Sydney Ideas

A panel of distinguished international visitors and Australia-based experts discuss and debate the ‘hot button’ issues being raised by Asian digital transformations. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 12 April 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/digital-rights-and-governance-in-asia-the-state-of-the-arts.html

Australia is widely celebrated as a multicultural triumph, but any such success remains incomplete. The findings of a new report, produced by the Australian Human Rights Commission in partnership with the University of Sydney Business School, the Committee for Sydney and Asia Society Australia, suggest we have a long way to go before realising the full potential of our multicultural population. In this Sydney Ideas event, held on 11 April 2018, Race Discrimination Commissioner Dr Tim Soutphommasane and University of Sydney Vice-Chancellor Dr Michael Spence AC launch the new research on cultural diversity and Australian leadership, and discuss opportunities and challenges that lie ahead.

Can we make objects invisible? Professor Gunther Uhlmann explores inverse problems, and the progress scientists are making to achieve invisibility.

Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings two leading scholars to discuss their new books and the power of populist authoritarianism. Prof Pippa Norris discusses her new book Cultural Backlash: The Rise of Populist Authoritarianism. Prof John Keane discusses his new book When Trees Fall, Monkeys Scatter: rethinking democracy in China.

Ngarigu woman Professor Jakelin Troy discusses intimate details of the lives, language and knowledge of the Aboriginal women she has discovered among the anthropological archives. Co-presented with Sydney University Museums, this talk coincides with the UNESCO memory of the world exhibition in Fisher Library which features the Anthropology archive through the work of Phyllis Kaberry, the first professionally trained Australian anthropologist, and the first to publish on Aboriginal women’s knowledge. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 15 March 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/interlocutors-in-the-archive.html

From the atom bomb to the microprocessor, physics produced many of the great transformations of the 20th century. In the 21st, a convergence of artificial intelligence, autonomous systems and quantum computing will yield even more profound changes. Professor Michael Biercuk, Professor Allison Macfarlane, Professor Hugh Gusterson, Professor Toby Walsh and Professor James Der Derian investigate the implications of quantum innovation for peace and security in the 21st century. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 15 February 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/strange-physics--drones--artificial-intelligence-and-quantum-com.html

Outrage. Is it an affect? An agency? A meme? This talk by Professor Robyn Wiegman attempts to decide whether outrage offers political instruction or if it's an instrument of democratic destruction. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 13 March 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/outrage-the-psychic-life-of-trumps-america.html

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have historically been subject to much more misdiagnosis, mistreatment, incarceration and coercion than other Australians in the hands of psychiatric institutions, psychiatrists and other mental health professionals. The ramifications of psychiatry’s sometimes unwitting, indifferent or knowing complicity in past harmful practices and beliefs have been far-reaching. They extend from the health and well-being of the individual patient, to human rights and social justice concerns that prevail in contemporary Australian society. How do we come to grips with the past, and how do we do so in just ways? What are the responsibilities of psychiatry to ensure a contribution to improving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander social and emotional health and well-being? What can apology and other forms of recognition achieve? What can we learn from other projects of apology and recognition? A panel discussion held as part of Sydney Ideas on 7 March 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/working-the-past-aboriginal-australia-and-psychiatry.html

We’ve just legalised same-sex marriage, but where does the rest of the world stand? Bronwyn Winter and Maxime Forest explore the ways in which same-sex marriage becomes institutionalised (or resisted) through legal and societal norms and practices. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 5 March 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/same-sex-marriage-and-the-state-global-perspectives.html

Professor Sylvie Poirier reflects on her trajectory of engagement and collaborative research with the Atikamekw First Nation (north-central Quebec, Canada). In 1990, when the Council of the Atikamekw Nation first approached Professor Poirier to conduct research work on land rights issues, they agreed that her anthropological expertise would serve their life projects. Since then, Professor Poirier’s engagement with them has been manifold. Early on, as an “expert” anthropologist within the arduous process of land claims negotiations, she documented the “anthropological proof” of their ancestral relationships to the land claimed. In the early 2000s, her anthropological expertise and research funds were further utilised for exploring contemporary ways to document, valorise and transmit their knowledge systems to younger generations. In this Sydney Ideas lecture she discusses collaborative research as an ongoing process of learning, exchange, and decolonization for the anthropologist and the Indigenous people. Held as part of Sydney Ideas on 14 February 2018: https://sydney.edu.au/news-opinion/sydney-ideas/2018/engaged-anthropology--collaborative-research-and-the-atikamekw-f.html