Sydney Ideas

A Sydney Ideas conversation co-presented with the Sydney School of Entrepreneurship A serial entrepreneur, Ryan Holmes started his first business in high school, ultimately opening a string of ventures - from a pizza restaurant to a digital media agency – before starting Hootsuite in 2008. As founder and CEO, he has helped grow Hootsuite into the world’s most widely used social relationship platform, with 15-million-plus users, including more than 800 of the Fortune 1000 companies. Ryan Holmes is in discussion with Nick Kaye, Chief Executive Officer, Sydney School of Entrepreneurship. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 March 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/ryan_holmes.shtml

As Director General of Al Jazeera Media Network from 2008 to 2011, Wadah Khanfar was in a unique position to observe war, uprisings and revolution in one of the most turbulent regions in the world, the Middle East. He is now President of Al Sharq Forum, an independent think-tank dedicated to developing long-term strategies for political development, social justice and economic prosperity of the people of the Middle East. Wadah Khanfar joins Sydney Ideas for a conversation about the rapidly evolving nature of our news consumption, its relationship to the complex world of political strategy and diplomacy in the Middle East and North Africa, and the complexities of identity and representation in this situation. Response by Zainab Jasim, PhD student at the University of Sydney, researching aspects of Al-Jazeera's coverage of the Arab Spring. Co-presented by the Department of Arabic Language and Cultures and the National Centre for Cultural Competence at the University of Sydney Presented by Sydney Ideas on 16 March 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/wadah_khanfar.shtml

Professor Stuart Kauffman is one of the most distinguished scholars of complexity and the author of several acclaimed books, including The Origins of Order: Self Organization and Selection in Evolution (1993), At Home in the Universe: The Search for Laws of Self-Organization and Complexity (1995), and Humanity in a Creative Universe (2016). In this Sydney Ideas talk, he proposes that the ever-changing phase space of evolution means we can write no laws of motion for evolution, and it is thus not reducible to physics. The evolving biosphere is the most complex system we know in the universe. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 1 March 2017. See the webpage for more about this lecture and to access the lecture slides: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_stuart_kauffman.shtml

A panel presents fresh perspectives on museums approaches to human rights and the Holocaust, exploring and explicating contemporary international debates. Experts from various disciplinary backgrounds alongside museum practitioners analyse, challenge, and critically assess existing approaches, while considering possible future directions for these increasingly influential institutions. For while human rights museums with a Holocaust core or theme proliferate internationally, this burgeoning area of museology has not yet been subject to systematic scholarly study. By comparing and contrasting the unique combination of advocacy (human rights) with memory (the Holocaust), the ARC Linkage project Reverberations: The Holocaust, Human Rights and the Museum is setting the agenda for theory, practice, and policy with regard to human rights and Holocaust museums in the 21st century. Chaired by Dr Avril Alba, a Senior Lecturer in Holocaust Studies and Jewish Civilisation, and Director (Acting) of the Museums and Heritage Program, University of Sydney. SPEAKERS: - Associate Professor Jennifer Barrett publishes on museums, culture, art, and the public sphere. - Ms Tali Nates, Founder and Director of the Johannesburg Holocaust and Genocide Centre, South Africa. - Associate Professor Adam Muller, Department of English, Film, and Theatre at the University of Manitoba, studies the representation of genocide, atrocity and mass violence. - Professor Jennifer Carter, Director of the graduate museology programs at the Université du Québec à Montréal, where she is also professor of new museologies, intangible heritage and cultural objects in the Department of Art History. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 28 Feb 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/reverberations_holocaust_humanrights_museums_forum.shtml

International insights on achieving affordability with quality density. Real estate development expert Professor Richard Peiser at Harvard University and guests of the Cities Leadership Institute at the University of Sydney, spoke on how to achieve quality, affordable housing drawing on case studies and strategies from the United States. They discussed ways that we can better finance loans for key workers in affordable housing, new tenure strategies, and trends in commercial and residential real estate. Professor Peiser also suggests how we can better integrate jobs and transport into the delivery process of and international best practices of density and accessibility. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 Feb 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/professor_richard_peiser.shtml

How do theatre plays, such as The Trouble with Harry contribute to advancing contemporary transgender issues? A post-performance Q&A co-presented with the Seymour Centre as part of the 2017 Mardi Gras. The playwright Lachlan Philpott is joined by the University of Sydney PhD candidate Rillark Bolton whose research explores the experiences of identity formation and community creation for trans masculine individuals, and Dr Anna Hickey-Moody, Associate Professor in Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. Together they discuss the history of transgender (the term that did not yet exist in the time of Harry Crawford), the politics of the play and the role of the performing arts in shaping contemporary thought and opinion on trans issues. The discussion is chaired by Charles O'Grady. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 23 February 2017: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/transgender_forum.shtml

Efforts to reconcile theories and practices of democracy with environmental sustainability have long been central to environmental political thought. Since this first wave of scholarship on ecological democracy, there have been numerous crucial developments that pose a range of challenges. On the environmental side, we have seen the acceleration of climate change, arguments for setting planetary boundaries around humanity’s environmental impacts, and widespread acknowledgement that the Earth has entered a new epoch: the Anthropocene. On the political side, we have had the growth of environmental and climate justice movements, the proliferation of institutions for global environmental governance, and the anti-environmental and post-truth era. This panel of distinguished contributors to the ecological democracy debate will examine what theories of ecological democracy have offered, and, looking forward, how (or if) they might respond to the current set of ecological, and democratic, challenges. SPEAKERS: - Professor Robyn Eckersley, Professor in Political Science in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. - John Dryzek, Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Centenary Professor in the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the Institute for Governance and Policy Analysis, and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia Presented by Sydney Ideas on 20 Feb 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/ecological_democracy.shtml (Please note that we had to take the section with Professor Karin Bäckstrand out due to technical difficulties)

Contemporary governments frame surveillance and secrecy as evils necessary to ensure our security. Individual privacy has been trumped by the need for covert behaviour on the part of states and corporations who collect and store our personal metadata and monitor our activities via new technologies without our knowledge or consent. We ask: how does the gathering and suppression of information subvert our right to know and preclude the media from exposing wrongdoing and holding officials accountable? What are the existing accountability mechanisms, and what are the challenges current surveillance measures pose to these? Panellists: - Ian Shaw, political geographer at the University of Glasgow, UK - Felicity Ruby, a doctoral candidate in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney - Peter Fray, professor of journalism practice at the University of Technology Sydney, the founder of the fact-checking website PolitiFact Australia and the former editor-in-chief or editor of the Sydney Morning Herald, the Canberra Times, the Sun-Herald and the Sunday Age. Presented by Sydney Ideas on 16 Feb 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/drones_lies_privacy_forum.shtml

In 2010 environmentalist David de Rothschild sailed from San Francisco to Sydney in 'The Plastiki' , a unique 18.3-metre catamaran made from approximately 12,500 reclaimed plastic soft drink bottles, sails of recycled PET, and masts made from aluminium irrigation piping and consist of 98 per cent post-consumer billet. In his talk for Sydney Ideas, with inventor, educator and adjudicator Sally Dominguez, David de Rothschild explained the technology used on board and revealed what he and crew learnt on their four-month journey about plastic in our oceans. A Sydney Ideas event on 29 July, 2010 For more information http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2010/david_de_rothschild.shtml

With the election of Donald Trump to the Presidency of the United States, it now seems climate change denial has reached into the most powerful political office in the world. In this special Sydney Ideas public lecture, world-renowned climate scientist Professor Michael Mann provides a somewhat light-hearted take on a very serious issue - the threat of human-caused climate change and what to do about it. Based on his recent collaboration with Washington Post editorial cartoonist Tom Toles, Professor Mann reviews the scientific evidence of climate change, the reasons we should care, and the often absurd efforts by special interests and partisan political figures to confuse the public and attack the science. Despite the monumental nature of the challenge this poses to human civilization, and the seeming inability of political leadership to respond to the climate crisis, Professor Mann highlights ways forward in mitigating future harm and reasons for cautious optimism. SPEAKER: Professor Michael E Mann, Distinguished Professor of Atmospheric Science at Pennsylvania State University Presented by Sydney Ideas and the Sydney Environment Institute at the University of Sydney on 8 February 2017 http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2017/michael_mann.shtml