Science has evolved over thousands of years of human enquiry to provide a rational basis for understanding and predicting what happens in the world around us. We rely on science to enhance our standard of living, to keep us healthy and to address the problems and challenges that we face. Science has put men on the moon, probed distant planets, discovered DNA and cured disease. And yet, there are many who still question the value and legitimacy of science which raises the question: when and why d...
Jan 15, 2015•1 hr 34 min
In today’s classrooms academics and teachers are increasingly expected to incorporate new communication technologies into their curriculum. However, by adopting these new mediums are we reducing the quality of students’ educational experience or is this just the way of the classrooms of tomorrow? In the final ‘blow up the lecture’ event for the year, our panel of experts examine the future of education in an online world addressing questions such as: What digital resources can we harness to enha...
Jan 09, 2015•1 hr 26 min
Professor Steven Chu gives the plenary opening at the Light, Energy and the Environment Congress held on 5 December 2014.
Jan 08, 2015•1 hr 18 min
The Australian community has, to an unprecedented extent, become involved in reconciliation through Reconciliation Action Plans and other initiatives. There is acceptance that there is a broad responsibility beyond governments to help close the gap. At the same time we have sharpened political and government focus with a Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, massive reorganisation of how the Commonwealth goes about its business, and all-party support for Constitutional recognition. In these res...
Dec 03, 2014•32 min
In his valedictory address, outgoing Head of College Professor Michael L'Estrange argues that the NSC is a good example of how the worlds of public policy and academia can best work together.
Nov 13, 2014•48 min
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 ag...
Nov 06, 2014•53 min
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 wi...
Nov 05, 2014•57 min
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 wor...
Nov 05, 2014•55 min
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 societ...
Nov 03, 2014•1 hr 19 min
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 ...
Oct 27, 2014•49 min
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 ...
Oct 27, 2014•51 min
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 com...
Oct 14, 2014•58 min
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 t...
Oct 14, 2014•1 hr 14 min
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 docume...
Oct 14, 2014•40 min
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 ba...
Oct 08, 2014•53 min
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 mor...
Oct 07, 2014•1 hr 8 min
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 a...
Oct 07, 2014•49 min
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.
Oct 07, 2014•43 min
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 a...
Sep 24, 2014•1 hr
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.
Sep 24, 2014•1 hr 41 min
Visiting international academic and influential science blogger Professor Jim Coyne gives a provocative talk at ANU Research School of Psychology.
Sep 22, 2014•1 hr 11 min
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 stud...
Sep 04, 2014•54 min
Phumzile Mlambo-Ngcuka, Executive Director of UN Women, in conversation with Virginia Haussegger
Aug 28, 2014•1 hr 9 min
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 conjunct...
Aug 27, 2014•1 hr 15 min
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 Commis...
Aug 26, 2014•1 hr 1 min
What if the traditional lecture became a thing of the past? Are there some forms of learning that are better suited to computers than the classroom? Do students want to be talked at or talked to? Technology is opening up new ways to teach and learn and we want your opinion on what the classrooms of the future might look like. Featuring panellists: Professor Sanjay Sarma Director of Digital Learning, MIT Dr Joe Hope Physics Education Centre, ANU Ms Laura Wey Education Officer, ANUSA Chaired by AB...
Aug 06, 2014•1 hr 22 min
Director-General of the World Trade Organisation, Ambassador Roberto Azevêdo delivered a public lecture on the 17th of July 2014 at ANU entitled, New momentum: can the success in Bali transform the WTO? Ambassador Azevêdo discussed where the WTO should go next and reflected on how trade issues might play into the G20 process — a timely discussion in the lead up to Australia's hosting of the G20 Summit in November. Ambassador Azevêdo is the sixth Director-General of the WTO. In 2008 he was appoin...
Aug 05, 2014•1 hr 6 min
What causes some eruptions to be more explosive than others? Is it the total driving gas fuel, or how fast the gas escapes? This lecture examines both the volatile content and the speed of magma ascent immediately prior to eruption. Chemical zonation preserved inside glass pockets and crystals provides one of the fastest clocks in geology. These timescales of chemical diffusion operate over minutes to hours in the run-up to eruption. Initial results show that more explosive eruptions may result ...
Aug 04, 2014•54 min
Claiming the body as property has been represented as the best way to ensure control over our own choices and lives; a crucial way of asserting our rights to bodily integrity; and an important means of protection against the abuse of our bodily materials by today's biotechnology companies. Refusing to see our bodies as property, it is argued, reflects either a religious view of the body as belonging to God, or a misguided sentimentalism that blocks clear thinking about matters such as prostituti...
Jul 31, 2014•1 hr 29 min
The Gender Institute marked its 3rd anniversary on Friday 21 March 2014 with an inspirational lecture and discussion with Sex Discrimination Commissioner Ms Elizabeth Broderick from the Australian Human Rights Commission, who spoke on; "Progressing gender equity and the role of male champions of change" Commissioner Broderick was introduced by ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young, AO who lauded her committed advocacy and confirmed ANU support for her goals: preventing violence against women a...
Jul 31, 2014•1 hr 24 min
