What's On at UWA

A public lecture by Paolo Boccagni, Associate Professor, Sociology, University of Trento, Italy and 2019 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

All across social sciences and humanities, "home" has emerged as a unique research topic, despite its inherent ambiguity, as it bridges a variety of divides - public vs private, material vs immaterial, descriptive vs prescriptive, "us" vs "them". However, under conditions of displacement and large-scale migration home is no more what it used to be. From an apparently natural background to people's lives, it turns into something to be achieved, or recovered, from scratch. Struggling for an adequate and ideally better home, successfully or not, is a process that irremediably parallels migrant life trajectories. Likewise, retaining some aspects of all that used to stand for home, while adapting to the views, emotions and practices associated with home in the countries of destination, is critical to migrant and refugee integration over time. Whether for practical purposes or in a more existential sense, coping with home anew is part and parcel of the migrant condition. Parallel to that, home - as a set of emplaced relationships and emotions, not just a place - is a key analytical tool for researching migrant trajectories and the attendant social transformations. Based on an original sociological understanding of home, and on the European Research Council HOMInG project, this lecture invites you to appreciate the significance of home for displaced and migrant people, as an often unaccomplished experience and as a balancing act between past, present and future. The methodological implications and the policy relevance of research on home and migration will also be discussed, against the backdrop of “homing” as a universal and often unmet human need.

All across social sciences and humanities, “home” has emerged as a unique research topic, despite its inherent ambiguity, as it bridges a variety of divides - public vs private, material vs immaterial, descriptive vs prescriptive, “us” vs “them”. However, under conditions of displacement and large-scale migration home is no more what it used to be. From an apparently natural background to people’s lives, it turns into something to be achieved, or recovered, from scratch. Struggling for an adequate and ideally better home, successfully or not, is a process that irremediably parallels migrant life trajectories. Likewise, retaining some aspects of all that used to stand for home, while adapting to the views, emotions and practices associated with home in the countries of destination, is critical to migrant and refugee integration over time. Whether for practical purposes or in a more existential sense, coping with home anew is part and parcel of the migrant condition. Parallel to that, home - as a set of emplaced relationships and emotions, not just a place - is a key analytical tool for researching migrant trajectories and the attendant social transformations. Based on an original sociological understanding of home, and on the European Research Council HOMInG project, this lecture invites you to appreciate the significance of home for displaced and migrant people, as an often unaccomplished experience and as a balancing act between past, present and future. The methodological implications and the policy relevance of research on home and migration will also be discussed, against the backdrop of “homing” as a universal and often unmet human need.

Paolo Boccagni’s main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on home-making and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives.

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/lectures/boccagni

People of Chinese cultural heritage has been part of the history of Western Australia since the proclamation of the Swan River Colony. They in the past were subjected to certain policies, which were legal but arguably unjust in light of contemporary societal attitude towards equality and fairness. Such policies included the poll tax (also known as the “head tax”), tonnage restrictions, exclusion from goldfields, and the dictation test. The project intends to study the period from the beginning of British settlement to the time around the abolition of the White Australia Policy. Through a cross-disciplinary approach, the project intends to examine in detail, these policies and their impact on people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia during that period.

People of Chinese cultural heritage were subjected to similar policies in other countries and other Australian states around the same time. In recent decades, many of these jurisdictions including New Zealand and Victoria have issued apologies for their past policies concerning their people of Chinese cultural heritage.

During the preliminary research of this project, it is apparent that there are ample literature on the people of Chinese cultural heritage and their experiences during the 1800s and 1900s in Western Australia. There are also an abundance of literature related to the apologies which have been made in the past. However, there is little evidence of any discussion on whether the policies of the governments of Western Australia towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage should be debated. From an academic point of view, it is of significance to address that.

It is worth noting that if there is ever going to be any public debate about this, such debate should be up to all West Australians and West Australians alone.

This project aims to, through a comparative approach, combine the studies of the history concerning the people of Chinese cultural heritage in Western Australia, the apologies delivered to people of Chinese cultural heritage in other jurisdictions for similar policies, and the apologies made to other groups of Australians to analyse whether an apology should or should not be made for its policies towards its people of Chinese cultural heritage in the past. It should always be remembered that this project is about examining whether or not a state apology is appropriate, not about finding ways to justify an apology.

Interested Postgraduate Students and Early Career Researchers whose research engages with themes of migration, home, identity and belonging are invited to attend a special research workshop with Professor Paolo Boccagni. Participants will give brief presentations summarising their research on these themes for discussion with Professor Boccagni and their academic peers.

About the Presenter

Paolo Boccagni is an associate professor in Sociology at the University of Trento, Italy. His main areas of expertise are international migration, transnationalism, social welfare, care, diversity and home. His current research is on homemaking and home-feeling processes, as a critical question for the everyday negotiation of boundaries between native and foreign-born populations. As the Principal Investigator of the European Research Council Starting Grant project HOMInG and of MIUR (Ministero dell’Istruzione, dell’Università e della Ricerca) HOASI (Home and Asylum Seekers in Italy), Paolo is leading a team of seven postdoctoral researcher fellows, doing multi-sited fieldwork on the experience of home among migrants and refugees in nine different countries. Based on these large-scale collaborative projects, Paolo is elaborating on “homing” as a lifelong set of processes through which individuals and groups try to make themselves at home. In recent years he has also done fieldwork on the ways of framing and approaching immigrant and refugee clients among social workers; on the lived experience and the sense of home of international students; on the built environment, material cultures and thresholds of domesticity in refugee reception initiatives. Paolo has published in over 30 international peer-reviewed journals in migration studies, diversity, housing, social policy and research methods. Recent publications include Migration and the Search for Home. Mapping Domestic Space in Migrants’ Everyday Lives (Palgrave, 2017) and the articles “Aspirations and the subjective future of migration” (Comparative Migration Studies, 2017), “At home in home care: Contents and boundaries of the ‘domestic’ among immigrant live-in workers in Italy” (Housing Studies, 2018), “Ambivalence and the social processes of immigrant inclusion” (with P. Kivisto,International Journal of Comparative Sociology, 2019).

Please RSVP online via www.ias.uwa.edu.au/masterclass/boccagni

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

This week the Music Students' Society hosts a staff versus student 3-on-3 debate, tackling the twisty conundrum: 'Should music be political?'

Further information at music.uwa.edu.au

A public lecture by Professor Nicoletta Marconi, University of Roma Tor Vergata and 2019 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

The contribution of female artists and craftswomen to the history of construction in early modern Rome forms an understudied part of the development of patronage of the arts and crafts of the period. It reveals another facet to the realization of ambitious social ennobling programs undertaken by papal and noble families of the Roman Curia in the Baroque period.

Nicoletta Marconi is Associate Professor in the History of Architecture at the University of Roma Tor Vergata. Her research explores the architectural and construction history of early modern Rome, with a particular focus on the St. Peter’s in Vatican building site, on architectural heritage of the Barberini family and the role of contribution of female artists and craftswomen to the history of construction in early modern Rome. She has contributed to many exhibitions and research projects, as well as published in collections and monographs.

Dr Marconi is a 2019 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

This lecture is presented by the UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies the Institute of Advanced Studies.

This year the Update tackles the important question of belonging, with the theme ‘Belonging in Western Australia: Addressing Migrant and Refugee Inclusion’. Each year around 200,000 people move permanently to Australia, and many more come temporarily for work or education – how are we, as a community, meeting their needs and ensuring they feel they ‘belong’ in Australia? Our program brings together policy makers, not-for-profits, communities and academics to explore questions such as: What does belonging look like? What are migrants’ and ethnic minorities’ experiences of inclusion and exclusion? How can services support belonging? To what extent is Australia’s migration system inclusive? How can we create inclusive spaces for migrants? What are the roles of schools, local councils, the media, and service organisations in generating belonging? Keynote Prof Paolo Boccagni (University of Trento), will speak on “Migrant Home-making: Insights from Europe”, and a range of representatives from community, government and academia will discuss experiences of belonging and unbelonging, and programs designed to promote inclusion, including arts, sports, media, local government and education based interventions.

A public lecture by Elke Krasny, Professor for Art and Education, Academy of Fine Arts Vienna.

In medical terms critical care, also known as intensive care, is a specialized branch of medicine dedicated to diagnosing and treating life-threatening conditions. For this lecture, this term is borrowed to address the planet’s life-threatening condition. Throughout the twenty-first century the condition of the planet has made headlines. The news is not good. The diagnosis is bleak. We have come to understand that the Anthropocene-Capitalocene is straining the planet to its breaking point. The planet we live on and we live with is exhausted, drained, depleted, damaged, broken. Therefore, the planet is urgently in need of critical care to repair livability and inhabitability and to restore its condition for its continued existence in the future.

Architecture and urbanism are at the heart of the modern project of capitalism. Modernist aspirations in architecture were based on the powerful promise of building a better future. Today, we live in the ruins of this promise. This lecture asks in what ways architecture and urbanism starting from the given interdependence of economy, ecology, and labor, can contribute to such critical care taking, acknowledging that there is no promise of a better future, but much rather a process of permanent repair. Following Joan Tronto’s political notion of care as everything we do to maintain and repair ourselves and our environment, the chosen examples in architecture and urbanism provide evidence that through a perspective of care social and environmental justice are not mutually exclusive.

Elke Krasny is Professor for Art and Education at the Academy of Fine Arts Vienna. She is a cultural theorist, urban researcher, and curator. Her scholarship and her curatorial work focus on critical practices in architecture, urbanism, and contemporary art addressing the interconnectedness of ecology, economy, labor, memory, and feminisms.

The Romantic choral repertoire did not always use massed forces. Join Con-Cantorum as they perform 19th-century mini masterpieces by well-loved and lesser known composers.

Tickets from $10

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Traditional forms of craftsmanship and craft production are types of intangible cultural heritage (ICH), and their survival has been challenged by urbanisation, industrialisation, and globalisation. This urgency motivates my doctoral research on heritage craft production in China, with the aim of balancing the sustainable development of profit-driven modern craft industries with the long-term conservation of the significant ICH. During my fieldwork in Jingdezhen which is the Porcelain Capital of China, a large number of interviewed porcelain craftsmen spoke highly of stateowned porcelain factories (SPFs) that operated from the mid to late 20th Century which was the period of centrally planned economy (CPE) in China. Based on grounded theory analysis of in-depth interviews with 14 former factory workers, the study concludes that the CPE in China has profoundly promoted the transmission of porcelain craftsmanship in Jingdezhen in breadth and depth. This study is thus an interrogation of whether experience can be drawn from SPFs for better ICH preservation contemporarily.

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

This week we shine a spotlight on The Winthrop Singers led by Nicholas Bannan to present a stunning program of choral works.

Free entry, no bookings required.

This paper begins with a critique of the marginality concept proposed by von Braun and Gatzweiler in Marginality: Addressing the Nexus of Poverty, Exclusion and Ecology due to its neglect of dimensions of local agency. It then proceeds to consider Scott’s rethinking of peripheral societies in Southeast Asia, as enunciated in The Art of Not Being Governed: An Anarchist History of Upland Southeast Asia (2009), which does emphasise local agency. However, in its terrestrialist agrarian bias and its overriding concern with evasion of the state in its construction of Zomia, it obscures a fuller understanding of the interplay of agency and constraint. The presentation re-evaluates aspects of Scott’s framework with regard to the very different dynamic of downstream states in outer Indonesia, emphasising the importance of market demand from outside those states (the’ X Factor’). It highlights the ways in which upriver smallholders are able to maintain an autonomous sphere of subsistence production while also engaging in commodity production, drawing on Dove’s analysis in The Banana Tree at the Gate: A History of Marginal Peoples and Global Markets in Borneo (2012). It then examines how the Zomia hypothesis must be further modified when considering the relation of mobile maritime communities to the marine-oriented states of archipelagic Southeast Asia, such as the Sulu Sultanate. The paper then presents an analysis of more recent trends in the analysis of mobile maritime communities in this region, focusing upon the Orang Laut and Bajau (Bajau Laut/Bajo/Sama Dilaut), who continue to occupy interstitial positions, particularly in the border areas of the interfaces of Indonesia, the Philippines, Singapore and Malaysia. This section draws on my own field work among various Bajau communities in Sabah and the Orang Seletar of the Johor-Singapore interface. It concludes by emphasising the necessity to consider how global forces continue to affect the interaction of contemporary nation-states with their marginal communities.

Greg Acciaioli teaches in Anthropology and Sociology and Asian Studies at The University of Western Australia. His research for the last decade has concentrated upon contestations regarding national parks in Indonesia and Malaysia. He also works on such topics as the Indonesian Indigenous people’s movement and farmer innovations in agriculture under new regulatory systems in Indonesia. This seminar draws on his research among stateless Bajau Laut in Sabah, east Malaysia, and the Seletar, an Orang Laut population found in Singapore and Johor, peninsular Malaysia.

Italy’s extension of mandatory vaccination in 2017 was a response to a public health crisis many years in the making. Vaccination rates had been in steady decline for half a decade, culminating in a measles epidemic. With existing studies demonstrating the role of vaccine hesitancy, this study sought to understand policy decisions made within the Italian public health bureaucracy between 2012 and 2017 to try and stem the vaccine confidence problem. Semistructured interviews with five key informants inside or close to government were qualitatively analysed using a theoretically informed schema to make sense of governance failures in realms of knowledge (epistemology) and action (the work of governing). Italian public health officials lacked crucial knowledge regarding the population, including how it was getting its vaccine information and what strategies might work to address hesitancy. Limited financial resources also constrained their capacity in a context of austerity. A credibility gap for government ensued, which officials sought to plug by constructing Italians as in need of firm instruction by mandatory vaccination. Mandatory vaccination can be understood as a form of control that ‘modulates’ people’s access to institutions – in this case the pre-school system. The alternative mode of governance is ‘discipline’, which uses institutions to educate, communicate and instil social norms. During the study period, Italy’s vaccination governance employed a disciplinary approach, but ineffectively. The resort to mandates in 2017 can be understood as a failure of this disciplinary approach, triggered by a series of unfortunate events that were thwarted by governance capacity gaps. The explicit control of mandates are improving Italy’s vaccination coverage rates, but the important work of discipline should not be left neglected. Effective and ethical governance to future-proof vaccine acceptance requires that the unfinished work of discipline be resumed and maintained.

At the Movies was a movie reviewing program that ran on the ABC between 2004 and 2014. Prior to that it was known as The Movie Show on SBS. Its presenters Margaret Pomeranz and David Stratton co-hosted the programs for a total of 28 years. This presentation reports on research into At the Movies, based primarily around a content analysis of the broadcast transcripts of the program, which are an unusual kind of script, and rarely analysed. The presentation will discuss some of the challenges of analyzing these documents in Nvivo. The session will also explore the problem of drawing links between research into film reviewing, screenwriting, and screen culture, drawing on Bourdieu’s work to link these fields. This presentation represents a Sabbatical report of work done in semester 1 2019. All welcome

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

Honours student Hannah Tungate presents her research on the legendary 1600s singer and composer, Barbara Strozzi, and her cantata 'Sino alla morte'.

Further information at music.uwa.edu.au

The 2019 Robin Winkler Lecture by Helen Milroy, Professor of Psychiatry at The University of Western Australia.

Indigenous mental health is an area of major concern in Australia. In this talk, Professor Milroy will consider the historical, cultural, and contemporary issues facing Indigenous peoples in regard to mental health and wellbeing and what may be required for a healing approach to be effective. The talk will provide a framework for understanding the components of healthy communities through a healing and community life development approach. Her presentation will explore major themes relating to the trauma that has occurred as a consequence of colonisation over many generations and continues to be experienced in the present, including the themes of powerlessness, disconnection, and helplessness. In turn, the talk will highlight pathways to recovery that are centred on self-determination and community governance, reconnection and community life, as well as restoration and community resilience. Professor Milroy will argue that acknowledgement of Aboriginal worldviews, developing a comprehensive, holistic approach that focuses on individual, family, and community strengths, whilst at the same time addressing the needs of the community, provides both a more culturally acceptable and effective approach to addressing these issues.

Helen Milroy is a descendant of the Palyku people of the Pilbara region of Western Australia but was born and educated in Perth. Currently she is a Consultant Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Professor at The University of Western Australia and Commissioner with the National Mental Health Commission. Helen has been on state and national mental health and research advisory committees and boards with a particular focus on Indigenous mental health as well as the wellbeing of children. From 2013-2017 Helen was a Commissioner for the Royal Commission into Institutional Responses to Child Sexual Abuse. In 2019, she was appointed as a Commissioner with the Australian Football League.

The Robin Winkler Lecture

This annual public lecture commemorates the work of Robin Winkler, a highly influential teacher and researcher at the UWA School of Psychological Science, whose work was guided by humanitarian values and a relentless questioning of accepted orthodoxies. He was a community psychologist and passionate advocate of the importance of equal access to psychological services, and of recognition of the social context in which treatment and research is being undertaken. He died at the age of 43 while heading the UWA Clinical Master’s program at the Psychology Clinic, which he established and which now bears his name. In the Oxford Handbook of the History of Psychology he is described as “a singular, crusading figure” in Australian psychology.

A public lecture by Anthony Pym, Translation Studies (Intercultural Studies), The University of Melbourne.

How good is neural machine translation? How good will it become? When everyone can use high-quality free online machine translation, what will be left for translators to do? Eschewing the facile wisdom of gurus, Anthony Pym will approach these questions empirically, looking at research on the technologies and critically assessing their claims. It will be proposed that although this is certainly not the end of the road for professional translators, new maps are needed.

Originally from Perth, Anthony Pym has been a professional translator and translator trainer in Spain, the United States and Australia for more than 20 years. He currently teaches at the University of Melbourne and is Distinguished Professor at the Rovira i Virgili University in Tarragona in Spain and Extra-ordinary Professor at Stellenbosch University in South Africa. He was President of the European Society for Translation Studies from 2010 to 2016. He has authored, co-authored or edited 28 books and some 200 articles in the general field of translation and intercultural communication. He holds a PhD in sociology from the École des Hautes Études en Sciences Sociales, Paris.

In this exhilarating concert we present a selection of 20th and 21st century orchestral showpieces that challenge perceptions and inspire performers and audience alike.

KATY ABBOTT Introduced Species

JAMES LEDGER Golden Years: Concerto for Violin and Orchestra with soloist Shaun Lee-Chen

BRITTEN Four Sea Interludes from Peter Grimes

Tickets from $18

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Various countries, including Indonesia, have developed environmental education (EE) to create environmentally responsible citizens in response to the growing challenges of environmental degradation and destruction caused by humanity. While there are many individuals who show irresponsible behaviour toward the environment, there are also individuals who are engaged in pro-environmental behaviour (PEB). Some of them may be the pioneers, the first ‘green’ individuals, who face opposition from their neighbours, especially if their pro-environmental action is considered to transgress the norms of the community. I used the term positive environmental deviants (PED) to describe such people. Learning from them may help to revealing the factors influencing their engagement in responsible environmental behaviour. Therefore, this study will explore the possibilities for using the Positive Environmental Deviance approach to improve EE in Indonesia. I will also use the Significant Life Experiences (SLE) concept to delve into the life history of the positive deviants to find what experiences influenced them to take up PEB. SLE is a retrospective exploration of the life of people who demonstrate environmental activism. I will carry out my study in several sites where I can find cases of PED. A qualitative approach, using interviews and participant observation, will be employed.

Resti Meilani is a PhD student in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia.

Abstract

This talk will bring together findings from two studies at Curtin University on the impact of allowing learners to plan for a communicative task in their first language (L1) as opposed to their foreign language (L2). The relative benefits will be discussed in terms of fluency and idea units used in an oral problem-solving task. Seventy-two Japanese university EFL learners were randomly assigned to one of two planning conditions. Dyads in each group were given 10 minutes to plan the content of a problem-solving task in the respective languages before individually performing a timed 2.5-minute oral problem-solving task in English. Data took the form of transcribed planning discussions and transcribed task performances. Task performances were coded for fluency based on Levelt’s (1989, 1999) model of speech processing, whereas all data were coded for idea units based on Hoey’s (1983, 2001) problem-solution discourse structure (situation, problem, response, evaluation). As expected, L1 planners spoke less fluently than L2 planners, monitoring their language output more in terms of number of replacements and reformulations. Also as expected, L1 planners generated more ideas connected with all four dimensions of problem-solving discourse. Contrary to expectations, however, the advantages of L1 planning in terms of task content did not transfer to L2 use. L1 and L2 planners’ were highly comparable in terms of ideas units used on the subsequent L2 task, and L2 planners were advantaged in some respects. Implications for future research and pedagogy aimed at facilitating transfer from L1 to L2 performance will be discussed.

References

Hoey, M. (1983). On the Surface of Discourse. London: George, Allen and Unwin.

Hoey, M. (2001). Textual Interaction: An Introduction to Written Discourse Analysis. London: Routledge.

Levelt, W. (1989). Speaking from intention to articulation. Cambridge, Mass: MIT Press.

Levelt, W. (1999). Producing the language: A blueprint of the speaker. In C. Brown and P. Hagoort (Eds.), The neurocognition of language (pp. 83-122). New York: Oxford Press.

Short bio

Craig Lambert is Associate Professor of Applied Linguistics in the School of Education at Curtin University in Perth, Australia. His specialization is in task-based language teaching (TBLT), and his research has focused on learner needs, materials design, motivation, fluency and syntactic development.