What's On at UWA

This is your night! Gather your family and friends and join Santa for the 2019 UWA Christmas Concert in support of Lifeline WA. The UWA Conservatorium of Music, national artists and community choirs will perform all your favourite Christmas songs.

Hosted by Nadia Mitsopoulos (ABC and Lifeline WA), this year’s concert is the biggest yet, as we move to a new location on UWA’s Riley Oval. Have your face-painted, visit the Christmas craft corner and have a chat to the one and only Santa.

So pack a picnic, don your Santa hat and bring the whole family along for a fun-filled festive musical evening!

There will be a selection of tasty snacks available from local food trucks and the University Club of WA will be open if you want to grab a pre-show drink. Please bring something to sit on (chairs only permitted in marked areas).

Time: Pre-show entertainment starts at 6pm with a special kids program at 6.30pm. Main show starts at 7pm.

Parking: Please consider using public transport as parking is limited during the Perth Festival Lotterywest Film Season at the Somerville Auditorium  (why not make a night of it and catch a movie at the after the concert)?

Bookings: FREE entry - suitable for all ages, please register online.

Complexity and quantum science appear at first to be two fields that bear little relation. One deals with the science of the very large – seeking the understand how unexpected phenomena can emerge in vast systems consisting of many interacting components. Quantum theory, on the other hand, deals with particles at the microscopic level and is usually considered limited to the domain of individual photons and atoms. Yet, different as they appear, there is growing evidence that in interfacing ideas from quantum and complexity science, we may unveil new perspective in either both fields.In this masterclass, Mile Gu will first give a tutorial on computational mechanics, a branch of complexity science captures structure by building the simplest causal models of natural observations. He wll then illustrate how many processes that require complex classical models may be simulated by remarkably simple quantum devices and describe recent experiments to test this laboratory conditions. He will survey the potential consequences these developments, highlighting how the indicate that fundamental notions of structure, complexity, and even the arrow of time, may change when the quantum properties of information are taken account. He will then review recent experiments in, where many of these consequences are illustrated through photonic systems.

Mile Gu currently leads the quantum and complexity science initiative - which seeks to explore how quantum technologies can help us understand the science of complex systems (www.quantumcomplexity.org) and holds appointments with the Complexity Institute at Nanyang Technological University and the Centre for Quantum Technologies at the National University of Singapore. Gu’s past research span the areas of quantum information, complexity theory and optical quantum computation, and has been featured in Science and Natural suite Journals. Prior to his current appointment, Gu obtained his PhD at the University of Queensland, and spent three years as faculty at the Institute for Interdisciplinary Information Sciences Tsinghua University under the China 1000 talents program.

A public lecture by Dr Ron Kikinis, Professor of Radiology, Harvard Medical School

During the last decade, results from basic research in the fields of genetics and immunology have begun to impact treatment in a variety of diseases. Checkpoint therapy, for instance has fundamentally changed the treatment and survival of some patients with melanoma. The medical workplace has transformed from an artisanal organization into an industrial enterprise environment. Workflows in the clinic are increasingly standardized. Their timing and execution are monitored through omnipresent software systems. This has resulted in an acceleration of the pace of care delivery. Imaging and image post-processing have rapidly evolved as well, enabled by ever-increasing computational power, novel sensor systems and novel mathematical approaches. Organizing the data and making it findable and accessible is an ongoing challenge and is investigated through a variety of research efforts. These topics will be reviewed and discussed during the lecture.

Dr Kikinis is the founding Director of the Surgical Planning Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and a Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. This laboratory was founded in 1990. Before joining Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 1988, he trained as a resident in radiology at the University Hospital in Zurich, and as a researcher in computer vision at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. He received his MD degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1982. In 2004 he was appointed Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. In 2009 he was the inaugural recipient of the MICCAI Society “Enduring Impact Award”.

Human anatomy is a foundation of medicine and therefore important for anybody who is active in the medical field. This master class will review the anatomy of the head and neck using an engineering perspective. Topics discussed will include the biomechanics of the neck, thermal stabilization of the brain, an introduction into brain anatomy and some of the sensory systems found in the skull. The class will also include discussion of a variety of resources available on the internet.

Participants will need to bring their own laptops and download and install the electronic version of the Netter Atlas of Human Anatomy (7th ed) from the UWA library.

Dr Ron Kikinis is the founding Director of the Surgical Planning Laboratory, Department of Radiology, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA, and a Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. Before joining Brigham & Women’s Hospital in 1988, he trained as a resident in radiology at the University Hospital in Zurich, and as a researcher in computer vision at the ETH in Zurich, Switzerland. He received his MD degree from the University of Zurich, Switzerland, in 1982. In 2004 he was appointed Professor of Radiology at Harvard Medical School. In 2009 he was the inaugural recipient of the MICCAI Society “Enduring Impact Award”.

In February 2010 he was appointed the Robert Greenes Distinguished Director of Biomedical Informatics in the Department of Radiology at Brigham and Women’s Hospital. In January 2014, he was appointed “Institutsleiter” of Fraunhofer MEVIS and Professor of Medical Image Computing at the University of Bremen. Since then he commutes every two months between Bremen and Boston.

The beautiful and complicated Mandelbrot set has captivated mathematicians since the first computer images of the set were drawn in the 1970s and 1980s. In this talk we’ll take a walk around the infinite intricacies of the Mandelbrot set, exploring the spirals, finding Fibonacci, and answering the question every maths student wonders when they first meet the Mandelbrot set: why do we care about this pretty picture?

Cheese and wine to follow in the Maths common room.

Learn, review and address your weaknesses and develop your GAMSAT-level reasoning skills in Section 1 and 2.

Develop your GAMSAT-level knowledge, skills and strategies for 4 full days through the problem-based learning approach to teach the most frequently tested GAMSAT topics in all three sections.

The speaker is the author of the Gold Standard GAMSAT textbooks.

Learn & review the skills, as well as the scope of subjects, being assessed in each test section of the GAMSAT. Practice answering GAMSAT-level questions (including essays!) to get insights into exam strategies.

Experience high-quality teaching from an experienced teacher and author of the Gold Standard GAMSAT textbooks.

Join us at our free introductory talk to learn more about the climate & biodiversity emergency, Extinction Rebellion's history and principles, and how Extinction Rebellion is taking non-violent direct action to tackle the crisis head-on.

Conference theme: Research, Evidence, and Public Policy in Asia-Pacific. The conference theme encourages papers that examine the changing dynamics of research, evidence and public policy. Call for papers and panels Proposals for both individual papers and thematic panels on all topics relevant to public policy are invited. Please refer to website for full particulars.

In this seminar I will present a preliminary typology of the interjections documented in 37 languages of diverse genetic affiliation across the Australian continent. I will spell out the results concerning Australian interjections themselves, which for most of them raise the question of whether they reflect specifically Australian properties, or universals of language. I will also discuss theoretical and methodological issues involved in studying interjections typologically.

The Centre for Exploration Targeting and the School of Earth Sciences are pleased to announce the "Recent Advances in Economic Geology Symposium" which will be held from 17th - 20th of February 2020, at The University of Western Australia. This has been very successful in the past and 2020 is a timely renewal of the event. The 4 day symposium will showcase some of our most recent research advances.

A public lecture by Patricia Hill Collins, Distinguished University Professor Emerita, Department of Sociology, University of Maryland.

In this lecture, internationally renowned sociologist Patricia Hill Collins will consider the concept and practices of intersectionality, a term that refers to the ways that systems of race, social class, gender, sexuality ethnicity, nation and age, intersect to compose systems of privilege and oppression. With particular reference to the intersections between race and gender, Patricia Hill Collins will explore the themes of Black Feminism and Intersectionality and will consider shared histories and contemporary justice claims of black women in the United States and Indigenous women of Australia.

This lecture coincides with the release of ‘Indigenous Femicide and the Killing State’, a case study undertaken by Deathscapes: Mapping Race and Violence in Setter States (Curtin University).

Professor Collins is a social theorist whose research and scholarship have examined issues of race, gender, social class, sexuality and/or nation. Her first book, 'Black Feminist Thought: Knowledge, Consciousness, and the Politics of Empowerment'(Routledge), published in 1990, with a revised tenth year anniversary edition published in 2000, won the Jessie Bernard Award of the American Sociological Association (ASA) for significant scholarship in gender, and the C. Wright Mills Award of the Society for the Study of Social Problems.

This public lecture is presented by the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies and Curtin University.

A quantum-chemical view on coordination chemistry: spectroscopy, catalysis, and bonding

If you haven't already enrolled in an MBA or Graduate Certificate, join us for an information evening on Wednesday 26 February at the UWA Business School to hear about our suite of programs. You’ll meet industry professionals, MBA Directors and some of our current students and alumni who are making their mark in business.

The course fee for our MBA Intensive program has been reduced and multiple scholarships are available every year. Come and join WA’s highest-ranking business school and grab the chance to take your career to the next level.

UWA is a member of the Group of Eight and has an outstanding reputation: we're ranked 1st in Western Australia and among the top 100 universities worldwide (QS World Rankings, 2019).



--What to expect--

We'll cover everything you need to know about these UWA MBA programs and MBA-pathway Graduate Certificates:

-MBA Intensive

-MBA Flexible

-Graduate Certificate in Business

-Graduate Certificate in Entrepreneurship and Innovation

-Graduate Certificate in Health Leadership and Management (new for 2020)

-Graduate Certificate in Leadership

-Graduate Certificate in Minerals and Energy Management (new for 2020)

-Graduate Certificate in Social Impact

You'll hear about various study options and what's included in each program, and gain some useful application advice. Join us for drinks and nibbles, learn about the new MBA Intensive, and decide which path is right for you.



--Event details--

5.45 PM: Registrations open

6.00 PM: Presentations and Q&A panel begins

7.00 PM: Drinks, nibbles and networking

As a recipient of the prestigious Asian Studies Grant, Dr Tao spent four weeks at the National Library of Australia in January 2020, when he was able to explore and investigate into the memoirs published by Chinese international students who studied in Australia since the 1980s. In this talk, Dr Tao will report the preliminary findings of his research residency. According to these findings, the study environment for Chinese international students in Australia changed significantly in the last four decades as a result of the rapid process of globalisation and the advance of telecommunication technologies. However, the key factors that impact the experience of Chinese international students in Australia remain persistent, including the challenges of establishing cross-cultural friendships and the importance of mono-cultural support networks. Dr Tao will also reflect on his experience of working on NLA’s Australiana Collection in the Chinese Language, which is a globally unique resource for researchers and readers who care particularly about how Australia is perceived and presented in the Chinese-language publications.

Abstract

When I began my PhD research on complex language repertoires, I found my linguistic toolkit was pretty empty of the kinds of analytic approaches that would allow me to do justice to the linguistic dexterity of my participants. This is partly down to the luck of the draw; I had studied my undergraduate linguistics degree at time prior to the upsurge in interest in variationist sociolinguistics in Australia and so no such courses were on offer at my alma mater. But as I embarked on the process of upskilling and methodological innovation that my PhD demanded of me, I also felt at times I was ‘unlearning’ some of the ways of thinking about language that had been engrained during my bachelor studies. In this talk, I reflect on the concept of linguistic variation (and the linguistic variable) and explore how this is navigated in a typical undergraduate linguistics program. In particular, I focus on opportunities for embedding the concept of variable grammar ‘early and often’ as a way to undermine linguistic prejudice and equip the linguists of the future to grapple with some of the big divisions in our field, such as between probabilistic, usage-based accounts and formal theories of language.

Short bio

My research and applied work is focused at the intersection of descriptive linguistics, sociolinguistics and education. I have always been interested in linguistic outcomes of contact, such as individual multilingualism, language practises in border regions, and contact varieties. I joined the Aboriginal Child Language Acquisition project in 2011, undertaking a study of Alyawarr children’s use of two closely-related language varieties in central Australia. Prior to this, I worked for several years at Wangka Maya Pilbara Aboriginal Language Centre as a field linguist and I also spent a year in the Philippines working for a local Indigenous people’s education NGO, where I developed multilingual curricula and teaching materials. Before coming to UNE in 2019, I lived in Germany for 3.5 years, teaching linguistics in the English Studies departments of the Friedrich Schiller University (Jena) and Erfurt University (Erfurt).

A public lecture by Mark Sidel, Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs, University of Wisconsin-Madison.

In this lecture, Mark Sidel will discuss some important recent themes in US philanthropy – the role of philanthropy in an era of increasing wealth disparities; adaptations by US foundations to changing circumstances; the changing situations for community foundations; the increasing, and increasingly problematic role of philanthropy by the individually wealthy; the regulation/self-regulation dilemma in the US and elsewhere; the changing nature of philanthropy across borders; and other issues. He will also at least ask to what degree these issues may be present or playing out differently in some other jurisdictions.

Mark Sidel is Doyle-Bascom Professor of Law and Public Affairs at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and consultant for Asia at the Washington DC-based International Center for Not-for-Profit Law. He works on state-society relations, and particularly the regulation and self-regulation of philanthropy and the nonprofit sector, in Asia and the United States. Sidel is currently writing a book for the Brookings Institution on China’s relationships with the international nonprofit and foundation community under Xi Jinping, and doing research for a future volume on modern secessionary movements in the US and in comparative perspective.

A public lecture by Professor Rosemary J. Jolly, Weiss Chair, Humanities in Literature and Human Rights, Pennsylvania State University and 2020 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

A central problem of the UNHR is its dependence on the state and citizenship as the conditions under which human rights flourish. Professor Jolly proposes an extra-anthropocentric contextualization of normative human rights as human rightness.

How do communities that do not depend on the state for their articulation – the indigenous, migrant, those at the peripheries of the global economy, and/or indentured by it – envision what she calls extra-anthropocentric human rightness, and how do they practice such rightness in aesthetic production, specifically as manifest in the narrative arts? Further, since human rights norms are deeply immersed in cultures of materialist accumulation, she is specifically interested in how animist cultures, who have beliefs in the value of the non-human and immaterial, have developed practices of human rightness through aesthetics means.

This talk uses narratives, both fictional and non-fictional, to pose an alternative to human rights frameworks that is non-anthropocentric (but not anti-human) to reframe debates concerning the health of humans, of the environment, and of the relation between the two. Professor Jolly will theorize how to frame the concept of Human Rights as non-anthropocentric and then go on to talk about her HIV/AIDS research to communicate a sense of what such an outlook might look like in the sub-Saharan African setting, in a specific context of massive human death.

It is her hope that this talk may open a discussion of what extra-anthropocentric human rightness may have to offer in the current Australian context of massive non-human animal extinction in the fires.

Rose Jolly was born in South Africa and left for Canada in 1981 due to the apartheid regime of the time. She came to Penn State in 2013. Her overarching interest is in the ways in which representations of violence and reconciliation actually affect inter-governmental, inter-community and inter-personal relations in contexts of conflict. Her work explores the links between living conditions of extreme deprivation, gender-based violence and coercion, and the HIV pandemic. She has worked with victim-survivors of state sponsored torture, gender-based violence, and communities fractured by illness globally. She explores the ethics of working with highly vulnerable communities in research and development.