The most common causes of death in Australia are chronic non-communicable diseases related to lifestyle. Despite great improvements in treatments and outcomes, more Australians are developing diseases like type 2 Diabetes than ever before, and the total cost to the health system of diabetes alone is around $15bn per year. How do these illnesses interact? What are the factors associated with increased risk of chronic illness, and what can we do to reduce our risk? And what can scientists, health ...
Aug 16, 2016•1 hr 6 min
The Grandmother Hypothesis aims to explain why increased longevity evolved in humans, while female fertility still ends at the same age it does in our closest evolutionary cousins, the great apes. Beginning with ethnographic surprises that drew us to pay attention to grandmothering in the first place, Kristen Hawkes will show how, in addition to human life history, grandmothering can help explain the precocious sociality of human infants and our distinctive appetite for mutual understanding as w...
Aug 15, 2016•1 hr 31 min
US author and activist, Linda Tirado explains the rise of Trump and suggests what can and should be done about it. Across the Western world, we’re seeing a resurgence in plain populism. The blame for this is laid at the feet of the poor. Common wisdom holds that Trump voters are usually rural, white, and lower working class. But is this objective reality, or merely the narrative we’re used to and most likely to rely on? ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Linda Tirado is a US writer and activist. Her work focuse...
Aug 11, 2016•1 hr 3 min
A Storyology 2016 event co-presented with the Walkley Foundation Investigative and public-service journalism shine a light on the world’s dark corners. In today’s globally connected world, leaked documents and data can be shared and analysed by reporters and citizen journalists anywhere. Major investigations into finance and corruption like the Panama Papers highlight the growing chasm between the world's elite and everyone else, and the role governments have played in creating it. Speakers: Ger...
Aug 10, 2016•56 min
Part of the 2016 Festival of Urbanism. A conversation on the divergence of Sydney and Melbourne’s cultural policy between the University of Melbourne’s Dr Kate Shaw and the University of Sydney’s Dr Oliver Watts. SPEAKERS: Dr Kate Shaw is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in Urban Geography and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Her current research focuses on urban renewal in the 21st century. Accepting that the economic case for growth combines with the environmental cas...
Aug 08, 2016•1 hr 11 min
The vocation of public service remains a cornerstone of Australian democracy. Yet its traditional virtues are under pressure. Too often exciting innovations have remained at the periphery, failing to deliver on their promise. New approaches to the designing, commissioning and funding of government services have yet to transform the centre of public administration. Bureaucratic structures, regulatory compliance systems and a culture of risk aversion have narrowed the manner in which public accoun...
Aug 04, 2016•1 hr 23 min
Under capitalism, how does the state organise space in our everyday lives through the streets we walk, the monuments we visit, and the places where we meet? A talk by Univeristy of Sydney Professor Adam Morton, Department of Political Economy.
Aug 04, 2016•1 hr 9 min
At 35 years of age Dr Marjorie Aunos had made a name for herself nationally and internationally as a leading practitioner-researcher and advocate for parents with intellectual disabilities. In her own words, “life was good”; she was doing what she loved especially her new role as a mother to her 18 month old son. On the 5th of January 2012, on her way to work, Marjorie’s life took a sharp turn. Her car slipped on ice and collided with an oncoming truck. She was left with paraplegia. In this lect...
Aug 03, 2016•58 min
The 2016 Australian Book Review Laureate’s Fellow Michael Aiken in conversation with David Malouf, the ABR Laureate. The forum includes Michael Aiken reading from his verse Fellowship project, ‘Satan Repentant’, a violent epic leaping from the cosmological to the infinitesimal, and a story of contrition. Sydney Ideas event infomation http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/ABR_laureate_2016_satan_repentant.shtml
Aug 03, 2016•58 min
According to recent reports, 1.2 million Australians regularly struggle to put good, healthy food on the table. From low incomes to high living costs, casualised labor markets to government policies, more and more Australians don’t have enough money to eat or to eat well. In policy jargon, problems like these are often referred to as food and nutrition insecurity. This panel focuses on the problem of food insecurity here in Sydney, its causes, consequences, and – ultimately – what can be done to...
Aug 01, 2016•1 hr 24 min
Tax evasion is as old as taxes. But with the introduction of mass income taxes at the beginning of the twentieth century, the problem took on new dimensions. After 1918, the first tax haven countries appeared initially in continental Europe. After the Second World War, a new generation of havens opened up in the dissolving British Empire in places such as the Bahamas, Cayman Islands, British Virgin Islands, Singapore, and, for Australia, the New Hebrides and other Pacific territories. This talk ...
Jul 27, 2016•1 hr 22 min
The Second World War still has a defining place in how we imagine war today, despite its increasing distance from us. The west has not experienced ‘major war’ since 1945, and so our comprehension of what it means has not had to be redefined. But the war, which we have invented for ourselves, is a caricature: a ‘good’ war fought for ‘necessary’ reasons by a generation of ‘heroes’. The implicit contrast is with the First World War, which is portrayed as none of these things. This construction of t...
Jul 19, 2016•1 hr 35 min
The Astronomical Society of Australia (ASA) 2016 Harley Wood Lecture for the ASA 50th anniversary Annual Scientific Meeting Over the last 40 years, scientists have uncovered evidence that if the Universe had been forged with even slightly different properties, life as we know it - and life as we can imagine it - would be impossible. With small tweaks to the way the Universe works, we can erase the periodic table, disintegrate particles and remove all traces of structure in the cosmos. Join us on...
Jul 06, 2016•1 hr 28 min
The human war against the mosquito is once again garnering global public attention. An explosion in the number of cases of Zika virus in the Americas, has resulted in huge media coverage and the World Health Organisation declaring a global health emergency. Spread by the mosquito Aedes aegypti, Zika virus causes a mild fever in most cases, but it has recently been associated with rising rates of microcephaly (abnormal brain development) if a woman is infected during pregnancy. This panel outline...
Jun 17, 2016•1 hr 19 min
For the 2016 Insight lecture Series Professor Yixu Lu, Head of School, School of Languages and Cultures talks about the images of China tantalised the European imagination throughout the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and still do today. The Enlightenment produced an image of China as decadent and stagnant, and this dominated European visions of China throughout the 19th century. This lecture takes a critical survey of the making and breaking of these images and consider the enigma that Ch...
Jun 16, 2016•57 min
The Middle Ages have never been more current. Particularly since 9/11, the term 'medieval' has been used to describe, for example, climate-change deniers, climate-change scientists, Christians, Muslims, IS, and Al-Qaeda, to name a few. In these contexts, the Middle Ages denotes ignorance, superstition and barbarism. Why this turn to the idea of the Middle Ages to explain our modern times? Our speakers will explore the long history of the 'modern' Middle Ages and its particular relevance for toda...
Jun 15, 2016•1 hr 22 min
Our greatest task is to try to imagine the future before it arrives and then to try to shape it. Will the buzzwords ‘innovation’ and ‘agility’ come to mean more than increased efficiency and wealth for the few? The future is almost within reach, but the portents are challenging; rarely has the future seemed so difficult a prospect. Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia, Griffith Review founding editor Julianne Schultz launches Griffith Review 52: Imagining the Future. Pro...
Jun 14, 2016•1 hr 25 min
The unrivalled corpus of medieval manuscripts unearthed in the northwestern Chinese desert town of Dunhuang in the early twentieth century divulged a trove of secrets about the practice of Chinese Buddhism. Among the thousands of liturgical texts created by local monks for the performance of rituals, almost two hundred separate manuscripts contain liturgies that were spoken aloud during healing rituals. Stephen F Teiser, Professor in Buddhist Studies and Professor of Religion at Princeton Univer...
Jun 09, 2016•1 hr 4 min
This talk explores how the manifesto became a defining genre of the artistic avant-garde and other political movements across the 20th century, from Futurism and Surrealism to radical feminist manifestos by Valerie Solanas and the Riot Grrrls. It coincides with Julian Rosefeldt’s moving image 2014-2015 artwork, ‘Manifesto’,which brings to life the enduring provocation of the historical art manifesto. ABOUT THE SPEAKER: Natalya Lusty is an Associate Professor in the Department of Gender and Cultu...
Jun 09, 2016•1 hr 11 min
Why was Zika virus declared an international public health emergency by the World Health Organization? What are the implications for people living in Australia? What other infectious diseases pose a risk here, and how would we respond if there was an outbreak? Listen to a wide ranging discussion about the facts behind Zika and other mosquito-borne illnesses, the role of the media and government in keeping the public properly informed, the mechanisms for controlling the risks, and a frank assessm...
Jun 08, 2016•1 hr 11 min
Data is the currency of the digital age and has transformed all areas of physical life and social sciences. In all disciplines there has been an unparalleled growth in the quantity and variety of data made available by the pervasive nature of the internet and enabled by almost free digital storage. Moving beyond the expectations of ‘big data’ the focus is now on development of sophisticated and nuanced transformational data-driven ideas and algorithms. Have we reached a tipping point where new a...
Jun 07, 2016•1 hr 28 min
This talk was a key note address for the 2016 Photography.Ontology symposium that took place at the University of Sydney in June 2016. Professor Smith considers Frederick Douglass’s propositions about the social power of photography. Looking back at Douglass’s lecture “Pictures and Progress” through the lens of contemporary artist Rashid Johnson’s homage to the nineteenth-century orator, the talk examines Douglass’s surprising celebration of photography as an objectifying medium. Douglass saw th...
Jun 02, 2016•1 hr 9 min
Constructed, neglected, rebuilt and expanded over the course of nearly a century, the Qing imperial park of Bishu shanzhuang played a central, but constantly changing, role in the history of the Manchu dynasty for nearly two centuries. Scholars of the site have focused on its final form at the end of the 18th century, taking a single vision of its design and use as descriptive of its entire history. In this talk, Stephen Whiteman explores the park’s early history under the Kangxi emperor, from i...
Jun 01, 2016•55 min
Scientists have long thought that the adult brain is unchangeable, but new evidence is emerging to challenge this belief by revealing that the brain is capable of lifelong change and adaptation. This adaptability - or neuroplasticity as it is commonly known - shows the mature brain can reorganise or ‘rewire’ itself in response to experience, disease or injury. University of Sydney researchers are at the forefront of brain and mind research. In this fascinating forum our experts will share what n...
Jun 01, 2016•1 hr 41 min
Panel discussion with audience Q&A on the topic of Wiser Healthcare We all want to be able to get good healthcare when we need it. But what would it mean to provide and consume healthcare wisely? This panel discussion with Dr Iona Heath considers a radical idea: that sometimes wiser healthcare means less healthcare. Or at least, less healthcare for people who don’t need it, so we can give more healthcare to people who do.
May 30, 2016•1 hr 18 min
Music’s power to form, sustain and present social identities is especially relevant in today’s changing and increasingly networked world. A panel of Indigenous researchers and performers from Australia and overseas discuss: how songs can support language revitalization; how music can help us to understand our history and our communities; and how Indigenous youth today are using Rap music to share their cultural knowledge and their lived experiences. A Sydney Ideas event on 27 May 2016. http://sy...
May 27, 2016•1 hr 3 min
Economic Modelling now plays a significant role in the development of public policy development and the conduct of public debate in Australia. Modelling has been central to the case for and against the carbon tax, the mining tax and industrial relations reform. But the widespread use of economic modelling is not matched with widespread understanding of its strengths, weaknesses and vulnerabilities. When used well economic modelling can help policy makers understand the existence, and magnitude, ...
May 24, 2016•1 hr 13 min
To celebrate National Archaeology Week 2016 we present two talks on the topic of archaeology and heritage in the Pacific. Wasteland and Wonderland: Bikini Atoll - from atomic bomb testing ground to World Heritage Dr Steve Brown, Lecturer in Archaeology, Master of Museum and Heritage Studies program Sydney’s Missionary Connections to the New Hebrides (Vanuatu) in the 19th Century James Flexner, Lecturer in Historical Archaeology and Heritage, Department of Archaeology More info: http://sydney.edu...
May 23, 2016•1 hr 16 min
Since the global food crisis of 2007, agricultural land has become an attractive asset for large private corporations and state-owned entities wanting to secure food supplies. These investments have had varying effects. At times, they have been associated with forced removals of pre-existing landholders with weak tenure rights. On other occasions they have driven up local property prices and altered production priorities towards export markets. Either way, they have been implicated in creating a...
May 23, 2016•1 hr 21 min
It is now well established that digital media has given rise to new forms of political speech. Just as importantly though, the new media environment has also created space for new types of listening. Media scholar Dave Karpf discusses the role that digital listening, measurement, and experimentation play in shaping the contours of ‘analytic activism’. More info: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/david_karpf.shtml
May 19, 2016•38 min
