What's On at UWA

The Perth USAsia Centre invites you to attend a launch of Australia's American Alliance, edited by Dr Peter J Dean, Dr Stephan Frühling and Dr Brendan Taylor. This public launch will feature a discussion with our Senior Fellow, The Hon. Kim Beazley AC, and two of the book's editors from the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, Australian National University. The Australia-United States Alliance has been critical to Australian foreign and defence policy since the ANZUS Treaty was signed in 1951. For 63 years it has been an enduring feature of Australian defence planning, yet the contemporary alliance is, arguably, in one of the more important phases of reinterpretation in its long history. While the Alliance by its very nature is a bi-lateral relationship, this book specifically focuses on Australian perspectives and policy choices, while providing context on the role of the United States in the Asia-Pacific and its position as a global power. To find out more about the book and pre-order a copy, please click here. Books will also be available for purchase before the event from 3.30pm and after the event at a discounted rate thanks to the Co-op Bookshop UWA. We look forward to you joining us at this special event. Perth USAsia Centre

Professor Carol Brayne is an internationally recognised leader in academic public health at University of Cambridge, UK. Professor Brayne has pioneered the study of dementia in the general population, launching two major longitudinal studies of the health and cognitive functioning of 30,000 older people. The results underpin our understanding of dementia and the ageing brain. Her studies have provided the basis for planning long term care needs in the United Kingdom and have recently shown that the prevalence of dementia at specific ages is declining.

You're invited to a high-calibre public panel discussion on the impact of President Trump's Administration on the Indo-Pacific region. Panellists will discuss: What will U.S. leadership in the Indo-Pacific look like under the Trump Administration? How will the Indo-Pacific region's economic and security architecture adjust, particularly after U.S. withdrawal from the Trans-Pacific Partnership? How will Chinese and other policymakers likely respond to the Trump agenda on trade, alliances and regional diplomacy? This event is a collaboration between the Asia Research Centre at Murdoch University, the Perth USAsia Centre and the Confucius Institute at The University of Western Australia.

For over a century aerial archaeology has been in the vanguard of archaeological discovery and recording. Thanks to a unique twenty year programme of aerial reconnaissance in Jordan combined with the growing availability of high-resolution satellite imagery we can now thickly ‘populate’ with often novel archaeological sites one of the most inhospitable landscapes in the world – ‘Arabia’.

For over a century aerial archaeology has been in the vanguard of archaeological discovery and recording. Thanks to a unique twenty year programme of aerial reconnaissance in Jordan combined with the growing availability of high-resolution satellite imagery we can now thickly ‘populate’ with often novel archaeological sites one of the most inhospitable landscapes in the world – ‘Arabia’. Bio: David Kennedy has taught at UWA since 1990 after 12 years at the University of Sheffield. His principal research interests are the Roman Near East and Aerial Archaeology. He has been engaged in a programme of Aerial Archaeology in Jordan since 1997, the only such programme outside Europe. He is currently working on a book, ‘East of Jordan’ in the Nineteenth Century: Travel and Travellers in North-Western Jordan.

UWA Publishing warmly invites you to the launch of Like Nothing on this Earth: A Literary History of the Wheatbelt by Tony Hughes-d'Aeth.

Like Nothing on this Earth will be launched by Prof. Matthew Tonts, Pro Vice Chancellor and Executive Dean.

Please RSVP by Monday 6 March for catering purposes.

The Seminar: Given the prediction for the increase to both the frequency and intensity of natural disasters due to global climate change, it is becoming increasingly important that we understand the impact of past disasters so we may be able to better mitigate the effects of future ones. Using data from the first long term study of the recovery of a wild primate population to a natural disaster; I will discuss the synergistic relationship between nutrition, disease and stress in determining population recovery following a severe environmental change. I will then discuss how the conclusions of this research left me with two questions to answer: How might exposure to regular natural disasters shape behavioural adaptation in non-human primates in the long term? And how might humans respond to similar environmental stressors given our close genetic relationship? This seminar will outline these ideas through an exploration of how we can use evidence of short term adaptation to build testable predictions regarding long term adaptations to sudden environmental change in non-human primates. It will then look at how this work can be extrapolated to humans to better mitigate our own exposure to sudden changes in environmental condition.

The Speaker: In 2010, Alison received a Ph.D from The University of Calgary in Anthropology (with a primatology specialization). Her dissertation work examined the effects of a major hurricane on a howler monkey population in Southern Belize, specifically examining the roles of food supply, nutrition, stress hormones and parasitism in the recovery of this population. From 2009 - 2011, Alison lectured in both the Department of Anthropology at The University of Calgary and The Department of Sociologyand Anthropology at Mount Royal University in Calgary. In 2011, she was appointed lecturer in Biological Anthropology in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology at The Australian National University. Currently, Alison is a Senior Lecturer and Head of Discipline in Biological Anthropology at ANU and an ARC DECRA fellow. Her current work builds on her previous research to explore how primates (human and non-human) adapt in the longer term to rapid and severe environmental change. She also conducts research projects on endangered primate species in Vietnam and Cambodia to understand how monkeys and apes adapt to different anthropogenic impacts including logging and poaching.

You are invited to join us for a public lecture on the escalating South China Sea dispute and how the assertive policies of Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte are shaping this dispute and wider East Asian geopolitics. In 2017, the Philippines are chairing the ASEAN bloc in its 50th year. As the institution reflects on its achievements over the last five decades, focus must not be taken away from the urgent and future challenges that face this organisation.

In 2012 the newly established Association of Critical Heritage Studies appealed for a critical turn in heritage scholarship, calling on its members to ‘critically engage with the proposition that heritage studies needs to be rebuilt from the ground up’, and that this required the ‘ruthless criticism of everything existing’ – the last phrase of course, referencing Marx. In doing so, the Association formalised a turn towards the critical that had been slowly growing in heritage scholarship circles since the late 1990s, and which sought to broaden the focus of heritage studies from an emphasis on practice and heritage fundamentally being about being about ‘the preservation of the past for future generations’, to one that stressed the inherently political nature of heritage as a process. This seminar – based on research undertaken in collaboration with Professor Laurajane Smith (ANU) – seeks to explore the supposed ‘need’ for a critical turn in heritage scholarship, and in doing so, also explores the utility of the tradition heritage canon to the critical heritage project.

After decades neglecting grammar in schools, some Western educators are calling for a grammar revolution. The revolution may be happening in some unexpected places. In this paper, I discuss building interest in grammar on the island of Ranongga in the Western Province of Solomon Islands. Vernacular language instruction for adults began in the context of a Bible translation project in 1998. Since then, the Kulu Language Institute (named for Kubokota and Luqa, the two vernacular languages spoken on Ranongga) has blossomed into a thriving grassroots institution teaching vernacular, English, and Greek and Hebrew grammar on Ranongga Island and in the capital city Honiara. Villagers, townspeople, primary school dropouts, university graduates—a surprising range of people have passionately embraced the study of grammar. In this paper, I suggest that grammar is seen not only seen as a tool for practical mastery of English, but also as a form of knowledge that cuts across racialized domains, translocal hierarchies, and social class distinctions.

This talk draws on a small scale pilot study which focused on identifying some key themes relating to appearance, attractiveness and belonging, and which were considered important for young Asian Australian men and women. Some existing literature on appearance and belonging in Australia and other Western diasporic contexts has suggested that young people of Asian descent are more likely to feel dissatisfied with their appearance than their white Australian peers. Moreover, some recent media reporting has asserted that Asian Australian women in particular are tempted to ‘deracialise’ their bodies through cosmetic surgery, in order to better conform to what such media representations describe as mainstream white beauty ideals in Australia. The findings of this research suggest that while media may have had some influence on the participants’ ideas of attractiveness and desirable beauty, their personal perceptions of attractive appearance were informed by much broader multicultural notions of desirable appearance, which may draw on various transnational sources, but without negating the participants’ sense of belonging to Australia.

This talk draws on a small scale pilot study which focused on identifying some key themes relating to appearance, attractiveness and belonging, and which were considered important for young Asian Australian men and women. Some existing literature on appearance and belonging in Australia and other Western diasporic contexts has suggested that young people of Asian descent are more likely to feel dissatisfied with their appearance than their white Australian peers. Moreover, some recent media reporting has asserted that Asian Australian women in particular are tempted to ‘deracialise’ their bodies through cosmetic surgery, in order to better conform to what such media representations describe as mainstream white beauty ideals in Australia. The findings of this research suggest that while media may have had some influence on the participants’ ideas of attractiveness and desirable beauty, their personal perceptions of attractive appearance were informed by much broader multicultural notions of desirable appearance, which may draw on various transnational sources, but without negating the participants’ sense of belonging to Australia.

Work in Australia aimed at finding prehistoric submerged archaeology is just beginning. For the NW Shelf, knowledge is increasing rapidly on its preserved drowned palaeoshorelines and palaeotidal simulations. Using the modern shelf as a reference, we rate past changes in shelf dynamics over the last 40 ky. We overlay past sea levels on modern bathymetry, and use basic principles of geomorphology and sediment transport to add likely coastal sediments. Results are presented as computer-based visualisations, representing potential post-glacial coastal changes on the NWS. The past development of coastal resources and their potential human use are primarily controlled not by sea level per se, but by 2nd and 3rd order effects associated with the movement of sediments and resultant variations in coastal sedimentary environments. Considering such sedimentary processes will improve targeted prospection of submerged cultural sites, and will help stimulate new ways to include such fundamental information in conceptual models of human occupation.

Violence and discrimination against women is a global phenomenon. Throughout the world women and girls face pervasive violence and discrimination due to their gender which is commonly accepted under the banner of ‘culture’. Through my work with my foundation Project Monma I have travelled to multiple parts of the world researching the varying forms of violence and discrimination against women including researching honor killings and how the presence of ISIS has affected women in northern Iraq, explored human trafficking and slavery in Madagascar, Argentina and Mauritania, documented Syrian women’s experiences of violence in Lebanon and Turkey, researched women’s roles in the Sahrawi refugee camps in southern Algeria and the sexual harassment of girls in schools in Mozambique. My research has demonstrated that throughout the world, regardless of culture, religion or ethnicity women face discriminatory attitudes that suggest women have less value than men. Such attitudes such that women should not have access to the same economic, political and sexual rights as men and in many cases are only valued as ‘sexual objects’. My research through Project Monma aims to explore some of the commonalities in violence against women around the world and seeks to raise attention to the global nature of both the subtle and extreme forms of violence facing women within different ethnic and religious contexts. We argue that in order to combat these pervasive attitudes that discriminate against women and girls globally and to work towards gender equality we must explore the key factors that allows male dominance and violence towards women to cut across cultures in the way that they do. Our research at Project Monma aims to do that as well as advocate for a more equal world for women.

Although employee reporting of workplace ethical violations is recognized as an important measure for managing the integrity of the public service, not many public employees who have witnessed ethical violations actually report them. This study examines and compares the links between employee perceptions of the trustworthiness of different organizational members and internal whistleblowing. It differentiates between trustworthy coworkers, supervisors, and senior managers. It uses cross-sectional data from 10,850 employees in the Australian Public Service in 2013 and 2016, which are aggregated to construct longitudinal data for 60 organizations. Among the three groups examined, perceptions of trustworthy senior managers are found to be most strongly related to internal whistleblowing.

Ambassador Armitage will be in Australia as part of the ‘Global Heads of Mission Meeting’ – the first time Australia will bring together all Australian Ambassadors, High Commissioners and Consuls-General to consider the emerging challenges and opportunities facing Australia at the time when we are preparing the Foreign Policy White Paper. The diplomats are then travelling to state capitals, regional and rural Australia to undertake advocacy and outreach with domestic stakeholders.

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. With specific reference to known discoveries of human skeletal remains (four burials recovered on Beacon Island between 1960 to 1964; six individuals recovered from a multiple grave 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 This was followed by a series of targeted excavations on Beacon Island in Jan-Feb 2015 and November 2016. This presentation briefly describes 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. A brief overview of isotopic analyses are presented.

It has been exactly twelve months since the first civilian government of Myanmar took the office in 50 years. Regardless of high degree of international and domestic legitimacy, the civilian government however has been facing challenges in several fronts, including ineffective governance. This study answers the question of ‘what makes the civilian government in Myanmar ineffective?’ Many people understood today’s ineffective governance as the result of the constitutional barriers put in place by the previous military government, which include power sharing arrangement with the military, and not being able to select de facto leader as president. However this study argues that these constitutional barriers shape the government’s policies only in areas related to national security. It therefore should not be overgeneralized as constitutional barriers determine the overall governance effectiveness. Today’s reality of ineffective governance is rather because the government lacks the capacity to be able to design and implement coherent policies to push the country towards a democratic state. In other words, the author argues that it is not politics of the military’s power sharing arrangement makes ineffective policies. In contrast, it is poorly designed policies resulting from fragmented policymaking of the government that determine politics of governance in Myanmar. This study builds on the enquiry on policymaking of the civilian government in Myanmar, 2016-2017 in five critical areas of country’s political transition: (1) civil- military relations, (2) democratization and decentralization (3) social justice, (4) ethnic conflicts, and (5) geo-politics.

Cerveceros Piratas – or Pirate Brewers have emerged as an important feature within a broader counter-cultural landscape within Cataluña. Loosely defined, these brewers produce and distribute beer illegally, directing profits towards non-state, subversive infrastructure, services and projects. In the past, these breweries formed a loose allegiance with one another. Increasingly, they represent a sustained and organized form of resistance against the dominance of corporate breweries within the region. In this presentation, I reflect on what it means to describe this movement as piratical. Notions of piracy help shed light on how contests to state sovereignty become intertwined within the distribution of rights and resources in some informal entrepreneurial practices. Catalan pirate brewers participate in creating and reinforcing alternative circuits for the flow of goods, services and ideas. At the same time, brewers’ pirate status denies them access to state resources designed to ensure standards of public health and quality, highlighting tensions between the objectives of these collectives and their precarious legal status.

This talk presents original ethnographic material drawing on long-term fieldwork at the Indian Ocean coast of Northwest Australia. It highlights a particular aspect in a conflict situation over the construction of a $ 45 Billion AUD liquefied natural gas facility (LNG) on top of an Indigenous heritage site, Walmadany / James Price Point. The presentation discusses the troubles encountered by an anthropologist born and raised in Germany in his attempts to translate Indigenous knowledge and heritage into Western scientific terminology. Based on this I address the following questions: How can Western law and science be better equipped to recognize Indigenous knowledges as ontologically different but equal epistemic partners? How can collaborative works in archaeology and anthropology help to account for Indigenous world(view)s beyond the modernist rationale?

Bio: Dr. Carsten Wergin leads the Research Group “The Transcultural Heritage of Northwest Australia: Dynamics and Resistances” at Heidelberg University. His academic background is in sociocultural anthropology, media and transcultural studies with a wider thematic interest in Digital and Environmental Humanities research, and a regional focus on the Indian Ocean World, drawing on long-term fieldwork phases in the Mascarene Archipelago and Northwest Australia.