What's On at UWA

Blood-Injection-Injury Phobia (BIIP) is a fear triggered by blood, an injury,or by receiving an injection or other invasive medical procedure. People with BIIP vary in their reactions and may feel disgust, nausea, dizziness or even faint.

The Robin Winker Clinic will be running a group treatment program for BIIP under the supervision of Associate Professor Carmela Pestell. It will run for 7 two-hour sessions as well as an initial assessment and a follow-up session.

Through this program, individuals will work in a supportive, confidential environment to challenge their fears and learn coping strategies for anxiety and to prevent fainting or feelings of disgust.

Our last sale sold out before 2pm. Any remaining plants will be sold on Friday 26th May at 12 - 2pm. We have a large selection of succulents as well as exotics, natives and herbs. Most plants will be $3-$5 with most herbs less. It is cash only and bring your own bag/box if possible. All proceeds will be spent on the grounds of UWA.

CMSS Religion, State and Society Seminar Series:

"The Saudi State as an Identity Racketeer"

Although substantial research has examined the Saudi state’s symbiosis with the Islamic revivalist movement commonly known as ‘Wahhabism’, few studies have considered how the dynamics of state formation underpin this relationship. This paper argues that a continuous and circular political logic lies behind the Saudi state’s patronage of the revivalist movement since 1744 and proposes a four-stage model that explains how and why the regime has maintained its support for the revivalist movement over such a prolonged period. The presentation first outlines the model, then presents a detailed analysis of its persistent presence in the development of Saudi state authority in order to highlight the recurrent manner by which the state often has constructed the spiritual concerns of revivalists to counter challenges to its authority, a pattern demonstrated most recently during the Arab Spring and the war in Yemen. The effects of this model will continue to shape the decisions, policies and perceptions of the Saudi political elite for the foreseeable future.

Dr. Ben Rich focuses his research on Middle Eastern affairs, political violence and international relations. He researches Saudi affairs, military policy and power politics in the Persian Gulf, as well as a range of topics relating to terrorism and insurgency.

Livelihoods, Fire Regimes, and Novel Ecosystems in Indigenous Australia

We are currently experiencing what Elizabeth Kolbert calls the planet's sixth great extinction. Australia represents the largest contributor to the mammalian component of this catastrophe. This presentation explores extinction processes in the most remote parts of Australia’s Western Desert with analyses of ecological interactions mediated in Aboriginal livelihoods. I investigate contemporary and historic relationships among invasive species, disturbance regimes, and Aboriginal land use, especially those associated with patterns of anthropogenic fire and their role in facilitating fundamental trophic interactions. These analyses suggest that, especially with increasingly variable climatic conditions, the efficacy of conservation and habitat restoration throughout much of the arid zone will likely depend on land management prescriptions modelled on Indigenous fire regimes.

Investigating Dingaal Seascapes on the Great Barrier Reef, Far North Queensland

Jiigurru or Lizard Island is a continental island on the Great Barrier Reef 250km north of Cairns and 30km from the mainland. The archipelago of islands forming an arc between Jiigurru and Cape Flattery on the mainland are traditionally owned by Dingaal people. The island is tightly enmeshed in a long and complex history of trade and exchange along the western margin of the Coral Sea which remains poorly understood. Dingaal country has also been at the centre of a sometimes violent recent history extending from Cook’s visit in 1770 and including the death of Mary Watson in 1881 and subsequent retributive killings. A richly storied cultural landscape including Dingaal histories, stone arrangements, shell middens, rock art and 19th and 20th century sites allow us to begin to engage with aspects of these histories in association with Dingaal. Here we outline preliminary results of a new phase of archaeological research on Lizard Island that commenced in 2012.

The period following the Second World War saw a massive increase in fishing effort, particularly in the 1960s. However, crashes due to this overfishing began to be reflected in global catch trends in the 1970s, and intensified in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, the industrialised countries of the Northern Hemisphere (where over fishing-induced catch declines appeared first) moved their effort toward deeper waters, and toward the south, i.e., to the coasts of developing countries, and beyond into the southern hemisphere, all the way to Antarctica. Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the global expansion of fisheries is completed, and the real global catch, which is much higher than officially reported, peaked in the late 1980s and is now rapidly declining. In parallel, the collateral damage to marine ecosystems and biodiversity continues to increase. Several factors act to prevent the public in developed countries from realising the depth of the crisis fisheries are in, notably the increased imports by developed countries, of seafood from developing countries. Also, the misleading perception that aquaculture can substitute for declining catches is widespread. In some countries, notably the U.S., stocks are being rebuilt, but elsewhere, the failure to respond creatively to these clear trends bode ill for the next decades. Indeed, the effects of global warming (productivity declines in the tropics, widespread disruptions at high latitudes), which have been increasingly felt in the last decades, will strongly impact fisheries and global seafood supply.

A public lecture by Professor Daniel Pauly, fisheries expert and marine conservationist

In this public lecture, Professor Pauly takes a historical look at fisheries, and comments on the current challenges of global food security.

The period following the Second World War saw a massive increase in fishing effort, particularly in the 1960s. However, crashes due to this overfishing began to be reflected in global catch trends in the 1970s, and intensified in the 1980s and 1990s. In response, the industrialised countries of the Northern Hemisphere (where overfishing-induced catch declines appeared first) moved their effort toward deeper waters, and toward the south, i.e., to the coasts off developing countries, and beyond into the southern hemisphere, all the way to Antarctica.

Now, in the second decade of the 21st century, the global expansion of fisheries is completed, and the real global catch, which is much higher than officially reported, peaked in the late 1980s and is now rapidly declining. In parallel, the collateral damage to marine ecosystems and biodiversity continues to increase. Several factors act to prevent the public in developed countries from realising the depth of the crisis fisheries are in, notably the increased imports by developed countries, of seafood from developing countries. Also, the misleading perception that aquaculture can substitute for declining catches is widespread. In some countries, notably the U.S., stocks are being rebuilt, but elsewhere, the failure to respond creatively to these clear trends bode ill for the next decades. Indeed, the effects of global warming (productivity declines in the tropics, widespread disruptions at high latitudes), which have been increasingly felt in the last decades, will strongly impact fisheries and global seafood supply.

Join Maïa Ponsonnet, from the University of Sydney, as she explores compassion in Indigenous languages. A number of Indigenous languages in the Top End display a highly conventionalised intonation contour that is used in emotionally tinted contexts relating in particular to compassion.

Be transported from the everyday in our free lunchtime concert series, featuring the finest musical talent locally, nationally and within the School.

Under the direction of Dr Jonathan Fitzgerald, the UWA Guitar Studio perform a selection of works for solo, duo and ensemble in this intimate free concert.

Entry is free, no bookings required.

Buddie Thompson, a self-described ‘midget’ with a penchant for studying his fellow human beings (both ‘little’ and ‘big’), navigated complex and competing conceptualisations of what being short-statured signified in the Depression-era United States. In these years the American ‘Freak Show’ no longer held the same widespread popular appeal it had had prior to the beginning of the century, while the discourses of medical science, reflecting the height of the eugenics movement as well as recent developments in the new field of endocrinology, intersected to make for particularly dangerous ground for those with ‘extraordinary bodies’. Thompson, and other ‘little people’ had career options which expanded beyond the increasingly moralised ‘freak show’, to traveling ‘midget troupes’, ‘Liliputian’ operatic companies, and miniature sized ‘midget city’ exhibits at World’s Fairs, but these involved no less fraught performative styles of self-representation.

By closely analysing Buddie Thompson’s insider account of little person show performers, As I Know Them: A Midget’s Story of Show People, self-published in 1936, I will examine how Thompson developed a unique and authoritative perspective which engaged in the complex and competing discourses of both popular culture and medical science. Thompson specifically rejected the social authority of medical physicians and their advice on new experimental hormone treatments, but only by professing to a superior scientific knowledge of the functioning of ‘glands of internal secretion’. He also rejected popular and offensive ‘outsider’ accounts of ‘midget’ show life offered by journalists which traded in obscenity and perverse interest, while nonetheless retaining countless anecdotes which played upon stereotypes of prodigious (but nonetheless ‘healthy’) male midget sexuality. Most importantly, Thompson devoted large parts of his narrative to returning gaze upon ‘John Public’ himself/herself, making his audience and readers the target of a close sociological and psychological study typically reserved for those with supposedly pathological or non-normative bodies. While Thompson lived until 1968, his relatively short show career, which appears to have finished before the end of the 1930s but included involvement in important historical moments like the Chicago Century of Progress World’s Fair, spoke to the increasingly difficulties of self-exhibition for small-statured people as a potentially empowering and profitable occupation supplanted and specifically rejected by the more recognisable minority-modelled organisations such as the Little People of America.

Guy Kirkwood is a PhD student at The University of Western Australia whose research focuses on late 19th and early 20th century American 'freak shows'. His working thesis aims to locate the perspectives and performance strategies of specific individuals within different historical and cultural moments, as well as within distinct regimes of normalisation. He has also taught some second and third year units at UWA, focusing broadly on African American history, as well as American colonialism. Guy hopes to finish his PhD at the end of the year and to have the opportunity to pursue future projects in the 'sideshow' of academia.

Rethinking Altered States of Consciousness in a Transforming World: Could Psychedelics be Vehicles for Change? by Alicia Wheatley

The recent renaissance into the study of psychedelic substances raises interesting and conceptually important issues for anthropologists and other academics alike. My data explore how altered states of consciousness (ASC), as opposed to the typical waking state, can offer significant benefits to those who experience them. As such, a preliminary objective of this thesis has been to explore the motivations and intentions behind psychedelic use by Westerners. By focusing mostly on entheogenic use, this study is interested in how Western users' worldviews, values, and practices are transformed through their use of psychedelics. From these results, I offer the notion that psychedelics are potential tools for correcting damaging human behaviours from further contributing to the impending ecological crisis. By delving into alternative epistemological methods of analysing psychedelic experiences, I additionally make the case that anthropologists must address the challenges and limitations of Western hegemonic perspectives, in order to respectably explore alternate ways of ‘knowing’ and ‘being’ in the 21st century.

Treading on the Glass Ceiling in Stilettos : A 21st Century Gender Equality (lack of) Progress Report by Nathan Jakovich

As the so-called ‘2nd wave’ of feminism audaciously broke through into (Western) mainstream consciousness throughout the 1960s and 1970s, there was widespread optimism that future gender equality was both attainable and inevitable. This thesis investigates why these predictions have not come to fruition. This study begins by presenting key achievements and theoretical developments in the ‘wave metaphor’ of feminism. It also addresses limitations of this view of feminist history, particularly the notion of ‘hegemonic feminism’, which asserts that much of feminist history and theory (particularly the consolidation and influence of traditional western liberal feminism that occurred during the 2nd wave) was produced from a perspective that was ‘privileged and white’ and is thus largely inapplicable to working-class women and ‘women of color’. The key theoretical focus for this discussion is the idea of a ‘patriarchal gender regime’, developed from Foucault’s concept of societal ‘regimes of truth’. It shows how the operation of patriarchal power is reinforced across generations, a major contributing factor to the concerningly slow rate that the gender gap is closing. I suggest the current appropriateness of intersectional feminism as a sound theoretical framework with which to address the historical materialist and culturally symbolic gender inequities that continue to be perpetrated/perpetuated across the world. I utilise categorical bifurcations including west/east, 1st/3rd world and religious/secular in addition to race, class and age to illustrate how ‘compound discrimination’ can occur across each of these dimensions and how they interact with gender to produce vastly inequitable life outcomes depending on a woman’s ‘glocality’. Finally I propose strategies for speeding up progress towards gender equality.

Now in its third season, Fridays@Five is the ideal way to kick-start your weekend! Each session offers a unique musical experience to delight all music lovers, from young artist led concerts to informal musical drinks on the famous grassy knoll, behind the scenes workshops to lectures and masterclasses.

This week, UWA's talented Percussion students present a celebration of tuned percussion music. This showcase of marimba repertoire, techniques and approaches will feature works by Keiko Abe, George Hamilton Green, Ross Edwards, Eric Sammut, Samuel Barber and more.

Entry is free, no bookings required.

The School of Music offers a number of stimulating and enjoyable broadening units for all undergraduates studying at UWA. Enrich! brings together these students in vibrant and dynamic ensemble performances.

In the World Percussion Carnival, Head of Percussion Louise Devenish will lead 3 ensembles in a lively performance of traditional Zimbabwean, Zulu and West African music!

Come and hear part of the wealth of musical talent on campus!

Tickets (available at the door): $10 Standard | $5 Concessions (Seniors/Children/Students/Friends of Music)

The Seminar: On 4 June 1629, the Verenigde Oostindische Compagnie (VOC) retourschip Batavia wrecked on Morning Reef, in the Houtman Abrolhos, approximately 65 km off the Western Australian coast. The macabre events following the wrecking saw more than 100 individuals murdered over a three-month period, by mutineers attempting to subjugate surviving crew and passengers. The historical significance of the latter is well established, and has been reconstructed, through the analysis of an extensive archaeological record, both maritime and terrestrial. With specific reference to known discoveries of human skeletal remains, four individual burials were recovered on Beacon Island between 1960 to 1964; a further six individuals were recovered from a multiple grave that was excavated in stages between 1994 and 2001. A multi-disciplinary collaboration of national and international partners performed a remote sensing program involving magnetics and conductivity mapping and GPR profiling followed by a series of targeted excavations on Beacon Island in January and February of 2015, and November 2016; this included the excavation of the recently rediscovered location of the postcranial remains of a skull originally removed in 1964, in addition to excavations in the southern region of the island where a human molar was found 2013. The latter discovery proved fortuitous, with the excavation culminating in the discovery of an intact human burial at over one meter in depth. Further excavation in the area to the immediate north led to the discovery of a further two individuals buried in direct association, one on top of the other. In 2016 a further individual was found, along with ceramics. The aim of the present presentation is to briefly describe the skeletal remains of the 2015-16 field season, including their burial context, and preliminary analyses of their demographics (sex, age and stature), including descriptions of potential palaeopathology.

The Speaker: Daniel Franklin has an honours degree in bioarchaeology and a PhD in physical anthropology. He is currently an Associate Professor at the Centre for Forensic Anthropology, School of Human Sciences, The University of Western Australia. His research involves the validation and exploration of alternative approaches for the quantification of skeletal biology and to advocate its potential applications in the forensic sciences. He has published extensively in a variety of journals, most recently in the Journal of Forensic Sciences; Forensic Science, Medicine and Pathology; American Journal of Physical Anthropology; and the International Journal of Legal Medicine.

Denmark Arts and the Centre for Muslim States and Societies, UWA, invite you to Sufi Songs from the Pankisi Valley by the Ensemble Aznash Lamaan.

The Ensemble Aznash Laaman are a collective of ethnic Chechen musicians from Georgia. For the Aznash Laaman there is the root, the vibration common to all, carried by the songs. It is joy and wealth for all beings.

The School of Music offers a number of stimulating and enjoyable broadening units for all undergraduates studying at UWA. Enrich! brings together these students in vibrant and dynamic ensemble performances.

The Percussion Fiesta will feature over 80 students, performing pieces from film and TV, Pop and Rock favourites as well as more traditional African melodies in the culmination of their semester's work!

Come and hear part of the wealth of musical talent on campus!

Tickets (available at the door): $10 Standard | $5 Concessions (Seniors/Children/Students/Friends of Music)

Come along to the next Futures Enthusiasts Meet-Up (FEMU) event on Wednesday, 31 May 2017 between 4-5pm to meet, share ideas and team up with other education futures enthusiasts from the UWA community, Perth start-ups, industry or technology specialists.

The FEMU event for May will feature a presentation by Dr Michael Ovens on Virtual Reality in Higher Education. Followed by a Networking Session.

Virtual Reality is considered by some to be a replacement for traditional face-to-face teaching methods, and a poor one at that. This presentation by Dr Michael Ovens, a recent Humanities doctoral graduate and educational Virtual Reality developer, will contest this position by arguing that Virtual Reality can be used to enhance rather than replace traditional teaching if educators and designers focus on the three things Virtual Reality does best: immersion, interaction, and impossibility.

Virtual Reality experiences will be made available for trial on the Futures Observatory's HTC Vive device.

Register for this FEMU event via the Eventbrite link below.

The School of Music offers a number of stimulating and enjoyable broadening units for all undergraduates studying at UWA. Enrich! brings together these students in vibrant and dynamic ensemble performances.

Rhythm & Beats will feature the Latin/Junk Percussion Ensemble, performing traditional pieces such as a Samba Batucada alongside new sounds of AfroJunk.

The concert will also feature Al On Quintet, a student led ensemble, who will present a program entitled Persian Art Music in Perspective.

Come and hear part of the wealth of musical talent on campus!

Tickets (available at the door): $10 Standard | $5 Concessions (Seniors/Children/Students/Friends of Music)

In this public lecture, Dr Heather Nancarrow will examine the data on domestic and family violence through a legal lense. The lack of an intersectional policy analysis, which would consider race, class and gender, has resulted in unintended negative consequences of civil domestic violence laws in Australia. The problem is amplified for Indigenous women. This is demonstrated through a mixed methods research design that examines: 1) gender and race differences in the application of legislation that reflected gendered aspirations (but ignored race); and 2) the kinds of domestic violence that occurred and its contexts. The data analysed were parliamentary debates, linked administrative court and police records for people who had been charged with breaches of civil domestic violence orders, and interviews with service providers and police prosecutors. A major finding was that although legislation was premised on gender-based coercive controlling violence, the application of the law in practice was far broader, applying it to fights, which is neither effective nor appropriate. For domestic violence law to be effective, it must distinguish between coercive control and fights, and victims (not just police) must have choice about state intervention. The findings have implications for the design and delivery of interventions, including justice mechanisms, in intimate partner violence. Dr Heather Nancarrow has 35 years experience working on the prevention of violence against women, including direct service provision, policy and legislation, and research and professional development. Heather has held many leadership roles at both the state and national level in regards to the prevention of violence against women. She was co-Deputy Chair of the Council of Australian Governments’ (COAG) Advisory Panel to Reduce Violence against Women 2015-16. In 2014-15 she was a member of the Queensland Premier’s Special Taskforce on Domestic and Family Violence; and in 2008-09 she was Deputy Chair of the National Council to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children, which produced Time for Action, the blue-print for COAG’s National Plan to Reduce Violence against Women and their Children 2010-2022. Heather has a PhD in Criminology and Criminal Justice. Her primary research interests are justice responses to violence against women, particularly as they relate to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people.

Be transported from the everyday in our free lunchtime concert series, featuring the finest musical talent locally, nationally and within the School.

Under the leadership of Helpmann Award winner and Head of Vocal Studies Andrew Foote, see these young emerging artist perform works for vocal ensemble.

Entry is free, no bookings required.

Co-creative digital practices are recently playing a central role in fostering opportunities for youth and young adults to participate in the production of new, emergent discourses that define, label and categorise new norms and counter-norms for gender and sexuality. Through digital cultural practices, recent figurations of sexuality and identity have emerged that present a widespread range of sexualities and genders challenging traditional masculine/feminine, hetero/homo dichotomies or LGBTQI labels that describe a more specific categorisation of identity practices. For example, this emergent taxonomy includes many new terms such as heteroflexible, asexual, homoflexible, sapiosexual, nonbinary, a-romantic and others, including multiple combinations. New practices of categorising and living sexualities/genders have significant implications for social theories of gender and sexuality, minority, health and mental health practices, community services, public facilities and family law. Two available approaches for understanding the emergence of new social formations of gender and sexuality include, firstly, a generational rejection of labels of earlier epochs, seeking instead a specificity for more ‘accurate’ descriptions of deeply-felt attachments, expressed principally in online settings as post-identity queer fluidity. Secondly, as a set of “micro-minoritisations” competing on a ladder of greater-or-lesser marginalisation, surveiled and policed through online interactivity afforded by the sociality of digital cultures. Drawing on nascent analyses of data collected as part of an ARC Discovery Project on queer youth support and belonging across two generations, this presentation accounts for the digital emergence of “micro-minority” taxonomies of sexual/gender identity, theorising new social practices in terms of digital affordances, while presenting a framework for understanding the implications of new, meaningful languages of identity categorisation for social theory.