4 – 10 September 2023

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Social science in professional practice for a sustainable transport transition

Virtual , Australia

RMIT

Cities and communities are grappling with the challenge of providing inclusive and sustainable transport to meet climate, energy and social inclusion challenges. Often transport issues are posed as technical problems but invariably have social dimensions, whether behavioural, institutional or political. Social scientific expertise is thus a key skillset for practitioners working on sustainable transport problems. This session grapples with the complex social science challenges of making transport systems greener, more inclusive and more efficient by bringing together transport practitioners with advanced social science training to reflect on the ways in which social science perspectives can inform sustainable transport policy and practice. The panellists will outline the social scientific aspects of their domain of transport and explain how social scientific training helps improve policy and practice responses. The session will include panellists: Helen Rowe, Transport Program Impact Manager, Climate Works Luisiana Paganelli, Transport Officer, City of Kingston David Ashmore, Executive Associate Transport Advisory, BIS Oxford Economics The session will be chaired by Jago Dodson, Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University. Register now

Putting Social Sciences to Work

Virtual , Australia

University of Melbourne

Join us for this student-centered panel event bringing together academics, practitioners and students to discuss the value and contribution of the social sciences. Panellists will speak about the questions and issues that university students told us that they want to hear about. This Social Sciences Week event focuses on how social science concepts, methods and skills are used outside the University, every day, and in a range of professions. Panellists will reflect on how their social science backgrounds have enabled them to think critically and creatively about social inequities and work in local and international contexts to improve outcomes for people with disability, enhance communication access and work towards social justice. How might your social sciences degree help you make change, solve problems and shape the world in which we live? Come and hear from our panellists about how and why the social sciences inspire and enable what they do! This is a collaborative event hosted by Scope, Brotherhood of St Laurence and the School of Social and Political Sciences and Arts Teaching Innovation at the University of Melbourne for National Social Sciences Week 2022. It will be live captioned. This online event will be live streamed in the Forum […]

Free

It’s Your Adventure, Not Mine: Shifting our Lens on Facilitated Adventure

Virtual , Australia

Charles Sturt University

Closing this year's Outdoor Therapy Series for Social Sciences Week is an interactive presentation with Doug Moczynski from Gippsland Adventure Therapy and Dr Will Dobud from Charles Sturt University. Doug will present how he learned to reframe his adventure therapy practice to focus solely client experiences. His practice has just three rules: to make therapeutic services Fun, Safe, and Useful. To do this, he must focus on his client's adventures. Dr Dobud will close the week of international presentations. Doug Moczynski Hi I’m Doug, I started Gippsland Adventure Therapy because I have a burning passion for helping people access the outdoors and nature for increased mental health and wellbeing. I love sharing experiences with others, I’m at my best when I’m engaged in something outdoors and can see the joy in peoples faces when they feel safe to try something new and challenging. I’ve been working in the outdoor industry since 2003 where I’ve had many roles spanning everything from camp counsellor in the USA to English teaching in China to snow skiing instructor and commercial outdoor adventure guide. Over the past decade I’ve committed myself to working with youth in the out of home care sector where I’ve worked […]

Free

Environmental Disaster and Disruption

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

Australia and the wider Asia Pacific regions have seen the proliferation of natural disasters in recent years. Social scientists have pointed out that the natural disasters and impacts they have on people and the ecosystems are situated within the larger postcolonial and political-economic systems. Understanding how our social practices at different layers of engagement fuels disasters and shapes responses and recovery is necessary to demand greater action for change. This panel brings together leading and emerging social scientists at the University of Sydney to share current research on environmental disasters, their management, adaption, response and recovery. It does so by unpacking the multifaceted roles of different actors and social practices, from turbulence in global environmental politics (David Schlosberg), to the role of the state in facilitating environmental disasters (Susan Park), to situated knowledge and community self-organisation in disaster response and recovery (Scott Webster), to the household gender dynamics that shape the nature of disasters and responses to them (Shiori Shakuto). Each presentation will be followed by a brief pitch on what change is necessary, and how we can be part of that change. Chair: Professor Dannielle Celermajer, Discipline of Sociology and Criminology Professor David Schlosberg, Discipline of Government and International Relations, University of […]

Free

Metropolitan Provocations: Challenges and Opportunities for Australia

Virtual , Australia

Australasian Cities Research Network

Metropolitan regions within Australia (and globally) are complex dynamic social, economic, environmental and physical systems. They are where the majority of Australians live, work, and, play across a vast constellation of urban and suburban environments. As spatial systems, metropolitan Australia is in a constant state of evolution. The arrival of the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020 has exacerbated, accelerated and disrupted the socio-spatial and economic order of our metropolitan regions with the traditional role and function of CBDs and suburbs being brought into question. In this seminar the various speakers will provide a series of provocations on a diverse range of issues – cultural diversity, industrial lands, (sub)urban regeneration, densification, (sub)urban sustainability, and, (sub)urban precarity – that characterise contemporary Australian metropolitanism. A Q&A session will follow all presentations.   Register now

Free

States and Corporations After Globalization

Virtual , Australia

University of Queensland

What is the purpose of the corporation? For nearly forty years, the consensus among Anglo-American economists and lawyers was that corporations exist to maximize financial returns to their shareholders. By implication, the purpose of the state was conceived in negative terms—states should minimize their interference in the internal affairs of corporations for risk of destroying financial value. This view has begun to unravel as security officials have entered the fray, envisioning the corporation as a potent source of state power. While their account of corporate purpose finds limited support in legal and economic theory it has influenced a rapidly growing body of policy and regulation. Because these rival images of the corporation are difficult to reconcile, geostrategic competitors have begun to decouple from one another. This paper identifies emerging dynamics in the relations between firms and states in the era after globalization. More information    

Discourse in governance: issues of climate, conflict, racism and misogyny

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

We access the world through storytelling. The most complex social and political challenges of the contemporary era are mediated for consumption through media, discourse, and narrative. In this panel discussion, University of Sydney experts on media and political discourse analysis engage questions of climate crisis, racism in mainstream politics in Australia, misogyny and the “incel” movement, and international conflict, connecting the representation of these pressing social and political problems with governance efforts to reduce or minimise their impact. Media, discourse, and narrative approaches to governance focus on how social and political realities become known – and how these realities can therefore be acted upon and perhaps even changed. Panelists: Chair: Professor Laura Shepherd Heela Popal is a final year PhD candidate at the department of Government and International Relations (GIR) researching racism in Australian political discourse. Julia Jacobson is an honours student in the department of Government and International Relations researching Australian media and political discourse on incels (an online misogynistic hate group). Sian Lucy Perry is a PhD Student in the Gov and IR department. For her thesis research, she is conducting a narrative study of U.S presidential climate change discourse. Jake Lynch is Associate Professor of Peace and […]

Free

What are the economic implications of a changing climate?

Virtual , Australia

Academy of Social Sciences in Australia

Given the warnings from scientists of potentially catastrophic changes to our climate from greenhouse gas emissions, it might surprise you to learn that we know very little about the potential economic implications of these unprecedented changes to the Earth’s climate. This lecture, directed at a general audience, will explore the potential channels through which climate change will impact our economy, and the unrealistic assumptions that underlie current models used to predict the economic impact of a changing climate. Insights from current research will be presented, as well as directions of future research into this extremely important subject. Dr Timothy Neal is a recipient of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia's prestigious Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Research. The Paul Bourke Lectures are named in honour of the late Paul Francis Bourke (1938–1999), President of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia from 1993–1997. These lectures are presented each year by the recipients of the previous year’s Paul Bourke Awards for Early Career Research. This lecture is jointly hosted by the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia and UNSW for Social Sciences Week. Register now

Free

2MCE Radio Program: Community Value in Street Libraries

Virtual , Australia

Charles Sturt University

Street Libraries offer communities an alternative and sustainable venue for finding and reusing books, supporting literacy at the ground (or street) level. In SICS Radio's 3rd broadcast celebrating Social Sciences Week, we discuss how Social Science helps us understand humanity, society and the institutions which govern our daily lives through the lens of street libraries. This year, our speakers are researchers and representatives from organisations supporting this literary phenomenon active in communities across Australia. Dr Peter John Chen is a senior lecturer in Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. His recent article in the Journal of the Australian Library and Information Association dicusses the role of street libraries in building literacy and social capital in the community and the gift economy. Nic Lowe is the Chairman of the Board for Street Library, an initiative with citizens sharing and exchanging books in tiny libraries on the street or in their yards in an effort to build community and literacy. This program is brought to you by Charles Sturt University's School of Information and Communication Studies (SICS) on radio station 2MCE https://2mce.org/. Photo by Jon Callow on Unsplash.

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Ethnographic Film Night: Life after Lockdown in Wuhan

University of Newcastle

It is over two years since we experienced the first period of lock down because of COVID’19. Since then, we have had periods of interruptions at various levels of society. Deferrals, delays and disappointments have become part of the status-quo as the intangible virus translates into tangible consequences and material realities. The virus interrupts and is omnipresent: it is in our homes, as we grapple with the virus taking hold of our bodies and the bodies of loved ones; in our communities, as our mobility, opportunities to socialise and engage in communal activities get impeded by people being sick, requirements for self-isolation, or concern about the spread of the virus; at our workplaces, as we respond to requirements for QR log ins and masks, social distancing rules and a new sense of environment. We have been told we have to learn to ‘live with COVID’ – but what is this? What does living with COVID mean? What is life like now, after lock down? These questions will be at the centre of the University of Newcastle’s fourth annual Ethnographic Film Night. Initiated as a UON Social Science Week event in 2019, the Ethnographic Film Night has brought together people from […]

Free

Two to tango: Language as a gateway to championing diversity

University of Western Australia

Harvard-trained lawyer Vernā Myers has famously stated that “if diversity is getting invited to the party, inclusion is being asked to dance”. What role does language play in getting invited to the dance floor? Join Dr Celeste Rodriguez Louro, Director of UWA’s Language Lab, to discuss how language, the ultimate social glue, can help you become a diversity champion. Learn about new gender pronouns in English, cross-cultural differences in communication, and how your accent may be stopping you from getting what you want. We can create safer places by understanding how language shapes our lives. But it does take two to tango.

Free

The First 100 Days: Politics, Policy and Reform Under the Albanese Government

Virtual , Australia

University of Sydney

It is with a warm welcome that we invite you to this online forum with Q&A: Paul Keating famously proclaimed that ‘When you change the government, you change the country’. What do the first 100 days of the Albanese Government tell us about the change it wants and how it will try to achieve that change? What are the barriers to the changes that it clearly wants, such as constitutional reform to introduce a Voice to Parliament? What do the experiences of past federal Labor governments tell us about likely successes and failures of the Albanese Government? Professor Rodney Smith chairs a panel discussion by experts from the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, who will discuss what the first 100 days of the Albanese Government tell us about its ambitions and the key actors, institutions and forces that will help and hinder it achieving them. Presenters (all from the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney): Professor Rodney Smith (Moderator) Professor Anika Gauja (Labor and the Greens: The Party Dynamics of Reform) Associate Professor Elizabeth Hill (Women, Income and Work) Associate Professor Lynne Chester (Energy and Environmental Policies) Associate Professor Anna Boucher […]

Free