What's On at UWA

The recent violence against Myanmar’s Rohingya shows that genocide and ethnic cleansing are not relics of a past era. In late 2017, the Myanmar military and local Rakhine proxies drove almost 700,000 Rohingya into Bangladesh, killing 6,700 in the first month alone. The attacks were systematic, involving mass killings, rapes and the razing of entire villages. The United Nations’ Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in Myanmar concluded the violence bore “the hallmarks of genocide”. In this lecture I consider why the Myanmar military launched this campaign of annihilation by comparing the events with the genocides against Rwanda’s Tutsi in 1994 and the Indonesian Left in 1965/66. I contend that genocide occurs during periods of rapid political change when militaries perceive a serious threat to their political and economic interests and self-appointed status as the ‘guardian of the nation’. Waves of persecution against a hated group generate substantial support among civil society groups, reaffirm the military’s central role in society while simultaneously instilling sufficient fear to preclude any further challenge. Genocides can be both popular and effective.

A public lecture by Elizabeth Reid, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UWA.

Between 1494 and 1559 two major European powers, the French Valois and the Austro-Spanish Habsburg fought a series of wars in a competitive bid to expand their territory into the Italian Peninsula. This period was characterised by ever-shifting allegiances, conspiracies, battles, and peace treaties. Major military victories or new alliances forged, and sealed by marriage, often occasioned a kind of ‘victory-lap’ whereby the triumphant ruler or his bride-prize entered allied territory and were treated to carefully orchestrated festivities. Artists, composers, poets and performers utilised gendered allegories to honour the entering party and to communicate the rich cultural identity of the city itself. Entries were just one level at which the politics of peace played on culturally engrained ideas of masculine strength juxtaposed with feminine vulnerability. This talk will contextualise and discuss key entries in light of this gendered framework. It is supported by a new ARC research project that aims to reconsider the events and cultural output of the Italian Wars through the lens of gender.

This talk is part of the lecture series - Peace and War: Representations in European Art and Literature. The three lectures in this series, offered by UWA academics associated with the UWA Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies, focus on representations of war and peace in European art and literature. Collectively, they will examine the contexts and reception of cultural and political practices of war and peace in the medieval and early modern era from the perspectives of emotions history, medievalism, and gender studies. In this way, the series stands to challenge conventional interpretations of European life in wartime from the sixteenth- to the nineteenth century.

A public lecture by Frans Swanepoel, Research Professor, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

Currently there are 1.3 billion people in Africa; more than five times the population in 1950. By 2050, Africa’s population will double to 2.6 billion, eventually reaching 4.2 billion by the end of the century – just about the entire world population in 1977. Africa is also the world’s most food insecure continent, with relatively low levels of agricultural productivity, low rural incomes, high rates of malnutrition, and a significantly worsening food trade balance. Ironically Africa has sufficient land, water and human resources to be a substantial contributor to the world’s food balance sheet, and to contribute to the growing global demand for both food staples and higher value added food, as well as to energy markets. Agriculture and the food sector also present significant opportunity for employment and wealth creation. This critical role of agriculture in fostering sustained competitiveness and profitability in the sector, in the face of a world economy that is rapidly transformed into a knowledge and network economy is acknowledged both within the scientific community and in Governments at large. Without question, agriculture and capacity strengthening are now back on the development agenda as Africa refocuses towards achieving the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). African agriculture has a number of major strengths, but also faces a significant number of challenges, a set of unique opportunities. Africa has now entered a development stage where some analysts are taking a more positive outlook and narrative as opposed to the traditional ‘Afro-pessimism’ of the last five decades. A new school of thought is emerging, one that recognises that Africa is in a better position to help itself be food secure moving forward – agriculture has started growing, albeit slowly but sustainably over the last decade. However, a number of interesting trends distinguish the economic growth of Africa from other continents. The dominant growth detected here is by small intermediary groups who are responding to rapid urbanisation and the growing ‘middle-class’. Strategies to support growth in sustainable agriculture should thus be responsive to these trends in order to vastly improve food security on the African continent.

In 1989 the wall between East and West Berlin came down and the Soviet Union collapsed. Hungary as part of the Soviet block had virtually been occupied by Russia for the previous 40 years.

In 1990 Hungary was economically weak and very quickly they saw their best opportunity for economic growth was to seek capital investment from the west. Coca-Cola Amatil Australia identified the potential of building their business and purchased the State-run Coca-Cola Franchises of Hungary & the Czech Republic in 1990. The operations in Hungary were in dire need of modernisation both in manufacturing & marketing. Jim Natt was asked to join a team from Australia with this mission and he worked in Budapest for 6 months in 1991/92. It was a time when Hungarians for the first time could buy products they had seen in magazines or movies. They queued for hours at the new Levi jeans store, or Nike trainers or big Macc. Natt was focused in the Human Resources area and involved the recruitment of new marketing teams and making some difficult changes for some employees. Communism had a low unemployment rate but very low productivity from their workers. Most Hungarians had a job but not necessarily a task. The talk is a personal story of Natt’s experiences working with Hungarians adjusting to a new way of life He grew to love the people and is proud to have a very small part in helping the country prosper today.

Jim has been in the soft drink industry all his working life spending 14 years managing the family business (Mackays Aerated Waters) and 28 years with Coca-Cola Perth in Marketing and Human Resources. In 1989 he retired to pursue other goals.

He was involved in some very Interesting projects including a few years on the organising team of the Variety Club Bash – a car rally around Western Australia – and, with David Tunley, helping to manage the York Winter Music Festival and the Terrace Proms.

In 1991 Coke approached him to go to Hungary as part of a group from Coca-Cola Amatil Australia to help grow the business they had just purchased there. Jim joined the team of Australians in Budapest whose mission was to bring the franchise up to western standards of marketing and production. His appointment was for two three month periods in 1991 and 1992 and he will describe his experiences in Hungary at that time and some of the changes that were taking place.

RSVP: Kathryn Maingard – [email protected] or 08 6488 2356 https://www.eventbrite.com/e/friends-of-the-library-hungary-after-the-wall-was-over-from-communism-to-capitalism-tickets-46000112575

Members: Free, Guests: $5 donation

This Postgraduate Advanced Training Seminar (PATS) will bring established scholars in this field together with postgraduates to explore issues between emotions, the non-human world, the environment, space and place.

Students and early career scholars will have the opportunity to discuss their own research.

This PATS is explicitly interdisciplinary and exploratory, and intended to allow students from many disciplines to encounter issues that transcend their own research field and to situate their own research in the interdisciplinary context.

‘We must above all see that here it is not a matter for psychology, nor even for a psychology undergirded by physiology and biology. It is a matter of the basic modes that constitute Dasein, a matter of the ways man confronts the Da, the openness and concealment of beings, in which he stands’ – Heidegger, Nietzsche I (p.45).

Emotion is central to the life of the subject, but emotion is no mere modification of subjectivity taken on its own. Rather, emotion is an essential part of the structure that opens up the subject to the objective and to the world. In phenomenological terms, emotion is essentially disclosive of the world. Yet in being so, emotion is also tied to felt bodily locatedness – the ‘being-placed’ – of the subject. Emotion thus belongs not to phenomenology alone, but to the essential topology of the human, and as part of that topology, emotion belongs to the externality of things no less than to the internality of the self. On this basis, we can better understand the relation of emotion to the materiality of human life (the material is always ‘felt’ and the ‘felt’ is always materialised), as well as the character of emotion as itself a mode of orientation – a finding of oneself as in the world in a certain way. Only in this latter fashion, in fact, can one find oneself in the world at all.

Jeff Malpas is Distinguished Professor at the University of Tasmania and Visiting Distinguished Professor at La Trobe University. He was founder, and until 2005 Director, of the University of Tasmania’s Centre for Applied Philosophy and Ethics. He is the author or editor of 21 books on topics in philosophy, art, architecture and geography. His work is grounded in post-Kantian thought, especially the hermeneutical and phenomenological traditions, as well as in analytic philosophy of language and mind. He is currently working on topics including the ethics of place, the failing character of governance, the materiality of memory, the topological character of hermeneutics, the place of art, and the relation between place, boundary and surface.

This free public lecture is the opening keynote of the Third International CHE conference, ‘The Future of Emotions: Conversations Without Borders’, at The University of Western Australia, 14–15 June 2018.

This is a free event, but please RSVP (link on website or email [email protected])

Scholarship on the history of emotions is now rich and varied, and informed by multiple disciplinary perspectives from the humanities. This conference celebrates the many achievements of humanities emotions research and looks to new horizons in which it can be applied.

Registration details to be advised. Call for Papers closes 21 February 2018.

Facilitated by an experienced Learning Designer, this one-day workshop is a great practical opportunity for new and current teaching staff at UWA to experience the unit design process.You and your colleagues will participate in a number of sequential collaborative tasks which will allow you to explore ideas for student-centred learning as well as map out and plan the face-to-face and online elements for your unit.

Searching the grey literature is an essential step in undertaking a systematic review - but what is grey literature, why is it so important and how do you find it? This seminar will provide you with some key tools and tips to assist you. Intended for researchers planning to undertake a systematic review. Registration required, please follow the link to register.

Speaker: Luke Morgan (Univ. of Western Australia)

Title: The Distinguishing Number of Finite Permutation Groups

Time and place: 4pm Friday 15 Jun 2018, Robert Street LT (note unusual venue)

Abstract: The distinguishing number of a permutation group G acting on a set X is the smallest size of a partition of X such that only the identity of G fixes each part of the partition. The symmetric and alternating groups of degree n have distinguishing number n and n-1 respectively. On the other hand, most primitive groups one meets in the wild have distinguishing number two. In fact, apart from the symmetric and alternating groups, the distinguishing number of a primitive group is bounded by an absolute constant. At the recent CMSC retreat, Alice Devillers, Scott Harper and myself looked at a larger class of finite permutation groups, the quasiprimitive and semiprimitive groups. I'll report on what we have found happens in these cases.

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/GroupsAndCombinatoricsSeminar/S18.html

All welcome.

The 21st century has been dubbed the Asian century, as the growth of China’s economic and political influence puts increased pressure on the existing world order. For Australia, an ally of the United States situated in the Indo-Pacific region, these changes could not be more significant.

In recent years China’s rise has sparked debate about how Australia should manage the relationship with its largest trading partner. Tensions between Australia and China have noticeably increased in the first few months of 2018. As Trump and Xi go head to head on the world stage, what will be the effect on Australia China relations, and what role can Australia play in these turbulent times?

Join in the conversation with our experts for what is likely one of the defining issues of our time.

This event is proudly presented by the Confucius Institute of UWA in partnership with Perth USAsia and Australia China Business Council.

This full-day workshop for postgraduates and ECRs provides an opportunity to explore and gain familiarity with some of the key techniques and methodologies of computational research in the humanities, with a focus on the needs of medievalists and early modernists. It is structured around a supportive lab-based environment, learning from scholars with ongoing digital humanities projects in the history of emotions.

Places are limited. Registration is essential. Contact [email protected] to register.

Abstract: The recently announced $400m Myalup-Wellington project in South West WA is a private-public partnership project between the Collie catchment in the east and the Myalup and Collie irrigation districts in the west. Collie Water was formed to implement and operate the project. It has a close relationship with Harvey Water, the primary water service provider from Wellington Dam. The project links with the movement of pines from Myalup to the Collie Catchment and the creation of new irrigation areas.

Richard will outline the steps involving headwater diversion of saline inflows to a desalinisation plant, thereby lowering Wellington Dam salinity, while creating over 10 GL/y of fresh water for Water Corporation to deliver to Great Southern towns. Lowering Wellington salinity provides the opportunity to improve crop and pasture yields and recover saline land in the Collie River Irrigation District. A mix of local and fresh Wellington water will be used to augment groundwater supplies in the Myalup Irrigation Area, including storing water over winter in the Superficial Aquifer.

The project has a number of potential research issues; the recovery of saline irrigated land, managed aquifer recharge, reviving wetlands affected by low watertables and salinity, environmental flows in drains, optimising new irrigation areas after a combination of pine removal and sand mining.

Speaker: Gabriel Verret (Univ. of Auckland)

Title: Compatible local actions in arc-transitive digraphs

Time and place: 4pm Friday 22 Jun 2018, Blakers LT

Abstract: Given a G-arc-transitive graph, the local action is the permutation group induced by a vertex-stabiliser Gv on the neighbourhood of v. It plays an extremely important role in the study of these objects. The situation for digraphs is a little more complicated. One can consider both the in- and out-local-action, that is, the permutation group induced by a vertex-stabiliser on the corresponding in- and out-neighbourhood, respectively. Perhaps surprisingly, these two permutation groups need not be isomorphic, they may not even have the same order. We say that two permutation groups are compatible if they arise in this way, that is, as the in- and out-local action of some finite G-arc-transitive digraph. We will discuss the problem of characterising compatible permutation groups. It turns out that the question can be reformulated in a purely group theoretic manner, in a very nice way.

Past and future seminars may be found at http://www.maths.uwa.edu.au/~glasby/GroupsAndCombinatoricsSeminar/S18.html

There will be cake in the Mathematics and Statistics tea room at 15:40. The seminar starts at 16:00, and after 17:05 we go to the UniClub for a drink.

All welcome.

The Centre for Cell Therapy and Regenerative Medicine is holding a mid-Winter Symposium around the visit by a delegation of stem cell scientists from Helmholtz Centre Munich.

The Helmholtz presentations will be headlined by Micha Drukker, leader of the Pluripotent Stem Cell Differentiation Laboratory, who will give the Perkins/CCTRM lunchtime seminar. He will address the challenges and recent breakthroughs on producing clinical grade pluripotent cells.

Lunch will be followed by an early career researchers session, with ECR from Helmholtz mixed with those from UWA to present on the hottest topics in cell therapy and regenerative medicine.

Talks for the remainder of the Symposium sessions will come from the full spectrum of CCTRM participants presenting highlights from their latest research.

Do you want to ensure that your research data is secure, accessible and reusable into the future? Find out how you can apply research data management best practice in all phases of the research lifecycle to ensure this happens. UWA offers a suite of services which aim to help researchers meet funder and publisher requirements in terms of data storage and access.

Bring your questions, the presenters will be available for 15 minutes after the workshop for individual consultations.

The aim of this course is to introduce you to basic statistics. It will cover descriptive statistics (means and standard deviations); data exploration; basic categorical data analysis; simple linear regression and basic analysis of variance (ANOVA). The statistical package SPSS will be used to illustrate the ideas demonstrated. The course will be held in a computer laboratory allowing participants to immediately apply the material covered through a series of practical examples.

A public lecture by Hilary Carey, Professor of Imperial & Religious History, University of Bristol; Conjoint Professor of History, University of Newcastle, NSW and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

[God] hath made of one blood all nations of men for to dwell on all the face of the earth, and hath determined the times before appointed, and the bounds of their habitation (Acts 17:26. KJV).

Until challenged by Darwinian evolution, Christians believed on excellent biblical authority that ‘all nations of men’ were God’s creation and there could be no fundamental division between them. From this it followed that all the extraordinary cultural diversity exhibited by the peoples of the world disguised an essential unity: they were ‘one blood’. This talk will examine the work of the Scottish schoolteacher Dr John Fraser (1834-1904) who sought to prove that the languages of the Australian Aborigines demonstrated that they were descended from the Dravidian peoples of southern India and were, ultimately, Babylonian in origin. Fraser’s views were published as part of his 1892 edition of the works of the missionary Lancelot Threlkeld (1877-1859) which was prepared as part of the New South Wales contribution to the World’s Columbian exhibition in Chicago in 1893. Fraser was both an able linguist and a skilled editor but those who have encountered the important work of Lancelot Threlkeld and his collaborator Biraban through his edition have found his biblical arguments distracting, if not bizarre.

This lecture will consider John Fraser as a representative of a Calvinist rear guard who sought to use the science of linguistics to defend the literal and scientific value of biblical narratives. Far from being a marginal figure, Fraser was at the centre of an extensive network of missionary linguists seeking to harmonise knowledge of Pacific and Aboriginal languages with scriptural deep history.

Telethon Kids Institute (UWA's Centre for Child Health Research) invites all prospective Honours, M.D., and higher degree by research students to join us for the evening to learn more about becoming a student with us!

Our supervisors will be speaking to students about their student projects and research areas. You will get to learn more about what we do, our current research projects, and our facilities. You will also get a chance to meet current students and learn more about our student programs, scholarships and support services.

When: Thursday 28th June, 5:00 – 6:30pm

Where: Telethon Kids Institute; 100 Roberts Rd, Subiaco WA 6008

RSVP: ProspectiveStudentEvening2018.splashthat.com

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

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