2021 FAD Seminar Series

Date: Monday 8 November
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm AEDT
Location: Zoom (please email oliver.bell-mackie@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Live art practice employs action and presence but is mainly experienced in exhibition spaces via documentation of actions and presence, with implications for a work’s aesthetic and social meanings. Participatory, community-engaged live artwork Colour me, Beautiful explored relationships between colour, identity and gender through the development of ‘colour portraits’ co-produced by gallery visitors and an artist-delegate. This practice-led research examines the effects of new techniques in live art practice, conceptualised via theories of ‘delegation’ (Bishop 2012) and ‘distribution’ (Rancière 2013), with the aim of balancing aesthetic and social meanings.

Dr Vahri McKenzie

Dr Vahri McKenzie is Research Fellow in Arts and Health in the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research at UC. Her work as a scholar focuses on valuing and evaluating creative practices with methods that show how artists contribute to new knowledge.Her artistic practice frames creative engagement as a model of, and practice for, ways of being together in a complex world.

Date: Wednesday 20 October
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm AEDT
Location: Zoom (please email oliver.bell-mackie@canberra.edu.au for the link)

King & Wood Mallesons is today a leading, multinational firm with twenty-seven offices around the globe and yearly revenues of more than AUD$1.5b. The bulk of its history, however, lies in Australia. Its roots stretch back to the mid-1800s and reach across the country, encompassing antecedent firms in Perth (Stone James & Co., founded in 1832), Melbourne (Mallesons, 1852), Sydney (Stephen Jaques & Stephen, 1849), and Canberra (Davies Bailey & Cater, 1926). It has had significant clients, ranging from banks to newspapers to insurance agents, and has been involved in an enormous range of pivotal legal matters, from the nationalisation fights of the 1940s to the privatisation of Telstra at the turn of the millennium. Moreover, the various founders and partners of these firms, in their time, have been significant figures in their communities, heavily involved in political, commercial, and cultural life.

Dr Patrick Mullins

Dr Patrick Mullins is a Canberra-based writer. He is the author of Tiberius with a Telephone: the life and stories of William McMahon(2018), winner of the 2020 National Biography Award and the 2020 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction, and The Trials of Portnoy (2020), which was shortlisted for the 2021 NSW Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction.

Date: Monday 20 September
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email paul.magee@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Adelle Sefton-Rowston

Adelle Sefton-Rowston is a senior lecturer in Literature and Creative Writing at Charles Darwin University. Her current research project is entitled Ywrite: a Prison Arts Education Program for the Northern Territory and aims to measure the emotional and psychological impacts of prison arts education, particularly the well-being and self-efficacy of incarcerated students (https://ywrite.cdu.edu.au/). The creative and critical analysis of artwork and creative writing from within prison is assisting her to better understand issues related to mass incarceration, and how to impact prison transformation through the arts. Adelle is recipient of a prestigious Fulbright scholarship for 2022 and will use this opportunity to teach literature and creative writing across fifteen correctional centres in Alabama under the auspices of Kyes Stevens, who is director of the Alabama Prison Arts + Education Project at Auburn University. Her goal is to develop a state-of-the-art prison education program that addresses literacy and “voice poverty” through an accessible and online rehabilitation program.

Date: Monday 13 September
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email oliver.bell-mackie@canberra.edu.au for the link)

For my Donald Horne Fellowship, I produced a science fiction noir novel titled Howling Metal. The manuscript flowed directly from my PhD - The Dark Century: Noir, Cyberpunk, and Asian Modernity - wherein I explored the noir traditions of four countries: Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, and Vietnam.  The new novel is set in the same universe as 36 Streets – the creative product I wrote as part of my PhD. 36 Streets subsequently sold to Titan Books (UK) and will be released in January 2022.   Through my creative works, I explore the four key areas of Apocalypse Noir identified by my PhD. First, the veteran as a noir archetype. Second, the shape of trauma: the use of fractured narratives to represent PTSD (Robinette 2007). Third, ghosts and memory: the cultural importance of ghosts in Vietnam; and fourth, the impossibility of return: the alienation and dislocation caused by the traumatic experience (Tran 2019).   My experience writing both 36 Streets and Howling Metal also revealed the challenges in communicating trauma, the expectations of an audience, and the necessary limits on how academic study may influence creative practice.

Dr Tim Napper

Tim Napper is a former diplomat and aid worker, having lived throughout Southeast Asia for over a decade delivering humanitarian programs. During this period, he received a commendation from the Government of Laos for his work with the poor.  Tim Napper completed his PhD (The Dark Century 1946 - 2046: Noir, Cyberpunk, and Asian Modernity) in 2019. On the strength of his doctorate, he was awarded the Donald Horne Creative and Cultural Fellowship in 2020. The creative component of his thesis, a novel (36 Streets) was acquired by Titan Books (UK) and will be published in 2022.  Writing as T. R. Napper, he has won multiple awards for his fiction, including the Aurealis twice, for Best Short Story (2016) and Best Novella (2020). His work has been published in respected genre magazines in the US, the UK, Israel, Austria, Australia, Singapore, and Vietnam. His debut short story collection (Neon Leviathan) was released in early 2020.  He is represented by UK literary agent John Jarrold. Currently Tim works as a professional dungeon master, running games for autistic teenagers and young adults for a local charity.

Date: Monday 30 August
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

Digital platforms have become valuable resources to citizens as they allow immediate access to quality information and news. Staying up to date with information and news is particularly vital in crises such as bushfires. The 2019–20 bushfire season in Australia was extreme, resulting in widespread devastation and loss of life, property and wildlife. Communicating with affected communities is a critical component of community response and resilience in a disaster. Organisations, such as ACT Emergency Services Agency and the NSW Rural Fire Service, need to provide timely, accurate and reliable information. This study investigated official communication using Facebook during the Orroral Valley bushfires from these two emergency services agencies and considers to what extent messaging demonstrated the characteristics of effective crisis communication, including application of the National Framework for Scaled Advice and Warnings to the Community. A content analysis of over 600 posts revealed marked differences in approaches. The study revealed the benefits of using a combination of text, images and infographics in communication activities. Suggestions are provided about how social media could be used more effectively by truly connecting with communities to improve community preparedness and resilience.

Dr Jee Young Lee & Ms Susan Atkinson

Jee Young Lee is a Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts & Design, University of Canberra. Her research focuses on social and cultural impacts of digital communication and technologies, including emerging digital excluded social groups in developed communities, digital engagement and digital trust and growing technology adoption in emerging markets, such as Asia-Pacific regions, and its effects on individuals and societies.

Sue Atkinson is a senior strategic communication consultant and an Associate Researcher at the University of Canberra. Her research focus is on the use of social media in crisis communication and particularly on understanding community information needs and the use of images and infographics to increase community responses and resilience.

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Date: Monday 16 August
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email nitya.reddy@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Landscape architecture has modelled itself as a profession on architecture, yet its main material – plants – has a very different nature than architectural materials, since plants grow and change over time, compared to architectural materials which are generally specified to remain consistent. However, while architecture has a model for thinking about construction called “the tectonic”, landscape architecture has not had such a model for plants. In an effort to develop landscape architecture theory, I developed an equivalent model of the tectonic for plants in Overgrown which I call “the viridic”, its etymology developed from the Latin viridis, which means green, and viridesco which refers to spring. In this presentation I will introduce and discus the viridic, and demonstrate that, as a material (but so much more than that) plants fundamentally alter how we might understand design.

Dr Julian Raxworthy

Dr Julian Raxworthy is a registered landscape architect and Associate Professor & Discipline Lead: Landscape Architecture at the University of Canberra, and Honorary Principal Fellow at the University of Queensland, where he completed his PhD in 2013 entitled Novelty in the entropic landscape: Landscape architecture, gardening and change. He has been faculty at RMIT, QUT and the University of Cape Town, and visiting professor at l’École nationale supérieure de paysage Versailles and the University of Virginia. His book Overgrown: practices between landscape architecture and gardening published in 2018 by The MIT Press was supported by the Graham Foundation for Advanced Studies in the Fine Arts.

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Date: August 2, Monday
Time: 1.30pm-2.30pm
Location: 1A21 & Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

At the height of the pandemic trust in news about COVID-19 and levels of news access soared in Australia, but less than a year on those levels of trust and access have not been maintained. Concern about misinformation is widespread, but reported experience is less so, with almost one-in-four (23%) saying they didn’t know if they had come across misinformation in the past week. Only 18% of Australians say they trust news on social media, but over half (52%) still use social for news and a growing proportion say it is their main source of news. These and other seemingly confounding findings demonstrate the difficulty of understanding audience perceptions in a hybrid media system. However, rather than dismissing what cannot be easily explained I argue these gaps point the way towards new, and potentially more profound research targets. This presentation brings together findings from three research projects, including the ongoing Digital News Report: Australia series, a survey of Australians perceptions of news and misinformation conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and a recently published content analysis of news media reporting of COVID-19 during 2020. Using these three studies I will discuss the complexity of defining and understanding risk and harm associated with misinformation in a hybrid media system, and propose avenues for future research.

Dr Kieran McGuinness

Kieran McGuinness is the Digital News Report Postdoctoral Fellow at the News & Media Research Centre at the University of Canberra. His recent research focuses on mixed method approaches to news consumption, misinformation, journalistic role performance, and defence journalism.

Date: Monday 26 July
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C12/Zoom (please email oliver.bell-mackie@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Belco Arts was established in 2009 and despite Covid in 2021 we celebrated the completion of our new theatre, rehearsal room and additional galleries. We have now proudly evolved into a true multi-arts precinct and tool kit for the region’s creatives.
We enable ambitious ideas, feed their appetite for creative risk, experimentation, dialogue, imaginative development, connection to others and support public outcomes. Belco Arts aims to be a powerhouse in all we do. Belco Arts is led by Co-CEOs, Artistic Director, Monika McInerney and Executive Director, Jack Lloyd and fuelled by a highly skilled professional team. At the heart of how we work at Belco Arts, is through collaboration. Our facility provides a unique toolkit for the creatives, individuals, and communities to explore and test new ideas, be safe to experiment and challenge themselves to take their work to the next level. Let us start the conversation.

Monika McInerney & Jack Lloyd from Belconnen Arts Centre

Monika McInerney
Monika joined the team at Belco Arts in 2015, bringing with her extensive experience spanning across 35 years in the community arts and cultural development, creative industry and local government sectors across SA, NT, NSW and in the UK.

Jack Lloyd
Jack has worked at Belconnen Arts Centre since its opening in 2009, managing a fantastic team of operational, financial, and marketing staff to help grow a vital and inclusive range of visual and performing arts activities for the Canberra community.

Date: Monday 19 July
Time: 1.30pm-2.30pm
Location: Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

This presentation will focus on toll-free telephone services in the Pacific nation of Papua New Guinea. At the outset, the talk will introduce the history of telephony in the country. The presentation will then outline three published research projects, as follows: a qualitative study of a maternal health hotline in a maritime province with a high maternal mortality rate, a quantitative study of a health call centre in a highlands province, and a qualitative study of an information service in the Autonomous Region of Bougainville during the pre-referendum period. The talk will conclude with reflections upon the theoretical and policy-relevant implications of these research projects.

Dr Amanda H A Watson

Dr Amanda H A Watson is a research fellow with the Department of Pacific Affairs at Australian National University. Dr Watson's research focuses on mobile telephone use in Papua New Guinea, including strategic uses and regulatory issues. Her PhD thesis looked at the uptake and use of mobile telephones during the earliest days of mobile telephone adoption in Papua New Guinea. Her work has been published in Mobile Media and Communication, Pacific Journalism Review, Media Asia, Australian Journalism Review and elsewhere.

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Date: Monday 12 July
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

This paper presents preliminary findings from a pilot project investigating the current energy transition from a cultural perspective. The concept of the ‘energy transition’ is used across a range of disciplines to describe the process of de-carbonising societies so they transition from carbon-intensive forms of energy to more sustainable forms of energy. We are interested in how this is playing out at the level of cultural practice and values. Our critical lens focuses on Tesla as a way to begin investigating the inter-related dimensions required for such a complex cultural transformation. The project developed from an exploration into the way technical information about secondhand Tesla vehicles circulates and then how buyers of these vehicles make decisions. It expanded in scope due to the apparent importance of Tesla in the global energy transition. The pilot project is designed to set up a larger scale project investigating how the energy transition is developing in suburban Australia and has a focus on home energy production and storage, battery electric vehicles (BEVs) and more sustainable low-energy lifestyles.

The pilot project is in two inter-related parts: 1. Analysis of specialist and mainstream media related to Tesla; 2. Semi-structured interviews with Tesla owners used to sensitise the analysis of the media text archive. This presentation reports on preliminary findings. The media analysis is based on texts from three months of cotemporaneous analysis (i.e. netnographic style immersion as reporting on Tesla was published) and more than a decade of archival material, with early analysis used to frame interview questions, the responses to which feeds back into further analysis. We have identified three inter-related areas of interest when exploring the media discourse in specialist and mainstream media around Tesla:

1. ‘Tesla’ and the commodification of a structure of feeling (‘Tesla’ as future of energy tech).
2. Tesla enthusiast communities and the circulation of tactical technical information (troubleshooting, fixes, known points of failure).
3. Elon Musk and the cult of tech micro-celebrity (public/private mediation, ‘private’ belongs to commercial operations of Tesla).

Professor Glen Fuller

Professor Glen Fuller is the Head of School, School of Arts and Communication. He joined the University of Canberra as an Assistant Professor in 2011. He convened the Journalism program 2014-2016, the Master of Communication 2017-2020, and has served as Head of School 2018-present. Glen completed his PhD in 2007, graduating from the Centre for Cultural Research at the University of Western Sydney. He has a professional background in specialist magazine publishing. He is a currently a CI on the ARC-funded Discovery Project “Pedalling for Change” DP190100185.

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Date: Monday 5 July
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C10/Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Children, whether in the global north or the global south have long been active participants in development programs. This paper introduces a new research project that uses child-authored materials— stories, poems and other materials produced by children in a range of development organisations—as the primary sources for an alternative children’s history of development over a hundred-year period (1920 – 2020). Seeking to challenge prevailing assumptions that children are simply the ‘objects’ of development interventions, this project highlights children’s active transnational roles creating and producing development. Alongside child authored materials the project also explores the techniques and tools used to elicit and direct children’s participation toward adult agendas and ‘developmentally’ appropriate affects and effects. In this talk I will introduce a range of child authored materials, explore the contexts of their production and explore some of the key methodological questions that arise in the production of a children’s history of development.

Dr Annie McCarthy

Annie McCarthy is an Assistant Professor in Global Studies at the University of Canberra.  She works at the intersection of anthropology, childhood studies and development studies and is the author of a new book Children and NGOs in India: Development as Storytelling and Performance (2021). Her new research project seeks to historically contextualise her ethnographic work on children’s participation in NGO programs in contemporary Delhi and look historically at children’s role as co-producers and creators of development through archival research with development materials over a hundred year period (1920-2020).

Date: Monday 28 June
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 9A01

Astrophotography is the art and science of taking long exposure photography of the night sky to reveal the cosmic structures of the universe. Modern computers and manufacturing means that amateur astronomers can now create pictures from backyards that rival professional work from earlier decades. For me, astrophotography opens a window into the past and connects me to people and places across time and space.

Dr Sam Hinton

Sam Hinton is a digital media and design specialist with more than 25 years’ experience as an educator and practitioner. His current research focuses on the uses of digital media and games for well-being and resilience.

Date: June 21, Monday
Time: 1.30pm-2.30pm
Location: 1A21 & Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

Political accountability is at a low ebb in western democracies as politicians, political institutions, journalists and media organisations variously exploit, accommodate and challenge ‘post-truth’ political techniques. This year striking efforts to make political actors accountable arose in Australia where a number of women journalists broke, and worked to ensure continuing coverage of, a range of stories of vital national importance. Some of the women journalists responsible for this vigorous public interest journalism were reinforced by senior women media executives defending their reporting. A small number of women politicians used niche institutional venues to press politicians and officials on the issues reported, helping keep their stories in the public eye. These striking developments, in which women figure centrally, hold promise for lifting the quality and effectiveness of journalism overall at a time when hope is in short supply and accountability overall remains weak.

Dr Chris Wallace, Associate Professor, 50/50 By 2030 Foundation, University of Canberra

Dr Chris Wallace joined the Canberra Press Gallery as economics writer for the Melbourne Herald in 1987 and was subsequently Canberra correspondent for Business Review Weekly, trade and telecommunications reporter for the Australian, economics writer and political commentator with the Australian Financial Review, and political correspondent with ABC-TV’s 7.30 Report. She experimented early with digital innovations with her Breakfast Politics news aggregation servicing the federal parliamentary community. Wallace switched to the academy more than a decade ago, completing a PhD in History at ANU, building on earlier degrees in politics and history (ANU) and economics (Sydney), as well as an MBA at UNSW’s Australian Graduate School of Management (AGSM). She is the author of several books, most recently How To Win An Election (NewSouth, 2020). UNSW Press will publish Wallace’s next book, Political Biography As Political Intervention: 20^th Century Australian Prime Ministers and Their Biographers in 2022.

Date: Monday 7 June
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C12/Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

Associate Professor Jordan Williams’ research focuses on the links between creative expression and wellbeing, particularly for those who have experienced traumatic events. She has worked with external clients as diverse as Department of Defence, National Farmers Federation and Hospital Research Foundation.

Ian Drayton is Deputy Director Innovation & Business Development at the University of Canberra. He was awarded a Churchill Fellowship in 2017 to explore the use of creative arts to assist recovery from combat-related PTSD. He has extensive experience of business development in both private enterprise and higher education.

Assoc. Prof. Jordan Williams and Ian Drayton

The University of Canberra has built a strong reputation for applied arts based research in the field of creative practice and trauma. Some of the projects we’ve been involved in have seen us working with serving military personnel (Defence Arts for Recovery Resilience Teamwork and Skills), drought affected communities (National Farmers Federation and community organisations in Condobolin) and now bushfire affected communities (Regeneration, a project with the Hospital Research Foundation and funded by Magda Szubanski and Will Connolly).

Date: Monday 24 May
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C14/Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

The Hunter Valley in NSW is one of the forgotten convict places in the historiography of Australia's past.  The memory of thousands of convict men and women who passed through there between 1804 and 1841 has faded.  Nor is the Hunter one of those places we consider when we look at the frontier and the violence of the colonial past. This talk will discuss the position in Australia's history that the Valley occupies, how it was overlooked and look at the sources that can reignite it.  It will also consider how the combination of a public history and academic history approach can spark people's interest in our past.

Dr Mark Dunn

Mark Dunn grew up in the Hunter Valley and now works as a professional historian.  For twenty years he has worked in the heritage and archaeology sector.  In 2015 he completed a PhD at UNSW about Newcastle and the colonial Hunter Valley.  His book, The Convict Valley is based on the research undertaken for the PhD and for his CH Currey Fellowship at SLNSW in 2016.

Date: Wednesday 19 May
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C14/Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

This talk presents examples from the material I've collected with community members and colleagues for interpretation of the natural-cultural landscape of the Ginninderry development area. It includes discussion of community and collaborative process I’ve used in support of diverse, inclusive and engaging interpretation, and reflects on the way this has evolved in the Ginninderry heritage and sustainability context.  My research interests in this project concern methods of dialogic interpretation, the connection between these and sustainability intentions, and the issues of applying formal heritage frameworks to sustainable development practice. Ginninderry is a sustainable urban development in West Belconnen that includes land across the border in NSW.

Dr Mary Hutchison (ANU), Dr Cathy Hope and Dr Denise Thwaites

Dr Mary Hutchison is an honorary associate professor at the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, ANU. Her research and professional interests include museum and heritage site interpretation, oral history, collaborative community research and cultural diversity. She has a particular interest in interpreting changing times and places through the lens of personal experience.

Dr Cathy Hope is the Coordinator of the Play, Creativity and Wellbeing Project. Cathy has delivered multiple cross-sector, interdisciplinary projects in the ACT public realm at the intersections of creativity, urban renewal, community engagement for improved people and place outcomes. Cathy was the project lead on Haig Park Experiments —a six month $1million dollar activation of Haig Park to test community aspirations for the park and inform its ongoing renewal.

Dr Denise Thwaites is an Australian curator, researcher and educator, whose practice interlaces digital and community engaged processes to interrogate emergent frames of cultural inclusion, exclusion and collaboration, particularly as they are re-imagined through decentralised technologies. She is a member of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research, and Assistant Professor in Digital Arts and Humanities at the University of Canberra, where she teaches into the Bachelor of Arts and Digital Cultural Heritage

Date: Monday 17 May
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 1A21 & Zoom (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

There is a dynamic global community of stakeholders working towards addressing the challenges posed by disinformation, especially during elections. Journalists have launched fact check initiatives. Donors continue to invest in media literacy programmes. Tech platforms like Facebook and Twitter are strengthening their content moderation practices.

These initiatives, while valuable, overlook the voices of ordinary citizens. How do citizens characterise the problem of ‘fake news’ during elections? Do they find disinformation a serious challenge to electoral integrity? Does disinformation offer a greater threat than the longstanding issues of electoral fraud, disenfranchisement, and threats of violence? What can we learn from the collective wisdom of ordinary citizens?

To answer these questions, our research team conducted a three-day deliberative forum on disinformation in the Philippines – a country that Facebook considered to be the ‘patient zero’ of the global disinformation epidemic. Twenty-six randomly selected Filipinos from all over the country came together to learn about disinformation. They deliberated on the dangers created by the spread of ‘fake news,’ answering questions of who should be held accountable for the production of disinformation and who should safeguard social media from its harms. Participants were then asked to generate collective recommendations for stakeholders leading campaigns against disinformation.

Findings of the study reveal that ordinary citizens view disinformation as closely linked to structural issues of the role of money in politics and the precarity of economic labour in a middle-income country’s gig economy.

The presentation concludes by making a call to shift the centre of gravity in scholarship of disinformation. Disinformation studies remain largely shaped by the experiences of the Global North even though many of the disinformation innovations (as well as their remedies) are unfolding in the Global South. The presentation seeks to present an alternative account of disinformation grounded on the lived experiences of disinformation producers and ordinary citizens in disinformation ‘hotspots’ around the world.

Dr Nicole Curato

Nicole Curato is an Associate Professor at the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra. Her work examines how democracy can take root in communities recovering from the trauma of disasters, armed conflict, and urban crime. She is the author of the prize-winning Democracy in a Time of Misery: From Spectacular Tragedy to Deliberative Action (2019, Oxford University Press) and the editor of the Journal of Deliberative Democracy.

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Date: Monday 3 May
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 1A21 & Online (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au for the Zoom link)

This seminar will be an overview of our recently completed ARC DP and current book project. We argue that the logic of digital crowdsourced political participation has become normalised and institutionalised into the everyday repertoires of citizens and their organisations. The growth in popularity of creating, signing and sharing online petitions, and making micro-donations, shows the impact that everyday digital communications have had on contemporary citizen participation. Through novel analysis of individual survey, platform, and organisational data, we found that crowdsourced political participation is a unique type of highly mediated citizen engagement. We assess its potential for addressing the well-documented malaise of citizen-politics linkage in contemporary liberal democracies. Yet, while our story is a relatively optimistic one of agile, mass-based citizen engagement, we also reflect on the growing anti-democratic side of citizen mobilisation and information sharing that corporate social media platforms foster, and rarely choose to regulate or dampen.

Professor Ariadne Vromen & Professor Darren Halpin

Ariadne Vromen is Professor of Public Administration at the Australian National University. Until mid-2020 she was Professor of Political Sociology at the University of Sydney. She has long-term research interests in political engagement, including a significant project on how young people use social media for civic engagement in Australia, the UK, and the USA. Her recent book, Digital Citizenship and Political Engagement (Palgrave 2017), charts the rise and influence of digital campaigning organisations. Currently she is collaborating with colleagues on projects as diverse as young women and the future of work, to the datafication of storytelling in policy advocacy campaigns.

Darren Halpin is Professor of Political Science at the Australian National University. He has published widely on the topics of interest groups and organized interests, including recent articles in Governance, British Journal of Political Science, Journal of European Public Policy and Public Administration. His books include Groups, Representation and Democracy: Between Promise and Practice (MUP 2010) and The Organization of Political Interest Groups: Designing Advocacy (Routledge 2014). His new book, with Anthony J. Nownes, The New Entrepreneurial Advocacy: Silicon Valley Elites in American Politics, was published in early 2021 by Oxford University Press. It provides a deep dive into the political engagement of this important slice of corporate America.

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Date: Monday 19 April
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C14/Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

I completed my PhD in 2019 and graduated in the October of that year. I am also a bushfire fighter who stood at the end of a hose putting out fires. If we were not quick enough, flames would move beyond any semblance of control and climb the trees of the forest I worked in, scattering birds, their squawking piercing the air as they flew away.
Of course, I did not work alone. Being on a fire-ground with other crew members and, after a 12 to 15+ hour shift, hopping back on the truck to return to the ‘Shed’ generated a ‘bonding’ like no other I have experienced. When not on the truck, I worked on the radio with a small communications cell at FireCom. Here, we ‘listened in’ as crews responded to callouts. Snatches of radio-talk created half built pictures of what was happening on the fire-ground. Again, shared emotional experiences of anguish, joy, and team bonding featured.
But, as the bushfire season progressed and we moved from October 2019 to March 2020, comments in relation to auto-ethnography made by one of my PhD examiners were firing my imagination like bursts of flame and noise from a rocket. This, at a time, when I at last understood the impacts of life experiences on my writing. Consequently, in this project I use an auto-ethnographic approach to track how I balance what became my everyday firefighting experiences, both positive and negative, with life just before and beyond the fire-ground.
The learnings have been intense, but for me creative writing is that hollowed out space where I can breathe calmly. It is also a place where I am safe to feel excitement at the prospect of working at my ‘creative writing’ again.
Writing through overcrowded places into hollowed out spaces: Life, before and after, bushfire fighting, is one expression of that excitement and is undertaken as part of my project for the University of Canberra’s Donald Horne Creative and Cultural Fellowship. The other part of the project consists of a Collection of poems, entitled Sensitivities.
I would like to thank and acknowledge the support of the University of Canberra through the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research for this opportunity to write about my PhD, Firie and Covid-19 experiences of 2019-2020.

Date: Monday 12 April
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 2B03

Naomi Telushkin teaches screenwriting at the University of Canberra and has taught creative writing at the National University of Singapore, Arizona State University and the American University of Rome. She was awarded a Fulbright Research-Arts Fellowship to develop a television series in Singapore, and her writing has also received grants and fellowships from the Cannes Film Festival, the Sundance Film Festival, the City University of Hong Kong, the DISQUIET Literary Festival, the San Miguel de Allende Writers Festival, and elsewhere. Her work has been anthologized in Best Small Fictions and published in the Mid-American Review, Prairie Schooner, and Crab Orchard Review, among others. Her Canberra-based television series CIPHER is in development with Screen Canberra and received a Made in CBR Early Development grant. Her novel THE LITTLE DEATH is in development with Temple Hill Publishing (Los Angeles) with Temple Hill Entertainment attached for TV development. She’s represented by Eliza Rothstein at Inkwell Management (New York City).

Date: Tuesday 30 March
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C12 or Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

“I want to write about an old Banksia ericifolia growing in our backyard garden. I have become used to its friendly presence and I’ll miss him when it passes away. However, it’s quite likely that it will outlive me. We are both old although my friend seems to be more resilient and robust than me.”
These are the words with which I begin my essay which takes me to Joseph Banks, after whom the plant got its botanical name. Banks loved botanising and collected samples with James Cook and other members of the party anchored in the bay aboard the Endeavour in April-May 1770. Cook named the bay Botany Bay oblivious of a much more interesting name the Dharawal-speaking clan of the Gweagal people had been using for the place for many thousands of years. For them it was Gamay or Kamay, a word that means fresh water. Why fresh water? I ask in my essay, and as I explore answers to the question, I am forced to traverse deeper into time, the Deep Time, which always scribbles its presence in both inanimate and animate entities, including us, the humans. I am grateful to my amicable friend, the old Banksia in my backyard garden, for guiding me on my journey, one of the many milestones (or Deep-time stones) of which is the Last Glacial Maximum that began ~36 000 years BP (before present) and was followed by global warming which led to the formation of the bay.

Adjunct Professor Subhash Jaireth

Subhash Jaireth was born in Punjab, India. Between 1969 and 1978 he spent nine years in Russia studying geology and Russian literature. In 1986 he migrated to Australia. He has published poetry in Hindi, English and Russian. His published works include four books of poems: Golee Lagne se Pahle (Before the Bullet Hit Me) (Vani Prakashan, 1994); Unfinished Poems for Your Violin (Penguin Australia, 1996); Yashodhara: Six Seasons without You (Wild Peony, 2003); Aflame (Gazebo Books, 2021); and five books of prose fiction and non-fiction: To Silence: Three Autobiographies (Puncher & Wattmann, 2011); After Love (Transit Lounge, 2012); Moments (Puncher & Wattmann, 2014); Incantations (Recent Work Press, 2016). His most recent books include a collection of essays entitled Spinoza’s Overcoat: Travels with Writers and Poets (Transit Lounge, 2020), and a book of translation from Hindi, Rain Clouds: Love Songs of Meerabai (Recent Work Press, 2020). He is an adjunct professor at CCCR (University of Canberra)

Date: Monday 22 March
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 6C12/Zoom (please email peta.sinclair@canberra.edu.au if you would like the Zoom link)

Prefabricated houses were imported into Victoria during the 1850s gold rush to address the lack of builders in the state. Manufactured by British colonial interests in Singapore, their architecture displayed European influence through their type, scale and form. However, they can also be seen as adapting vernacular approaches as the construction details of these buildings clearly show the involvement of migrant Chinese and Malay carpenters. As timber buildings, construction details were not masked or covered up but expressed as integrated parts of the architecture. The roof structures display Malay intermediate beams, and Chinese crossed top plates are used on top of the wall framing. Long runs of horizontal timber members were joined in what the Chinese call a ‘hand in hand’ connection (also known in European carpentry as ‘lightning scarf’ joints). These systems were not self-evident, and often required Singapore carpenters to accompany knocked-down prefabricated houses to export markets like Australia. This paper investigates why these highly skilled Chinese carpenters left their home country, how they might have implemented their skills in Singapore, and how they then came to move on to other colonial jurisdictions. It also examines the legacy of nineteenth century Chinese carpentry and construction practices in Australia.

Dr John Ting

Dr. John Ting is an architect, researcher and educator. He teaches in the architecture and BCM programs at FAD, with a PhD from the University of Melbourne and a professional degree in architecture from RMIT University. His present research investigates Sarawak’s architectural history, the vernacular architecture of Malaysia, and mobile and prefabricated timber buildings in nineteenth century colonial Southeast Asia and Australia. He is the author of The History of Architecture in Sarawak before Malaysia, published in 2018.

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Date: Tuesday 16 March
Time:  5:30pm - 6:30pm
Location: 1A21/Live Stream YouTube

Once a ‘big idea, big ticket’ item, there has been a marked decline in a focus on innovation in the recent national conversation and public policy. But the pandemic has made innovation a necessity for many and not the optional extra it has often been perceived to be. This talk suggests that some of the historical problems with embedding innovation into public policy in Australia could be sheeted home to exactly the big idea, big ticket approach. Innovation can be encouraged – nudged along – without necessarily a big ticket approach. But the main difference from the past is that it is now much clearer that we can’t engage with innovation without working to overcome the divide between science and technology (STEM) and humanities, arts and social sciences (HASS).

Presenter

Distinguished Fellow Stuart Cunningham

Stuart Cunningham is a University of Canberra Faculty of Arts & Design’s first Distinguished Fellow. He is Distinguished Emeritus Professor, Queensland University of Technology. He directed the first Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence based in the humanities, Creative Industries and Innovation, and has contributed to the national debate on innovation through research, advocacy and books such as Hidden Innovation: Policy, Industry and the Creative Sector.

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Date: Monday 22 February
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: Zoom (please email jessica.western@canberra.edu.au for the link)

More and more institutions in the GLAM sector (Galleries, Libraries, Archives and Museums) are sharing their collection data, but how can it be used in research? The GLAM Workbench aims to build the skills and confidence of researchers, by sharing a wide range of tools and examples that work with real collection data. This seminar will explore the thinking behind the GLAM Workbench and possibilities for future development.

Associate Professor Tim Sherratt

Tim Sherratt is a historian and hacker who researches the possibilities and politics of digital cultural collections. He is Associate Professor of Digital Heritage within the CCCR.

Date: Monday 15 February
Time:  1:30pm - 2:30pm
Location: 1A21/Hybrid (please email nmrc@canberra.edu.au if you would like the Zoom link)

In 2020, researchers from the News and Media Research Centre, in partnership with two local community services organisations, were awarded $118,000 as part of the federal government’s Online Safety Grants Program, which provides funding to non-government organisations to deliver online safety education to children, young people and their communities. In this seminar, Catherine Page Jeffery and Sue Atkinson will provide an overview of the Safe Online project, which aims to develop and deliver a series of evidence-based, innovative workshops, school presentations and online resources to provide families with school-aged children with the skills to balance the risks and opportunities of digital technologies and reduce family conflict around technology use. Through this project, we aim to change the perception of young people as vulnerable risk takers in the online environment, and instead support them to share their knowledge about managing their online presence with younger peers and families. Our goal is to facilitate intergenerational discussion to enhance the relevance of strategies to minimise risks and increase uptake of online opportunities to children and young people’s actual experiences online.

Dr Catherine Page Jeffery & Ms Susan Atkinson

Catherine Page Jeffery is a lecturer in communication and media at the University of Canberra. Her research examines parental anxieties and perspectives regarding their children’s digital media use. She used to work in media regulation and cyber safety education.

Susan Atkinson is a senior strategic communication consultant and experienced former federal public servant. She is currently finishing her Masters of Strategic Communication, undertaking research and working on a number of projects with the News & Media Research Centre at UC, including the Safe Online Together project. Her research focuses on the use of social media in bushfire communication particularly on understanding community information needs and the use of images and infographics to increase community resilience.

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