What's On at UWA

At KIN Village, children will have the chance to explore and play in nature under the pines in UWA’s beautiful Somerville Auditorium. With the guidance of the team at Educated by Nature, children will build a village of cubbies, make nature-inspired art, learn whittling, play wilderness adventure games, and make music with songs that engage, entertain and provide a little bit of extra magic.

Educated by Nature aims to increase the mental, emotional and physical health of children and in doing so, foster a deep love for the natural environment. KIN Village at Somerville is a chance to learn, play and be creative, and will be an adventure for children come rain, hail or shine!

Drop and leave program. Children should bring their own lunch. Tickets cost $50 for the day (10am - 3pm).

Best suited for ages 7 - 12.

Find out more about Educated by Nature at www.educatedbynature.com

This event is part of the The University of Western Australia WINTERarts program. For the full program, visit http://culturalprecinct.uwa.edu.au/winterarts

Learn how to get your work published with tips and practical guidance from industry professionals.

Join UWA Publishing for a professional development day and gain insights into the entire publishing process – from writing a compelling book proposal, to marketing and publicity. Learn how a manuscript gets made into a book and finds its way to readers, and how best to approach publishers about your project.

Presented as part of the UWA WINTERarts Festival 2017.

To most North Americans and Europeans otters are highly esteemed for intelligence, playfulness, and attractiveness. These qualities have contributed to otters receiving considerable research and conservation attention in North America and Europe. Additionally, such favourable attitudes and otters’ dependence on aquatic habitats offer potential for otters to serve as an aquatic flagship species to promote aquatic conservation. However, little is known about public attitudes towards otters outside of North America and Europe, and characteristics of a species that engender support from the public vary considerably among cultures.

Dr. Serfass developed a 5-point conceptual model/approach comprised of 5-elements to serve as a basis for evaluating and developing an aquatic flagship species based on ecotourism: 1) presence at tourist-focused areas; 2) viewing opportunities—when, where, and how; 3) public support & tourist/tour operator interest; 4) public education and involvement, and 5) promotion of long-term persistence/ monitoring.

In this lecture Professor Serfass will review research outcomes and conservation experiences related to the North American river otter (Lontra canadensis) in the Greater Yellowstone Ecosystem, USA and the spotted-necked otter (Hydrictis maculicollis) in Rubondo Island National Park, Tanzania to demonstrate the potential for the model to be applied in developing these species as aquatic flagships. He will also discuss potential challenges likely to be imposed by differing environmental, cultural, economic, and wildlife conservation policies/systems. Additionally, he will identify virtues and liabilities in using a game species, such as the river otter, to promote a holistic environmental agenda (in this case aquatic conservation) by contrasting it to the preservationist approach often followed by government agencies.

Professor Tom Serfass is Professor of Wildlife Ecology and former Chair in the Department of Biology and Natural Resources at Frostburg State University, and Adjunct Professor at the Appalachian Laboratory – University of Maryland (College Park) Centre for Environmental Science. A large portion of his research and conservation activities focus on the design, implementation and evaluation of wildlife restoration programs and recovering wildlife populations – particularly mesocarnivores. Tom conceived and coordinated the successful Pennsylvania River Otter (Lontra canadensis) and Fisher (Pekania pennanti) Reintroduction Projects. Tom is the North American Coordinator and African Co-coordinator of the International Union for the Conservation of Nature and Natural Resources’ Otter Specialist Group.

The Social Impact Festival 2017 is a platform for cutting-edge knowledge and ideas, celebrating initiatives creating positive change, and generating insights that address complex social problems.

The festival will bring almost 200 contributors, who are leading experts and social changemakers in the local and global scene. The Social Impact Festival will be held in various locations at The University of Western Australia, Perth CBD, and across metro and regional areas.

For more information and to register, please visit socialimpactfestival.org

A public lecture by Ned Curthoys, English and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia.

In a famous and enduringly influential reading of Jane Austen’s novels, the moral philospher Alasdair MacIntyre argues in his germinal work of moral philosophy After Virtue (1981) that Austen was the ‘last, great effective voice of that tradition of thought about, and practice of, the virtues’. MacIntyre suggests that Austen’s novels promote a catalogue of virtuous behaviours including amiability, practical intelligence, constancy, humility, and a capacity for self-examination. These intrinsic virtues, practised by Austen’s heroines and heroes, can be considered to build character in a manner that can be distinguished from the simulated charms of personages in her novels who are focused on external goods such as wealth and reputation. It is essential to MacIntyre’s conception of the virtues that they are not timeless and universal, but relevant to particular societies in their struggle against the vices and social ills of their age. Perhaps controversially MacIntyre insists that for Austen the ‘touchstone of the virtues is a certain kind of marriage and indeed a certain kind of [English] naval officer’. For Austen companionate marriage is conceived in patriotic and conservative terms as supporting a well ordered household and stable social structures. Austen’s emphasis on constancy as a cardinal virtue is buttressed, argues MacIntyre, by her powerful moral criticism of irresponsible parents, and guardians, and the caprice of younger romantics such as Marianne Dashwood.

This lecture will explore the strengths and weaknesses of MacInytre’s interpretation of Austen’s novels and its subsequent critical reception. It will emphasize that MacIntrye is contributing to an ongoing repositioning of Austen as a novelist with moral and philosophical intentions. It will examine MacIntyre’s interpretation of Austen alongside recent scholarship pointing to her reinvention of literary genres focused on manners and social etiquette and her promotion, following David Hume, of the ‘education of the passions’. Lastly the lecture will discuss Austen’s indebtedness to the Third Earl of Shaftesbury’s discourse on the profound moral significance of robust and convivial conversation.

About this Series - New Perspectives on Jane Austen On the two-hundredth anniversary of her death, this UWA Institute of Advanced Studies - Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Lecture Series presents new perspectives on the life and work of Jane Austen. Drawing upon the latest literary and historical research, UWA researchers tackle key themes in Austen's work and the wider social and cultural contexts in which she created her now world-famous novels.

UWA Publishing warmly invites you to the launch of Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of chronic illness and pain, edited by Heather Taylor Johnson.

Shaping the Fractured Self showcases twenty-eight of Australia’s finest poets who happen to live with chronic illness and pain. The autobiographical short essays, in conjunction with the three poems from each of the poets, capture the body in trauma in its many and varied moods. Because those who live with chronic illness and pain experience shifts in their relationship to it on a yearly, monthly or daily basis, so do the words they use to describe it.

Shaping the Fractured Self will be launched by writer, scholar and contributor Rachel Robertson. The launch will also feature readings from contributing poet Kevin Gillam and editor Heather Taylor Johnson.

Please RSVP by Monday 17 July for catering purposes.

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Due to our speaker, Ezrina Fewings being unwell we have decided to cancel the event ‘Strategic Approaches to Blended Learning through Unit and Learning Design’ that was scheduled to take place this Friday, 21 July 2017 from 11am to 12pm.

This event will be rescheduled at a future date and time, which you will be notified of once set.

Thank you for your understanding, and our apologies for any inconvenience.

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A significant outcome from the Centre for Education Futures’ Zenith (Learning Analytics) Pilot Project was the clear demarcation between unit design and learning design elements. Unit Coordinators involved in the project became acutely aware of how the carefully structured unit design could promote effective learning, and consideration for learning design activities could improve interactivity, adaptability and engagement by the unit cohort.

With this in mind, this one hour informative session will scaffold the top four requirements for both unit and learning design for academics to become influential in learning analytics, feedback, communication, and curricular innovation. Further opportunity to familiarise and workshop these necessary elements of blended learning into the LMS (Blackboard) can be explored at a Carpe Diem workshop and the Transforming Teaching for Learning (TTL) unit.

Register for this event via the Eventbrite link listed below.

‘The whole universe is one single nest,’ from the Upanishads, adopted as a motto by Rabindranath Tagore (1861-1941). In this special talk, Peter Underwood will discuss two recent radio snippets broadcast on Radio National, both concerning medical research.

Peter Underwood is a doctor, academic and writer. An Honorary Research Fellow at The University of Western Australia, he is a Vice President of the Medical Association for Prevention of War (www.mapw.org.au). He lives in Perth and Denmark, WA.

'I was born in Perth, studied science and then medicine at UWA, and after a spell as a doctor in Oz’s far north, travelled slowly through India and Central Asia, a life changing experience.

Eventually reaching London, I completed post-graduate studies but fell under the spell of both EF Schumacher of Small is Beautiful, and, though irredeemably irreligious, some radical groups practicing ‘liberation theology’. As a result, I ended up with my then-wife and tiny child working as volunteers for several years in the remote mountains of North Yemen.

Returning to Perth and UWA, I was a founder of UWA’s Department of General Practice but continued to work and travel in 'wild places’. In my teaching and research in medicine I have tried to emphasise the ‘human’ and the 'social’ against the notion of humans as elevated bits of clockwork. I believe that this impoverished idea of what we are and can be underlies our increasingly narcissistic and commodified world.

I now share my time between writing and broadcasting, some medical teaching and consulting, running a small farm, looking after my grandchildren, and peace and environmental activism. I reckon Santayana’s saying that 'life is not a spectacle nor a feast but a predicament' is baloney: life is all three'. 

Abstract: The impacts on Inuit life conditions of global warming - resulting in severe reduction of the Arctic sea ice and thus changing potentials for hunting marine mammals – in concert with external political developments are strong these years. The interdisciplinary NOW Project, where researchers from biology, anthropology and archaeology have joined forces, explores how the Inuit hunting societies in northernmost Greenland have coped with such environmental and societal/economic changes through time. The Thule Inuit (Inughuit) are dependent on the biotic resources of the North Water – the largest open water area in the Arctic, which is remarkably rich in game but also vulnerable. Focusing on the historical/archaeological research conducted in the framework of the NOW Project the presentation puts the subsistence and settlement strategies of the Inughuit into a long term perspective. Biography: Bjarne Gronnow leads SILA – the Arctic Centre at the Ethnographic Collections, the frame of the archaeological research environment, which was established at the National Museum in 1999. It is the aim of SILA to conduct and promote cultural historical research in the Arctic at the highest international level of quality, to curate the Arctic collections of the Museum, and to utilize the collections' potential for public outreach. The activities of SILA are central to the collaboration between the Ethnographic Collections and the museums in Greenland, including the Greenland National Museum and Archive in Nuuk.

** Presenting the inaugural TEDxUWASalon Series, ART // ACT **

We invite you to explore the concept of "artistic activism". Join the global discussion on the power of spreading ideas through the visual and the verbal. Discover how local change-makers are taking a stand on global issues through creative platforms!

|| PART TWO ||

In partnership with Alumni for Social Impact - UWA & The Centre for Social Impact , we are proud to announce the second part of TEDxUWASalon: ART // ACT, focusing on the VERBAL. This is an Impact Sparker Event during Social Impact Festival 2017.

With our debut at the newly-refurbished Carpe Diem Room at Education Futures UWA, it's going to be a wonderful afternoon you won't want to miss!

Check out the full SIF 2017 Program here: https://www.facebook.com/events/310955969337463

***What is TEDxUWASalon?***

Salon events are smaller-scaled gatherings that keep a TEDx community engaged between main conferences. It provides the opportunity for more in-depth and intimate ideas sharing. It also focuses on one theme, so expect a niche audience of like-minded people to keep the conversation going! For more information: https://www.ted.com/participate/organize-a-local-tedx-event/before-you-start/event-types/salon-event

"It is always what is under pressure in us, especially under pressure of concealment – that explodes in poetry." Adrienne Rich

In this workshop writer and editor Heather Taylor Johnson will guide participants on how to nd language for the unspeakable.

Why is poetry the form in which such explosions can take place, and how can poetry’s qualities be harnessed to explode the experience of trauma? What must hold together, and what can fall apart? Heather Taylor Johnson, writer and editor of Shaping the Fractured Self: Poetry of chronic illness and pain, will guide you through ways to find a language for the unspeakable, for conditions kept quiet and experiences communicated in groans and grunts.

This workshop will help you take those experiences and shape them into poetry.

Refreshments will be provided.

Presented as part of the UWA WINTERarts Festival 2017.

Join writer Heather Taylor Johnson in giving your illness narrative meaning, not a label.

David Foster Wallace famously said "The role of literature is to disturb the comfortable and comfort the disturbed". In the case of an illness narrative, the author is both the one doing the disturbing and the one who is disturbed, so it’s no wonder illness is such an intimidating topic. This workshop will help you to claim the titles of 'disturber' and 'disturbed' and find the right balance. We will talk about fiction and non-fiction, and open up a space in which we can blur the two, a space in which we can use the 'I' without naming the 'I.

Refreshments will be provided.

Presented as part of the UWA WINTERarts Festival 2017.

Unfortunately this event has been cancelled.

Due to our speaker, Ezrina Fewings being unwell we have decided to cancel the Futures Enthusiasts Meet-Up (FEMU) event that was scheduled to take place on Wednesday, 26 July 2017 from 4pm to 5pm.

Thank you for your understanding, and our apologies for any inconvenience.

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Featuring a demonstration of the Blackboard Instructor mobile app followed by a networking session.

Blackboard’s highly anticipated scheduled global release of the Blackboard Instructor app, is earmarked for mid-July 2017 through both iOS and Android app stores – just in time for Semester 2, 2017!

Learning Technologist Ezrina Fewings will give attendees a brief overview of the Blackboard Instructor app, designed to better meet the needs of staff, by offering to enhance the user-centric mobile experience. Essentially, this first release of Blackboard Instructor focuses on optimising the accessibility to the unit, viewing content and test, participation in discussions, creating announcements, joining Collaborate sessions and generally improving the workflow critical for learning and teaching.

Aspirin has been used to relieve pain and discomfort for thousands of years and has been commercially available for more than 100 years. Today it is one of the most widely used drugs globally and can be obtained without prescription from most supermarket and corner stores.

Scientific discoveries detailing the mechanism of action and the benefits of aspirin for patients are detailed in thousands of research papers published over the past century. People were aware of aspirin’s analgesic and anti-inflammatory properties long before any research was performed, but it was not until scientists found that it reduced blood clotting that aspirin transformed the management of patients with cardiovascular disease. Aspirin’s cardiovascular benefits are explained by its unique pharmacology. When taken at low doses, aspirin is cleared from the circulation within an hour. It takes only minutes for aspirin to permanently block the blood platelets that cause heart attack and stroke, and its rapid clearance limits the potentially harmful effects of aspirin on the walls of blood vessels when it is given in higher doses.

Recent discoveries have further refined our understanding of the cardiovascular benefits of aspirin. The evidence supporting its use for the treatment of heart attack and stroke is overwhelming, but we are now less certain of its benefits for “primary” prevention in persons without a history of cardiovascular disease, and aspirin may even be harmful when used for this reason in older persons. Possibly balancing this concern is the unexpected finding that continued use of aspirin for more than a decade prevents the onset of cancer.

Current aspirin research focuses on the evaluation of aspirin for new indications, optimizing its benefits with alternative dosing regimens, and reducing the risks of bleeding. Aspirin does not fully protect against the risk of a further heart attack or stroke, and trials currently underway are exploring whether its use in combination with other treatments is more effective. Efforts to replace aspirin with potentially more effective and safer new designer drugs have so far proven unsuccessful, and in the meantime new aspirin discoveries continue unabated.

How long can this old dog continue to surprise us with new tricks?

John Eikelboom, MBBS, MSc, FRCPC is Associate Professor in the Department of Medicine, McMaster University, and haematologist in the Thrombosis Service, Hamilton General Hospital, Ontario, Canada. He originally trained in Internal Medicine and Haematology in Perth, Australia and subsequently moved to Hamilton to take up a Tier II Canada Research Chair in Cardiovascular Medicine. Dr Eikelboom has co-authored more than 500 articles in peer-reviewed journals. His current research, supported by the Canadian Institutes for Health Research, the Heart and Stroke Foundation and the National Health and Medical Research Council of Australia, focuses on the efficacy and safety of antithrombotic therapies, outcomes after blood transfusion and bleeding, and the mechanisms of variable response to antiplatelet drugs.

It is generally agreed that 1% of the prison population are innocent inmates who are the victims of injustice. This presentation will detail two wrongful convictions in 1961 and 1963 and how a Perth journalist with no legal training could succeed in gaining the innocent men’s exonerations 40 years later, winning against the odds after they had lost seven combined appeals in the 60s.

When John Button’s manslaughter conviction was quashed by the WA Court of Criminal Appeal in 2002, and Darryl Beamish’s wilful murder conviction was quashed in 2005, they were the longest standing convictions to be overturned in Australia.

As well as the exonerations, the work corrected Perth’s history. Eric Edgar Cooke, the perpetrator of the two murders and the last person executed in WA, had been remembered for killing six people and attempting to kill two more in 1963. Cooke is now recognised for eight murders and 14 attempted murders over a five-year period from 1958.

The work also gave a voice to 12 of Cooke’s previously-unknown attempted murder victims, gave hope to innocent prisoners and raised public awareness of wrongful conviction and its causes: police misconduct including blinkered investigation, over-zealous prosecutors, weak legal representation for the uneducated and marginalised, false confessions, fabricated evidence by witnesses with incentives, faults in forensics, eyewitness misidentification and fallible memory. While not the cause in the Button and Beamish cases, the fallibility of eyewitness memory has been found to be the greatest contributor to wrongful conviction – 72% of eyewitness identifications being wrong in the US Innocence Project’s successful exoneration cases.

This lecture is part of the 2017 Limina Collective Conference - Memory: Myth and Modernity. Visit www.limina.arts.uwa.edu.au for more information.

Estelle Blackburn is a writer whose determined sleuthing uncovered the truth about Perth’s most notorious serial killer, Eric Edgar Cooke. Her investigative journalism, authorship of Broken Lives and citizen advocacy led to the exoneration of convicted killers John Button and Darryl Beamish, 40 years after they were wrongfully convicted of Cooke murders. Estelle was a journalist for The West Australian then the ABC, before becoming a press secretary to several WA Ministers and a Premier. The winner of many awards including an OAM, WA Citizen of the Year (Arts and Entertainment), WA Woman of the Year, Premier’s Award for non-fiction, and journalism’s top honour, a Walkley Award for the most outstanding contribution to the profession, she is also an inductee into the WA Womens Hall of Fame. Now working in Canberra, Estelle still spends her spare time crusading against wrongful conviction.

Science fiction has explored the consequences of human genetic engineering for decades, and the results are universally dystopic. With the advent of the genome editing technology called CRISPR, we are closer than ever before. CRISPR has been called 'the word processor for genomes', allowing us for the first time to precisely change DNA code in any organism. From its development in 2012 to its use today, we have already progressed to human clinical trials and the first human embryo experiments. What does this mean for our identity as humans? Should it be controlled, and if so, by whom? Are we already on a slippery slope? CRISPR also opens the door to species-wide genetic change, including annihilation through DNA perpetual motion machines called gene drives. Could social pressure to eliminate disease mean the end of the mosquito?

Dr. Ellen Jorgensen is co-founder and President of Biotech Without Borders, a nonprofit organization dedicated to promoting citizen science and access to biotechnology. She is passionate about increasing science literacy in both student and adult populations, particularly in the areas of molecular and synthetic biology. She cofounded and directed the community lab Genspace in Brooklyn NY where she initiated Genspace’s award-winning curriculum of informal science education for adults and students in biotechnology and synthetic biology, which resulted in Genspace being named one of the World's Top 10 Innovative Companies in Education by Fast Company magazine. Her efforts to develop innovative ways to support citizen participation in science have been chronicled by Nature Medicine, Science, Discover Magazine, Wired, Make, BBC News, Dan Rather Reports, PBS News Hour, The Discovery Channel, and The New York Times. She has a Ph.D. in Molecular Biology from New York University, spent many years in the biotechnology industry, and is currently adjunct faculty at The Cooper Union and the School of Visual Arts. Dr. Jorgensen’s two TED talks (Biohacking: You Can Do It Too and What You Need To Know About CRISPR) have received over two million views. In 2017, Fast Company magazine named her one of their Most Creative Leaders in Business.

Join us for the second annual Keyed Up! Day of Piano where you can learn tips and tricks of piano performance from some of Perth’s most experienced teachers and examiners to ensure that every performance you give is one that you are proud of, whether that be for your University or School assessment, WACE practical or AMEB or other grade exams.

The skills that you learn at the Keyed Up! Day of Piano will give you the confidence to excel in all your performance endeavours!

The day will be split into 2 main streams (approximate standard):

AMEB Level 2 (5th - 8th), Certificate of Performance) and; AMEB Level 3 (Associate - Licentiate diplomas). Participants can register to perform and receive feedback from one of our expert panel in an informal workshop setting. Observers are also welcome!

Tickets: www.trybooking.com/261636 Participants $10 Parents accompanying students/Observers $5

We know very little about the role of fauna in Australian archaeology, particularly what species people hunted, and how they were butchered and cooked. The majority of our understanding comes from archaeological assemblages and ethnography. However animal . Previously, such studies were restricted to the ungulate (hooved) animals of North America, Europe and Africa. This current project is building the most comprehensive database of its type anywhere in the world. Results from this research also have important implications for the ‘modern Australian palaeodiet’, specifically what native animals we should incorporate into our everyday lives. Bio

Jillian Garvey is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the Department of Archaeology and History at La Trobe University researching human occupation, subsistence and land-use in late Quaternary northwest Victoria and Tasmania. She has combined her background in archaeology and zoology to specialise in zooarchaeology, and is interested in the role of Australia native fauna (both vertebrate and invertebrate) in Australian archaeology.

Nicaragua contains an enormous quantity of rock art, which is virtually unknown, and little formal rock art research or analysis has been carried out there. Her data consists of the largest body of formally recorded rock art in Lower Central America, collected during the course of the Ometepe Archaeological Project, which she has directed over ten field seasons. Over 2000 modified basalt boulders have been recorded, the vast majority of which contain petroglyph motifs. Her thesis research will focus on establishing the identity or identities of the makers of the art and its ritual significance.

Suzanne Baker is currently a doctoral student in rock art studies at Centre for Rock Art Research and Management, University of Western Australia. She is normally the principal and senior archaeologist for a cultural research management firm in Oakland, California.

Black Market Pudding is a twist on the traditional Irish blood sausage. It represents an ethically-conscious food product, combining congealed pig blood with fats, cereals and spices. Black Market Pudding is manufactured using blood taken from a living pig. It proposes a cyclical business model to ensure a uniquely fair deal for farmer, animal and consumer. Through a routine veterinary procedure, blood is obtained from the animal in a humane, healthy and safe way. Producers are compensated for costs associated with breeding and maintaining pigs that are kept outside of the traditional food chain. Consumers pay a premium market price for the pudding and the reassurance that no animals are harmed in the making of this product. Black Market Pudding confronts us with the taboo of consuming blood taken from a living animal, echoing the harvesting habits of vampire bats and other blood consuming animals. However, the artist argues that it is no more unusual than drinking milk, eating eggs or wearing wool. Difficult to produce, Black Market Pudding highlights how comparatively easy (and legal) it is to kill an animal while there is no clear-cut legal process for taking and consuming the blood of a live animal. Black Market Pudding was previously produced and consumed legally in the Netherlands, Poland and Ireland, and was displayed as part of Blood: Not for the faint-hearted at Science Gallery Dublin (2014), and featured as part of ARTMEATFLESH live cooking show and evening of SymbioticA in Rotterdam 2012.

John O’Shea is a UK-based curator, producer and artist working with unconventional materials and social structures to create new and experimental approaches to artmaking. In 2011/12 he worked as artist in residence at University of Liverpool Clinical Engineering Research Unit on a Wellcome Trust funded project "Pigs Bladder Football" where he created the world's first bio-engineered football - grown from living pig bladder cells. O’Shea is in Australia through the support of Science Gallery Melbourne, who have commissioned a new version of the work for their Blood: Attract and Repel exhibition: 25-7 -2017 to 5-10-2017. More info here: https://melbourne.sciencegallery.com/blood-attract-repel