Experience Anu

In this podcast ANU classics expert Dr Ioannis Ziogas delivers the 2014 Last Lecture. Classics, the study of the ancient Greek and Roman world, deals with the traditional literature of Greece and Rome and the themes of history, philosophy, and culture. Dr Ziogas says it makes it a multi-faceted and diverse subject for students to learn, especially since the topic is always on the news and in movies. “It actually covers a lot of motifs that are appealing to this young age group – the coming of age, the challenges within families, discovering yourself – all these lie at the heart of Greek myth and all these issues appeal to the young students.” The Last Lecture is an initiative supported by the Dean of Students, the ANU Students' Association (ANUSA) and the Postgraduate and Research Students' Association (PARSA). Around 1,200 students voted in the Last Lecture process. They chose from 100 lecturers who made it through to final nominations.

This talk was given at The Australian National University on 22 October 2014. The Art of Belonging advances the argument put forward in Mackay's bestselling The Good Life: a 'good life' is not lived in isolation or in the pursuit of independent goals; a good life is lived at the heart of a thriving community, among people we trust, and within an environment of mutual respect. Drawing on 50 years' experience as a social researcher, Mackay creates a fictional suburb, Southwood, and populates it with characters who - like most of us - struggle to reconcile their need to belong with their desire to live life on their own terms. He chronicles the numerous human interactions and inevitable conflicts that arise in a community when characters assert their own needs at the expense of others. The Art of Belonging is the book that will reignite the conversation about how we want to live; it will provide the framework for those who argue for a particular vision of community, one that sustains, protects and nurtures th

The 2014 OAA-ANU Lecture The world’s tallest flowering plants – the Mountain Ash forests – lie just 90 minutes’ drive north-east from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. They are the world’s most carbon dense ecosystems. They yield almost all of Melbourne’s water supply and are a critical environment for a wide range of native plants and animals. Mountain Ash forests are also subject to widespread logging, primarily for paper production and were the scene of the 2009 Black Saturday wildfires – the worst natural disaster in Australian history. The ANU has conducted key research programs on forest ecology, biodiversity conservation and disturbance (logging and fire) impacts in these forests since mid-1983 leading to a major body of new knowledge and an array of exciting scientific discoveries. In this lecture Professor David Lindenmayer summarises some of the extra-ordinary ecology of Mountain Ash forests and some sobering recent research results highlighting links between past logging operations and the elevated

One of the major questions raised regarding many protracted and violent intergroup conflicts is why the adversaries do not succeed in reaching a settlement that seems obvious and easily attainable to outsiders. This question is of special importance because despite great losses, destruction, and personal suffering, many members of societies engulfed in these conflicts remain entrenched in their conflict supporting narratives that prevent peace making process and cannot go easily through a societal change that is required in order to achieve peaceful settlement of the conflict. These conflict-supporting narratives are propagated over many years by various channels of communication and various institutions in each involved society, including the educational system. They become pillars of culture of conflict and leaders with the help of the societal institutions make all the efforts to maintain them. Various societal mechanisms are employed to prevent transmission and dissemination of alternative information tha

Seventeenth Geoffrey Sawer Lecture 2014 Geoffrey Sawer was the first Professor of Law at The Australian National University, appointed in 1950 at the age of 40. His fluid and incisive writing, especially on Australian constitutional law and politics, has had a significant impact on succeeding generations of academics, practitioners and judges. In 1998, two years after Sawer’s death in 1996, in honour of this pioneering scholar, the Dean of the ANU College of Law, Michael Coper, with then Centre for International and Public Law Director Hilary Charlesworth, inaugurated the annual Sawer Lecture. Since then, the annual lecture has been delivered by such luminaries as Sir Ninian Stephen, Sir Gerard Brennan, and Professor Leslie Zines. Ms Deborah Glass OBE is the current Victorian Ombudsman. She was appointed in March 2014; the appointment is for a term of 10 years. Deborah has recently stepped down as Deputy Chair of the Independent Police Complaints Commission (IPCC) of England and Wales, completing a 10-year

After enacting an array of new anti-terror laws in the years following the September 11 attacks, Australia is now seeking to introduce additional laws in response to the threat posed by fighters returning from conflicts in Syria and Iraq. This talk will examine whether these measures are needed, exploring whether Australia already has the laws in place to protect the community from home-grown terrorism? Drawing from current examples, Professor George Williams will consider if changes need to be made. This includes such measures as the collection of metadata on calls and internet use, reversing the onus of proof by deeming a person guilty of an offence if they travel to certain locations, and making it easier for government to ban organisations (and jail their members) based on their speech about terrorism. George Williams AO is the Anthony Mason Professor at the University of New South Wales. As an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Professor Williams is engaged in a multi-year project on ant

Graeme Simsion talks about his latest book, creative processes and adapting the Rosie Project for the big screen. The Rosie Project was an international publishing phenomenon, with more than a million copies sold in over forty countries around the world. Now Graeme Simsion returns with the highly anticipated sequel, The Rosie Effect. Don Tillman and Rosie Jarman are now married and living in New York. Just as Don is about to announce that Gene, his philandering best friend from Australia, is coming to stay, Rosie drops a bombshell: she’s pregnant. In true Tillman style, Don instantly becomes an expert on all things obstetric. But in between immersing himself in a new research study on parenting and implementing the Standardised Meal System (pregnancy version), Don’s old weaknesses resurface. And while he strives to get the technicalities right, he gets the emotions all wrong, and risks losing Rosie when she needs him most. Graeme Simsion was born in Auckland and is a Melbourne-based writer of short stori

Authoritarian regimes are under siege in many parts of the world. Some have already given way and others are likely to follow. Building democracies in their place will not be easy or quick, and in some cases it will not happen in the medium term. Much has been learned about how to organize free and fair elections, but building the other institutions and the habits of democratic governance inevitably takes time. Some countries in transition face intense divisions that make democracy challenging to achieve. But the historic possibility of decisive movement from exclusionary and repressive rule toward more open, inclusionary and accountable democratic governance beckons in North and sub-Saharan Africa, Western Asia, Southeast Asia, and the Caribbean. Learning how unexpected transitions toward democracy were accomplished should be of great interest to those who want to understand, undertake or support democratic transitions today. Abraham F. (Abe) Lowenthal has combined two careers: as an analyst of Latin Americ

With unprecedented access to their hitherto sealed records, David Horner tells the real story of Australia's domestic intelligence organisation, from shaky beginnings to the expulsion of Ivan Skripov in 1963. This is the first volume of a remarkable official history of ASIO - a revealing and authoritative account of the early years of Australia's national security intelligence service. With unfettered access to the records, David Horner’s research sheds new light on the Petrov Affair, and documents incidents and activities that have never previously been revealed. This authoritative and ground-breaking account overturns many myths about ASIO, and offers new insights into broader Australian politics and society in the fraught years of the Cold War. David Horner AM is Professor of Australian defence history in the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre at The Australian National University, Australia’s oldest, largest and highest ranking academic institute for strategic studies research, education and commentar

This podcast was recorded at ANU on Thursday 3 October. Annabel Crabb is in conversation with Samantha Maiden, National Political Editor Sunday Telegraph. Working women are in an advanced, sustained, and chronically under-reported state of wife drought, and there is no sign of rain. But why is the work-and-family debate always about women? Why don't men get the same flexibility that women do? In our fixation on the barriers that face women on the way into the workplace, do we forget about the barriers that – for men – still block the exits? The Wife Drought is about women, men, family and work. Written in Annabel Crabb's inimitable style, it's full of candid and funny stories from the author's work in and around politics and the media, historical nuggets about the role of ‘The Wife' in Australia, and intriguing research about the attitudes that pulse beneath the surface of egalitarian Australia. One of Australia's most popular political commentators, Annabel Crabb is the ABC's chief online political write

Australia asserts sovereignty to 42 per cent of the Antarctic continent and has a long involvement in Antarctic exploration and science. Australia also has important economic and environmental interests in the Great Southern Ocean. We are an original signatory to the Antarctic Treaty which, among other things, establishes all that part of the globe below 60 degrees South as a region free of military conflict and nuclear arms. While Australia has been a leading player in Antarctic affairs for more than a century, Australian leadership should not be taken for granted as new countries emerge as significant participants in the Antarctic treaty System. This NSC public seminar will explore the emerging issues in Antarctica and their implications for the Antarctic Treaty System and for Australia’s Antarctic policy. Dr Tony Press is the Chief Investigator for the Australian Government’s 20 Year Australian Antarctic Strategic Plan and Adjunct Professor at the University of Tasmania. Until July this year, he was the

In the past decade more than 150 books with ‘Anzacs’ in the title have been published. But for Australians there was much more WWI than battles and fighting. The war bitterly divided Australian society and politics, along fault lines that would last for at least a generation. In all of today’s national commemoration we should remember these others ‘wars’—between pro and anti-conscriptionists, between ‘loyalists’ and those whom they stigmatised as ‘disloyal’, and between the labour movement and an increasingly authoritarian government. Within the labour movement, too, there was a war which tore it asunder, in ways that stalled its emergence as a party of reforming government at the national level. Professor Joan Beaumont is an internationally recognised historian of Australia in the two world wars. Her most recent book Broken Nation: Australians and the Great War (Allen & Unwin, 2013) has been shortlisted for the WA Premier’s Award (non-fiction) and the NSW Premier’s (Australian History) Award.

The Government’s decision to commission a new Defence White Paper – the third in just in just five years – suggests that Australian defence policy is in trouble. That comes as no surprise, because Defence policy is never easy. But the new White Paper will only fix the problems if we understand why the last two failed, and avoid the same mistakes. Professor Hugh White AO, ANU Public Policy Fellow delivered a keynote address during ANU Public Policy Week 2014.

Born in the United States to immigrant Chinese parents, Amy Tan is an internationally celebrated writer. Her novels The Joy Luck Club, The Kitchen God’s Wife, The Hundred Secret Senses, The Bonesetters Daughter, and Saving Fish from Drowning, are all New York Times bestsellers. She is also the author of a memoir, The Opposite of Fate, and two children's books. Her work has been translated into 35 languages. Join Amy Tan and Colin Steele, Emeritus Fellow, ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences as they discuss the collapse of China’s imperial dynasty to the inner workings of courtesan houses in her new novel Valley of Amazement. With her characteristic wisdom, grace, and humour, Amy Tan conjures a story of the inheritance of love, its mysteries and senses, and its illusions and truths.

Alastair Walton, Chairman of BKK Partners and a former Co-Chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia, discusses Australia’s financial sector in the context of global developments impacting the industry.

Visiting international academic and influential science blogger Professor Jim Coyne gives a provocative talk at ANU Research School of Psychology.

Greg Combet has been central to some of the biggest public struggles of our time—on the waterfront, the collapse of an airline, compensation for asbestos victims, the campaign against unfair workplace laws and then climate change. From an idyllic childhood on the Minchinbury estate in the western suburbs of Sydney, Combet's world changed dramatically with the early death of his wine-maker father. The shy child was uprooted to the suburbs and an uncertain future. A scholarship allowed him to study engineering and saw him appreciate first hand the role of unions in the workplace. He rose to lead the Australian trade union movement and become a senior minister in the Rudd and Gillard Labor governments. Along the way he has battled his own struggles, with political ideology, the impact of work on families and the loneliness of the parliamentary life. His story is not just a personal memoir; it is an insight into how power works in Australia, who holds it, how it is used and the ruthless ways in which it is snatc

Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, in conversation with Virginia Haussegger

The Curtin Medalist for Excellence in Medical Research for 2013, Canberra’s Centenary Year, is Nobel Laureate Emeritus Professor Rolf Zinkernagel. The Medal was presented to Professor Zinkernagel for a Lifetime of Achievement at a ceremony at JCSMR. Professor Zinkernagel then presented a Public Lecture on his work entitled 'Why do we not have a vaccine against HIV or TB?' Professor Zinkernagel was awarded the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine in 1996 for his research, carried out in conjunction with Professor Peter Doherty at The John Curtin School in the 1970s. The Prize was for their discoveries concerning the specificity of the cell mediated immune defence.

The United Nations Human Rights Council established the Commission of Inquiry on Human Rights on the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) in 2013, tasked with investigating the alleged systematic, widespread and grave violations of human rights in North Korea, with a view to ensuring full accountability, particularly for violations which may amount to crimes against humanity. The Hon Michael Kirby was appointed as Chair of this Commission. As part of its investigations, the Commission conducted public hearings with more than 80 victims and other witnesses in Seoul, Tokyo, London and Washington D.C. The Commission’s report was made public in February 2014 and detailed many alleged crimes against humanity arising from ‘policies established at the highest level of State’ and called for urgent action from the international community. In this public lecture, Mr Kirby will be talking about his work on the Commission and the human rights situation in North Korea.