UWA Logo What's On at UWA
   UWA HomeProspective Students  | Current Students  | Staff  | Alumni  | Visitors  | About  |     Search UWA    for      
 

What's On at UWA

* Login to add events... *
Today's date is Thursday, March 28, 2024
Events for the public
 July 2019
Tuesday 23
11:00 - SEMINAR - UWA Centre for Muslim States and Societies (CMSS) Seminar : 'The Rise of Islamism in the Maldives' More Information
This presentation examines the spectacular emergence of Islamism in the twenty-first century in the island nation of the Maldives, where Islam has existed for about 800 years. It problematizes the conventional view that political Islam is the other of the modern state or an outcome of an aberrant understanding of Islam. As counterintuitive as it is, the chapter argues that the genealogy of Islamism goes back to the institutional and discursive politicisation of Islam through modern nation building since 1930s by state actors with Islamic modernist orientations. Those nation building projects transformed Islam into a modern religion in two primary ways. First, instead of jettisoning Islam from the polity, Islam was institutionalised into modern institutional forms – constitutions, codified laws and rules, centralised state authority, a bureaucratised judicial system. Second, Islam was also transformed into an extra-institutional public political discourse of collective national identity. Both forms of statist political Islam in many ways conformed to the liberal expectations and sensibilities consistent with Islamic modernist orientations. However, instead of weakening Islam in the polity, it was deeply embedded in the political domain. The paper shows that Islamism in the twenty-first century was unwittinglynourished by those forms of political Islam in the polity, as Islamism finds the right ‘language’ already in the political domain. While Islamism agrees with the modalities of the forms of political Islam that emerged through modern nation building, it deeply contests the content, as it were, of them. Oppositional Islamism wants more substantive institutionalisation of Islam and more substantive religious identity for the people, threatening even the liberal aspects of statist political Islam.

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - Pulling Back the Big Blue Curtain: big fish and big parks Website | More Information
A public lecture by Jessica Meeuwig, Professor of Marine Science, The University of Western Australia and 2019 Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering Eminent Speaker.

Oceans are fundamental to life on planet “earth”. Over 72% of the planet’s surface is water; every 2nd breath we take is oxygen produced by the sea; and our food security depends on protein caught from the ocean. Yet humans are rapidly transforming our oceans and not in a good way. Globally, we are literally emptying the oceans of fish. Only 5% of hammerhead and thresher sharks remain relative to their numbers in 1950. Tunas are down to approximately 40% of historical numbers, and in the case of southern bluefin tuna, 95% are gone. In Australia, some estimates suggest that over 30% of large fish have been fished out, with large tiger, white and hammerheads declining by up to 92% in Queensland. In Western Australia, key species such as western rock lobster, dhufish and herring became so depleted that catch was cut in half to allow stocks to rebuild.

In the face of these challenges, marine parks, areas where marine life is protected from fishing, have been strongly advocated for by the science community as research shows that the coastal fish diversity, abundance and size increases in these protected areas. Australia has now established large marine parks in our offshore “big blue” waters and the question is: how does ocean wildlife respond to protection. We explore this question by deploying non-destructive baited video cameras in offshore waters to identify, count and measure ocean wildlife. This is a window onto our new marine parks.

This lecture is presented by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and the Australian Academy of Technology and Engineering.
Wednesday 24
18:00 - FREE LECTURE - Finding Rembrandt in Love and Life : A public lecture by Professor Susan Broomhall (The University of Western Australia) Website | More Information
This lecture explores how the character of Rembrandt van Rijn is interpreted through place, gender and emotions in museums and heritage sites in the Netherlands today. It focuses on the cities of Leiden and Amsterdam, Rembrandt’s homes, and particularly, the role of women in shaping interpretations of Rembrandt’s life and work. Historical women in Rembrandt’s life are increasingly employed as tools to understand the artist’s mind in creative responses such as Peter Greenaway’s 2006 film Nightwatching or the 2009 Australian opera by Andrew Ford and Sue Smith, Rembrandt’s Wife. This lecture investigates how heritage sites have likewise co-opted Rembrandt’s relationships with women, in a range of ways, in order to increase visitor engagement.

This public lecture is part of the 'Rembrandt – 350th Anniversary Lecture Series' presented by the Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia and sponsored by the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - Finding Rembrandt in Love and Life Website | More Information
A public lecture by Dr Susan Broomhall, School of Humanities (History), UWA.

This lecture explores how the character of Rembrandt van Rijn is interpreted through place, gender and emotions in museums and heritage sites in the Netherlands today. It focuses on the cities of Leiden and Amsterdam, Rembrandt’s homes, and particularly, the role of women in shaping interpretations of Rembrandt’s life and work. Historical women in Rembrandt's life are increasingly employed as tools to understand the artist's mind in creative responses such as Peter Greenaway's 2006 film 'Nightwatching' or the 2009 Australian opera by Andrew Ford and Sue Smith, 'Rembrandt's Wife'. This lecture investigates how heritage sites have likewise co-opted Rembrandt's relationships with women, in a range of ways, in order to increase visitor engagement.

Rembrandt’s death took place 350 years ago this year, in 1669. Museums across the globe, from Amsterdam to the Arabian Gulf, are staging exhibitions to commemorate his artistic legacy, and a life that was far from a masterpiece. Sometimes dismissed contemptuously in his own time, the supreme genius of Rembrandt is now universally acknowledged. The Institute of Advanced Studies at The University of Western Australia is pleased to present a series of lectures offering insights into the artist’s life, his work and its reception.
Thursday 25
13:30 - FORUM - The UWA Institute of Agriculture Industry Forum : Finding Common Ground: Bringing food, fibre and ethics to the same table Website | More Information
With increasing public scrutiny of agricultural practices in food and fibre production, rebuilding trust between innovative primary producers and ethically informed consumers is becoming more important than ever before. Join us for a lively discussion on finding common ground and moving forward together.

The event program is as follows: 1.30pm Registration and refreshments, 2.00pm Event start, 5.00pm - 6.30pm Sundowner

For more details, view the flyer: http://www.ioa.uwa.edu.au/publications/industry-forum
Friday 26
14:30 - SEMINAR - Anthropology & Sociology Seminar Series : The Thermal Complex: Air conditioning Urban Asia in an era of Climate Change More Information
As cities across the world endure increase extremes of heat, indoor comfort has become a key vector in the debate about sustainability and energy consumption. Across Asia the carbon footprint of buildings continues to rise because of the widespread adoption of air conditioning. Current trends are unsustainable, and alternative, less energy intensive comfort regimes need to be maintained or cultivated.

This presentation examines such challenges as a thermal complex, an approach that seeks to move the debate beyond questions of engineering and smart-city solutions. In this informal presentation we want to outline our struggle at conceptualising a book, and the challenges of imparting socio-cultural histories and political analyses into a domain dominated by techno-scientific discourses.

Jiat Hwee Chang is Associate Professor at the School of Design and Environment, National University of Singapore, and is author of a number of books, including A Genealogy of Tropical Architecture: Colonial Networks, Nature and Technoscience. He is also co-founder of Southeast Asia Architecture Research Collaborative (SEAARC).

Tim Winter is ARC Professorial Future Fellow in the School of Sciences, UWA and was Lead CI on 2 international research collaborations on air conditioning and urban development in Southeast Asia (ARC DP) and the Middle East (QNRF).
Wednesday 31
18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - Pyrogeography and Fire Management Website | More Information
A public lecture by David Bowman, Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science, School of Natural Sciences,The University of Tasmania.

There is increasing recognition that a focus on understanding wildfire as a narrow physical phenomenon, and the associated pursuit of better predictions, is unable to stem the global epidemic of fire disasters. More holistic thinking is required by broadening the intellectual framework of wildland fire science to accommodate multiple, and sometimes competing, socio-political and biophysical perspective of fire. Pyrogeography encourages such broader thinking about landscape fire because it integrates and synthesizes insights and knowledge from intellectual domains with a stake in wildfire including, for example, the creative arts and design, humanities and cultural studies, and fundamental and applied hard and soft sciences. A pyrogeographic framework can enable transiting from the current vicious cycle of problematizing wildfire disasters to a more virtuous cycle of problem solving to achieve sustainable co-existence with fire. This is so because pyrogeography encourages ‘neural diversity’ by giving voice to difference points of view that lie outside classical fire science and fire management paradigms thereby revealing both barriers and opportunities for social and environmental adaptation to wildfire in a non-stationary climate. Pyrogeography thus creates space for innovation, fosters diversity, and provides pathways for building social capacity and capital in communities vulnerable to fire disasters.

This public lecture is part of the Prescribed Burning Conference 2019 - Evidence and Policy being held at UWA from 31 July - 1 August 2019. Details http://pbc2019.com.au/index.php

18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - PRISON versus WESTERN AUSTRALIA Website | More Information
A public lecture by Barry Godfrey, Professor of Social Justice, University of Liverpool and Russell Ward Visiting Professor, University of New England and 2019 UWA Fred Alexander Fellow.

Which worked best, the system of convict transportation or the British home convict service? Between 1850 and 1868 a natural experiment in punishment took place when men convicted of similar crimes could either serve their sentence of penal servitude in Britain or in Western Australia. For historians and social scientists, this offers the prospect of addressing a key question posed over two-hundred years ago by the philosopher, penal theorist, and reformer Jeremy Bentham, when he authored a lengthy letter entitled ‘PANOPTICON versus NEW SOUTH WALES’. Bentham, and subsequent generations of historians did not have the data to answer this question, but now we do. This lecture asks whether British convicts or Australian convicts had higher rates of reconviction; and how both Big Data and biographical research can help us to answer this question.

Barry Godfrey is the 2019 UWA Fred Alexander Fellow. The Fred Alexander Fellowship is dedicated to the memory of Professor Fred Alexander (1899-1996), the founding Head of the History Discipline (then Department) at The University of Western Australia.

 August 2019
Thursday 01
18:00 - PUBLIC TALK - No Sense of Place? Website | More Information
The 2019 George Seddon Memorial Lecture by Don Bradshaw, Emeritus Professor, Zoology.

It is over forty years since the publication of George Seddon’s 'Sense of Place', a masterly evocation of the city of Perth and its environs. Perth has grown and changed much in the interim and is now beset with a number of problems with which it grapples. Finding enough water to satisfy the needs of a rapidly-growing population, urban sprawl, vehicle congestion and the continuing destruction of biodiversity-rich banksia woodlands are just a few. Planners struggle to respond to the divergent agenda of developers and environmentalists and many question the sustainability of our current life style. Have we lost our sense, and are we in danger of losing our place?

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

George Seddon AM (1927-2007) was an Emeritus Professor of Environmental Science at the University of Melbourne and a Senior Honorary Research Fellow in English at The University of Western Australia. His books include 'Swan River Landscapes', 'A Landscape for Learning' and 'Sense of Place'. He was awarded the Eureka Prize from the Australian Museum in 1995, the Mawson Medal from the Academy of Science in 1996 and a Lifetime Achievement Award from the Planning Institute of Australia.

19:30 - PERFORMANCE - UWA Music presents: Centre Stage | Musica Nova with Lina Andonovska Website | More Information
Quickly gaining recognition internationally as a fearless and versatile artist, Lina Andonovska (flute) enjoys a diverse career as soloist, chamber musician, orchestral player, collaborator and educator. In this concert, staff and students come together with Andonovska to perform exciting works for contemporary woodwinds by Dorff, Berio, Connesson, Penderecki and Liebermann.

Tickets from $10

trybooking.com/BASXC
Friday 02
11:00 - SEMINAR - The Clash of Ideologies � How? Making sense of the Christianity-related protests in contemporary China : This talk about decoding the State-religion contention in contemporary China will be followed by a seminar in the afternoon hosted by the Anthropology and Sociology group More Information
This talk aims to offer an analytical framework to make sense of the abundant empirical materials regarding the Christianity related protests in contemporary China. It argues that the inherent ambiguity in the Chinese Communist Party’s (CCP) religious policy is fundamentally responsible for the many Christianity-related protests in contemporary China. However, while many Christianity-related protests in contemporary China are closely associated with the clash of ideologies, the specific causes of protests differ significantly among Catholic churches, Protestant churches, and Christian-inspired groups. The ideological incompatibility between the ruling CCP and the Catholic Church in China is epitomised by their struggle for authority and influence over the Chinese Catholic community. On the contrary, some influential Protestant church leaders have turned their progressive theology into social activism since the turn of the 21st century, leading to various forms of protests against the authoritarian policies and politics in contemporary China. In addition, ideological and theological conflicts between different religions or religious schools may also trigger the CCP’s suppression of certain religious groups and activities, which often in turn cause protests.

Dr Yu Tao teaches and researches contemporary China at the University of Western Australia. A political sociologist by training, he conducts theoretical and empirical analysis into the intersections and interactions among religious groups, civic organisations and local state agencies in contemporary China and overseas Chinese communities.

13:00 - PERFORMANCE - UWA Music presents: Lunchtime Concert | Lina Andonovska More Information
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.

Fresh from her solo recital at Musica nova Helsinki (Finland’s largest contemporary music festival), Lina Andonovska joins us as a Royal Over-Seas League Visiting Artist to perform an exciting program which champions electronics and innovative audio manipulation with works by Brett Dean, Chris Cerrone, Jacob TV and Donnacha Dennehy.

Free entry, no bookings required.

14:30 - SEMINAR - Anthropology and Sociology Seminar Series : Why do Chinese cadres worry about religion? Findings from a list experiment More Information
The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is often portrayed in the West as hostile towards religion, and the Party indeed still prohibits its members from joining any religion. How should we understand the apparent incompatibility between the CCP and religion? Is the CCP hostile towards religion because of the atheist ideology of a Communist Party? Or is the CCP, as an ‘organisational emperor’, is concerned with the strong organisational capacity that religious groups have in mobilising contentious politics? Moreover, if we were to study this topic through direct interviews, could we believe what Chinese cadres tell us in the first place? In this work-in-progress presentation, we will report findings revealed by a simple, yet sophisticatedly designed, list experience with 170 junior CCP cadres in Beijing. Our result demonstrates that the problem of social desirability exists in some, but not all, dimensions of the perceptions that Chinese cadres have on religion. We also revealed that Chinese cadres tend to perceive different religions with different levels of concerns, while in general they have much stronger concern over the frequency of religious congregation (i.e. the organisational aspect of religion) than over individual religious participations (i.e. the ideological aspect of religion).

15:00 - SEMINAR - The Formation of Grass-roots Heritage Movements In Iran More Information
In this presentation, I examine the activities of a group of heritage enthusiasts in Iran. Grass-roots heritage activism is a relatively recent phenomenon that appeared in Iran since the late 1990s. Activists often operate collectively, as NGOs that focus on heritage. They represent a range of cultural and socioeconomic origins with different political views. However, they share a certain ambivalence towards and critical approach to official, state definitions of heritage and identity. By referring to data collected through fieldwork I argue that these activities constitute a form of heritage movement and outline some of the characteristics of this movement.

Ali Mozaffari is a Fellow of the Australian Research Council with the Alfred Deakin Institute at Deakin University. Through his research, he seeks to understand the uses of the past in contemporary discourses of heritage and built environment in Iran and West Asia. His publications include Forming National Identity in Iran: The Idea of Homeland Derived from Ancient Persian and Islamic Imaginations of Place (2014) and World Heritage in Iran: Perspectives on Pasargadae (2016), and “Picturing Pasargadae: Visual Representation and the Ambiguities of Heritage in Iran” (Iranian Studies, 2017).
Tuesday 06
13:00 - SEMINAR - Asian Studies Semiar Series : Being Japanese, Indigenous Australian, and 'mixed' in Broome More Information
This conversational presentation will consider both the process and the implications of intermittent research conducted by Associate Professor Yamanouchi since 2009 in the vibrant, northern, coastal town of Broome, in Western Australia's Kimberley region. Via a focus on emphases such as a Japanese diaspora, identity, history, ethnicity, food, place‐naming and making, the complex extent to which Indigenous Australians and persons with Japanese heritage identify and interact in Broome, will be explored, alongside an interest in theories of contemporary identity.

Dr Yuriko Yamanouchi is an Associate Professor at the Tokyo University of Foreign Studies (TUFS). She finished PhD (Anthropology) at the University of Sydney. She has been visiting Broome and conducting research with Indigenous people who share a Japanese heritage since 2009. Dr Yamanouchi lectures in Oceania Studies Course at TUFS (The Tokyo University of Foreign Studies).

13:00 - SEMINAR - Political Science and International Relations Seminar Series 2019 : Title:Environmental Populism: The Politics of Survival in the Anthropocene More Information
Populism is popular but generally gets a bad press—for good reasons. But could populism actually be a progressive force in domestic and even international politics? Recent movements such as Occupy Wall Street and the abortive Arab Spring suggest it might. This presentation previews my forthcoming book and considers—more in hope than expectation—whether a populist upsurge could actually mobilise around the issue of climate change. We will undoubtedly be forced to respond to climate change eventually, but thoughtful, constructive responses may no longer be possible by the time we do. Yet public pressure to make policymakers act in environmentally sustainable ways is still just about possible. Progressive forms of populism, especially in democratic states, could compel even the most conservative politicians to take climate change seriously before it is too late. As Mrs Thatcher might have said, as far as the majority of us who have no influence over policy are concerned, there really is no alternative. This presentation is based on Mark’s new book of the same name.


18:30 - EVENT - From evidence to empowerment � translating UWA breastfeeding research into practice Website | More Information
To mark World Breastfeeding Week, three of UWA’s leading breastfeeding researchers will share their research projects and participate in a panel discussion:

* What does the research tell us about the role of breastfeeding in allergy prevention? - with Professor Valerie Verhasselt, Larsson-Rosenquist Chair in Human Lactology;

* Breastfeeding the baby reduces obesity and related diseases later in life: how does that work? - with Associate Professor Donna Geddes, Chief Investigator of the Hartmann Human Lactation Research Group and

* LactaMap, an online lactation care support system - with Melinda Boss, Senior Research Fellow, School of Allied Health.

Parents, extended families, health professionals and interested members of the general public are invited to join the discussion.
Wednesday 07
18:00 - SCREENING - The Stanford Prison Experiment Website | More Information
Join us for a screening of The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), followed by a discussion with Alex Haslam, Professor of Social and Organizational Psychology and an Australian Laureate Fellow at the University of Queensland.

The Stanford Prison Experiment is a feature film that revisits the psychology of power and abuse. In 1971, twenty-four male students at Stanford University were divided into guards and prisoners in a mock jail, and quickly spiralled into sadism and subordination. Adapting it for the screen, director Kyle Patrick Alvarez cranks up the claustrophobia to nightmarish levels.

It is true that prisons are damaging places for both prisoners and prison workers. But it is dangerous to derive general implications about human behaviour from flawed evidence; the Stanford Prison Experiment has been used to banalize evil by arguing that any ‘‘ordinary’’ individual can be made to engage in extraordinarily malicious acts, and this is simply not the case. As Professor Alex Haslam will argue, the social psychology textbooks will need to be re-written.
Thursday 08
12:00 - EVENT - Asian Studies Semiar Series : Towards a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of international student mobility More Information
In recent years, scholarship on international student mobility (ISM) has proliferated across various social science disciplines. Of late, an interest in the ethics and politics of ISM seems to be emerging, as more scholars begin to consider critically questions about rights, responsibility, justice, equality, etc., that inhere in the thorny relationships between ISM stakeholders. To date, however, these discussions remain largely scattered. Bringing together these scattered conversations in literature, this paper outlines elements of a framework for (re)thinking the ethics and politics of ISM. The proposed framework identifies eight key ISM actors between whom various ethical and political relationships arise, where these relationships range from the social to the institutional. Furthermore, the framework discusses four sets of concepts from the literature deemed pertinent in thinking further about ISM ethics and politics. This proposed framework is aimed at stimulating further conversations and efforts to make ISM more socially equitable and sustainable.

Dr Peidong Yang (DPhil Oxford) is an Assistant Professor of Sociology and Social Studies Education at the National Institute of Education (NIE), Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. With a background in sociology of education, Dr Yang’s research interests are mainly located at the intersections between education and migration/mobility. He is the author of International Mobility and Educational Desire: Chinese Foreign Talent Students in Singapore (Palgrave, 2016) and various international peer‐reviewed journal articles and book chapters.


13:00 - EVENT - Heading for Extinction (And What to Do About It) : A public presentation from Extinction Rebellion WA about the climate crisis and our response to it Website | More Information
There is no more time to delay taking urgent action on the ecological crisis which is upon us. Unless we respond now, societal collapse and mass extinction are seen as inevitable by scientists and many other experts. We can all feel it coming.

Extinction Rebellion WA is part of an international movement that uses non-violent civil disobedience to minimise the risk of human extinction and ecological collapse. Extinction Rebellion believes it is a citizen’s duty to rebel. History shows us that peaceful civil disobedience is the most effective way to bring about rapid social change.

In this public talk, we will share the latest climate science on where our planet is heading, discuss some of the current psychology around climate change, and offer solutions through the study of social movements.

In August, Extinction Rebellion WA will roll out direct actions across Perth, including a Declaration at Parliament on August 15th.

Everyone is welcome and there will be time to ask questions and discuss afterwards

Alternative formats: Default | XML


Top of Page
© 2001-2010  The University of Western Australia
Questions? Mail [email protected]