensembles, offering a full palate of chamber music experiences to WA audiences for over 15 years. In this free concert, they present Bach's Chaconne in D minor for violin, with piano accompaniment by Robert Schumann and Anton Arensky's Piano Trio No 1 in D minor Op 32

Free entry, no bookings required.

Assemblage thinking has exploded in policy research, especially among scholars working in the policy mobilities field who are seeking to harness the potential of an assemblage approach to understand how policies move, mutate and manifest in increasingly transnational contexts. The ubiquity of assemblage, however, does not always render it clear, with the concept being variously defined and sometimes lacking conceptual strength and explanatory power. In this seminar, I will seek to conceptualize and defend an assemblage approach to policy analysis. By synthesizing core threads from existing literature, I will identify three theoretical and conceptual foundations central to a ‘policy assemblage’ approach: (1) relations of exteriority and emergence; (2) heterogeneity, relationality and flux; and (3) attention to power, politics and agency. Together, these foundations signal a coherency to assemblage thinking and suggest an assemblage approach has powerful potential, allowing researchers to see and explain things in ways that many established traditions in policy research do not. By identifying foundations and offering examples of how each might be mobilized, I will provide the beginnings of a framework for policy assemblage research not previously articulated in a systematic form, thus inviting further discussion about what it means to undertake policy assemblage research.

Glenn Savage is a senior lecturer at UWA with expertise in education policy and sociology of education. His research focuses on education policy, politics and governance at national and global levels, with a specific interest in equity, federalism, intergovernmental relations, policy mobilities, curriculum, school funding and standards-based reform. Dr Savage has published widely in leading journals and maintains a strong media profile and links with senior policy makers. He currently holds an Australian Research Council ‘Discovery Early Career Researcher Award’ (DECRA) titled ‘National schooling reform and the reshaping of Australian federalism’, which examines how national schooling reforms in curriculum, pedagogy and assessment are reshaping the role of Australian governments in education policy.

Hamida Novakovich is an academic, writer, curator and community arts worker who traveled to Morocco, Spain, and Turkey among other places on an Australia Council Career Development grant. She also facilitated the 'Rekindling Tour' by CMSS (sponsored by the Council of Australian Arab Relations, CAAR) where 6 Australian artists travelled to Morocco in November to train in traditional arts. In this seminar, Hamida will share how understanding Islamic and traditional arts are vital for the development of the Australian Muslim community. By connecting with the history of Islamic arts and understanding the political trajectories that have influenced the community's access to artistic spaces, Hamida will share some of her ongoing research in the field.

Con-Cantorum (vocal ensemble) and UWA String and Brass students present intimate music spanning more than 150 years of the Baroque period. The program will feature Purcell Anthems, including his haunting 'Funeral Music for Queen Mary', Lotti 'Crucifixus a 10 voci', and Telemann Concerto for 4 Violins in D Major TWV 40:202

Tickets from $10 | trybooking.com/BASWU

Calling all engaged couples! If you are getting married in Perth, put Wedding Upmarket in your diary now as we will be showcasing more than 50 handpicked local designers to help you create a bespoke celebration. Draw inspiration from our beautifully styled areas around UWA’s Winthrop Hall and meet Perth’s finest designers. It is the perfect opportunity to discuss with them how they can help you transform your inspiration boards into a reality. Western Australia is home to countless talented creatives but sometimes the best wedding suppliers are hard to find. Wedding Upmarket is all about connecting couples with local designers to create a truly custom, personalised event. DETAILS: Saturday 4th May 2019
Time: 10am-3pm
 Venue: The University of Western Australia’s Winthrop Hall
 Parking and entry free, venue is easily accessible
 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley
Website: www.weddingupmarket.com.au Facebook.com/weddingupmarket

Over recent decades, tensions in the ways universities are organized and operate have become increasingly apparent. On the one hand, universities have ostensibly endeavoured to move away from traditional bureaucratic modes of governance, aiming to reduce ‘red tape’ in the process. Yet over the same period, there has been growing concern internationally about everencroaching “academic bureaucratization” (Gornitzka, Kyvik, & Larsen, 1998), with the administrative dimensions of academic work apparently becoming “ever more formalized, complicated, bureaucratic and time-consuming” (Martin, 2016, 14). To this date, however, there is a lack of systematic empirical research into this ‘new’ bureaucratic phenomenon. To address the resulting lacuna, this paper pioneers a novel way of investigating academic bureaucratization, through systematically scrutinizing some of those documents and devices which themselves co-constitute bureaucratic practices. The specific case investigated are the ‘Key Selection Criteria’ (KSC) commonly used at Australian universities for the purpose of hiring academic staff. Drawing on analyses of 273 sets of KSC, the paper finds, among other things, that the number of KSC job applicants have to address in writing are unreasonably high by all standards, as is the proportion of KSC that are redundant in terms of content, or which have a purely performative or rhetorical function (e.g., having ‘a high work ethic’; or ‘an interest in academic work such as teaching and research’). Taken together, these findings pinpoint one striking manifestation of the inconspicuous yet pervasive dynamics of bureaucratization reshaping academic work today. However, it is finally argued, the phenomena investigated also indicate, at least indirectly, that academic staff have been complicit in the normalization and reproduction of mechanisms of bureaucratization.

Learn about the proper rest and recovery techniques to use before and after you have completed a workout to prevent injury and keep you feeling your best.

Key topics covered include stretching techniques and how to use a foam roller.

The UWA Friends of the Grounds are holding a Plant Sale very soon and you're invited!

Get something for Mum, improve your herb garden or add a succulent to your work space while supporting Friends of the Grounds. Plants typically $3 - $5 each. Great finds!

Open to staff, students, and the public.

Over the last forty years or so, speculation about the origins and purpose of music within the disciplines devoted to human evolution has moved from being almost systematically ignored to centre stage. This paper sets out some of the historical influences on this change in the value placed on Music, as well as proposing why the topic is significant. It presents and evaluates the trajectories of complementary theories for the role and universality of Music from Darwin and his immediate predecessors, and reviews new contributions to the debate that are appearing with increasing frequency in literatures as diverse as: pre-natal learning; acoustic archaeology; geriatric medicine; cognitive development; social intelligence; and hemispherical integration.

In conclusion, the paper will illustrate the possibility that music, rather than being a luxury that emerged as a side-benefit of language, may have played a part in the development of symbolic thinking, religious ritual, and theory of mind at an early stage in modern human cultural development.

A public lecture by Maureen O’Malley, School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, University of Sydney and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Microbes in the gut (‘microbiomes’) are thought to play a major role in producing disorders such as autism, anxiety and depression. Gut microbiomes even appear to have effects on general cognition and memory. Some strong interpretations have been made of these findings, including claims that microbes control our minds. Other researchers have argued that microbiome contributions mean we need a new concept of self: the ‘microbial self’. This talk will examine such statements in light of several broad problems in microbiome research, to do with causality, ‘dysbiosis’ (sick microbiomes), and probiotic treatments. The talk will conclude with reflections on whether insights into microbiomes change our views of who we are as humans.