This seminar forms part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Wednesday seminar series running from March to December this year.

Members of the public are welcome to attend at no charge.

Sir Gustav Nossal has shown a lifelong commitment to translating medical research into improving the health of all, for which he was awarded the Australian of the Year in 2000. He is renowned for his contributions to the fields of antibody formation and immunological tolerance, having written eight books and over 500 scientific articles throughout his incredible career. At this event, he will discuss his life’s work and how his tireless efforts have generated tangible outcomes throughout the world.

Entry for the night will be by gold coin donation, with all proceeds going towards Melbourne University Health Initiative'’s local and international programs.

This public event will feature the premiere of a documentary film about changing attitudes toward religion and spirituality in Java, Indonesia produced by Professor Thomas Reuter. The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session on: Religious Change Under the Condition of Late Modernity: Indonesia and Beyond.

Panelists include:

Professor Thomas Reuter (film producer, anthropologist and expert on religion)

Supriyanto Abdi (Melbourne University expert on progressive Islam in Indonesia)

Dr Julian Millie (Monash University expert on Islam in West-Java)

Margaret Coffey (ABC Radio National, Encounter)

Java is home to a diverse array of spiritual traditions, influenced by all the world religions but building also on its own unique heritage. The Javanese spiritual heritage is rich but not well known to the Western public, as is Indian yoga, for example. The documentary Java Spirit provides a glimpse of some of the many unique and fascinating forms of the Javanese tradition.

While it has been a part of the human journey from prehistoric times and remains an important force in contemporary societies, religion is also culturally diverse and changeable across time. This is because religion must evolve to meet the changing life experiences and needs of people across different societies and historical periods.

Radical cultural and economic changes in the wake of globalization have created similar living conditions for a large proportion of humanity. Religious trends in contemporary Indonesia reflect these global societal changes, and thus have a lot in common with religious trends in western societies and elsewhere. This is important to note because western media have bombarded us with negative stereotypes of Islamic countries like Indonesia, producing ignorance, fear and hostility, in line with the questionable geopolitical objectives of the so-called “War on Terror”.

Java Spirit explores some of the new forms of religiosity emerging in contemporary Indonesia, focusing in particular on Java, Indonesia’s political center and most populous island. Attitudes toward religion are changing, as Javanese society becomes an increasingly urban, middle class, media-driven, late modern consumer society. At the same time, local spiritual traditions and associated value systems also serve as a critique of late modernity and as a foundation for imagining alternative futures.

Professor Reuter will also be launching his new book: Faith in the Future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia. Brill, 2013

When Australia recently earned a long-anticipated seat on the UN Security Council, there was some discussion of its relevance, but little recognition of its historical significance, despite the fact for more than a century Australians have been deeply involved at popular and governmental level in international institutions and international politics and in the conceptualization of international law and human rights.

In this lecture, Professor Glenda Sluga will map a new chronology of the twentieth century around the concept of internationalism, with specific attention to the 1940s and the early years of the United Nations as the ‘apogee of internationalism’. Her aim is to explore the possibilities of the new international history that has appeared on the horizon and that is already changing the way we understand the significance of internationalism in the present.

Professor Glenda Sluga, a graduate of the University of Melbourne and Sussex University is Professor of International History at the University of Sydney. Her most recent book is Internationalism in the Age of Nationalism published by UPenn Press in 2013.

‘Australia in the World’ is a new lecture and seminar series that presents international and transnational perspectives on the past. The series highlights the inter-connectedness of past worlds and future challenges with speakers from around the country and across the globe.

Supported by the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies.

This lecture assesses the role of imaginative literature in providing viable narrative forms of 'risk communication' (Heise 2008) in the context of current global climate challenge. So-called 'climate-change fiction' (Trexler and Johns-Putra 2011) is most often assimilated to the apocalyptic tradition, i.e. it is seen in terms of the inexorable unfolding - or dire consequences - of planetary disaster.

This presentation argues, however, that it might just as readily be ascribed to the more general type of 'dwelling-in-crisis' narrative (Buell 2003) in which risk scenarios menacingly gather and emergent crises - domestic, regional, global/cosmic - fan out across a wide variety of temporal and spatial sites. The two examples examined here - Tim Winton's Breath (2008) and Kate Grenville's The Idea of Perfection (1999) - are cases in point: multi-scalar texts that use the conventional narrative techniques of the social realist novel to illustrate some of the ethical dilemmas opened up by today's era of accelerated climate change.

These two novels are examined in the context of some of the wider debates surrounding contemporary climate change in Australia, a land of 'meteorological extremes' (Flannery 2005) generally considered to be the largest carbon emitter per capita in the modern industrialised world (Garnaut 2011). The lecture also considers literature's capacity for the 'social staging of risk' (Beck 2009) in a globally interconnected world.

Graham Huggan is Chair of Commonwealth and Postcolonial Literatures in the School of English at the University of Leeds, UK. He is the author of eleven books, including Australian Literature: Postcolonialism, Racism, Transnationalism (Oxford UP 2007) and Postcolonial Ecocriticism: Literature, Animals, Environment (Routledge 2010, co-authored with Helen Tiffin).

This public event will feature the premiere of a documentary film about changing attitudes toward religion and spirituality in Java, Indonesia produced by Prof Thomas Reuter. The film screening will be followed by a panel discussion and Q&A session on: Religious Change Under the Condition of Late Modernity: Indonesia and Beyond.

Panelists include: Professor Thomas Reuter (film producer, anthropologist and expert on religion) Supriyanto Abdi (Melbourne University expert on progressive Islam in Indonesia) Dr Julian Millie (Monash University expert on Islam in West-Java) Margaret Coffey (ABC Radio National, Encounter)

Film Synopsis Java is home to a diverse array of spiritual traditions, influenced by all the world religions but building also on its own unique heritage. The Javanese spiritual heritage is rich but not well known to the Western public, as is Indian yoga, for example. The documentary Java Spirit provides a glimpse of some of the many unique and fascinating forms of the Javanese tradition. While it has been a part of the human journey from prehistoric times and remains an important force in contemporary societies, religion is also culturally diverse and changeable across time. This is because religion must evolve to meet the changing life experiences and needs of people across different societies and historical periods.

Radical cultural and economic changes in the wake of globalization have created similar living conditions for a large proportion of humanity. Religious trends in contemporary Indonesia reflect these global societal changes, and thus have a lot in common with religious trends in western societies and elsewhere. This is important to note because western media have bombarded us with negative stereotypes of Islamic countries like Indonesia, producing ignorance, fear and hostility, in line with the questionable geopolitical objectives of the so-called “War on Terror”.

Java Spirit explores some of the new forms of religiosity emerging in contemporary Indonesia, focusing in particular on Java, Indonesia’s political center and most populous island. Attitudes toward religion are changing, as Javanese society becomes an increasingly urban, middle class, media-driven, late modern consumer society. At the same time, local spiritual traditions and associated value systems also serve as a critique of late modernity and as a foundation for imagining alternative futures.

Professor Reuter will also be launching his new book: Faith in the Future: Understanding the Revitalization of Religions and Cultural Traditions in Asia. Brill, 2013

Find out more about your graduate study options in business and economics at our information evening. Speak with professional and acadmic staff about what its like to study at Melbourne Business School.

Register now!

The threat to independent journalism has never been more intimidating. Mainstream newspapers are downsizing, journalists are losing their jobs and the media ownership debate still rages. Some say we are facing a civic emergency and a drought of reliable information on the issues that matter. Yet at the same time we have never had such good tools for informing, being informed and connecting with our fellow citizens. What does the crisis in news media mean for democracy? And what, in particular, does it mean for Warrnambool and South-West Victoria? How can we be sure we know what's going on in our community?

What alternatives are possible? How can the media play a role in tackling the issues in our community? In this public forum, the Centre for Advancing Journalism brings together local journalists and your community to navigate the issues in South-West Victoria. They will be joined by the Director of the Centre, new media journalist and researcher Dr Margaret Simons, who will discuss the future of journalism and how, overseas and closer to home, some citizens are doing it for themselves.

New News is a program of events about the future of journalism. It will explore how to make the most of the opportunities - and deal with the challenges - of new media. It is about journalism as an act of engaged citizenship. New News is not an industry talkfest, nor an academic conference. It is an ongoing series of conversations, designed to provide our community with occasions to talk about journalism, why it matters and how to do it better.

Presented by the Centre for Advancing Journalism in partnership with other leading industry organisations, New News events will include big keynotes, but also casual meet-ups. Sometimes we will move fast, to provide a chance to talk about the issues of the day as they happen; other times, we'll spotlight broader topics. Our events will be engaging, optimistic and creative. They will reach out to all citizens who are concerned about the future of journalism.

This event is supported by ConnectWeb.

We will be holding an information evening for you and your families in Shepparton as part of our Meet Melbourne program. Please come along to hear more about what the University of Melbourne has to offer. More information and registration can be found on our Meet Melbourne event page.

Covers the Bachelor of Biomedicine, Bachelor of Oral Health and graduate pathways, including graduate study in the health science disciplines Learn about the Bachelor of Biomedicine at Melbourne - hear information about the pathways into graduate study in the health science disciplines. Hear from current students, academic staff and recent graduates about what it is like to study biomedicine at Melbourne, how we teach and the career and personal development opportunities available to our graduates.

Featuring work by Australian and international artists, BACKFLIP: Feminism and Humour in Contemporary Art seeks to challenge the ongoing stereotype of feminism as dry, dull and humourless.

The exhibition affirms laughter as an important and potent tool for feminist artists across generations, geographies and political contexts. Humour has a unique ability to simultaneously disrupt and entertain, and lends itself readily to one of the overarching goals that unites the many feminisms; namely, to critique and destabilize patriarchy. Following on from last year’s lecture by the Guerrilla Girls, BACKFLIP will present a range of strategies and approaches from slapstick to satire, detouring through irony and black humour.

Artists include: Melanie Bonajo, Brown Council, Catherine orKate, Guerrilla Girls, Tracey Moffatt, Hotham St Ladies, Louise Lawler, Nat& Ali, Hannah Raisin among many others.

Curator: Laura Castagnini (with Vikki McInnes, Margaret Lawrence Gallery through the NAVA Sidney Myer Curator Mentorship Initiative).

Opening celebration Friday 26 April 2013, 6 – 8pm

Featuring works for all manner of ensembles, these concerts are always popular. The Ensemble Series will run from 21 May to 7 June 2013. Admission is free.

Composition Concerts - Exciting concerts of new works from the talented composition department at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (MCM). Tuesdays 21, 28 May, 5 June, 7.30pm

World Music Choir Concert Friday 31 May, 12.15pm

World Music Combined Ensembles Concert - A gala concert featuring an array of performances highlighting the variety of ensembles on offer at the MCM. The program will include Javanese Gamelan, African Drum and Dance, Shakuhachi and World Music Choir. Wednesday 5 June, 3pm

Flute, Brass and Saxophone Ensembles Concert Thursday 6 June, 6pm

Choir Concert Friday 7 June, 7pm

This winter The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) plays host to an exciting exhibition which gives rare insight into the design process of architectural practice DENTON CORKER MARSHALL.

The exhibition is part of ABP’s Alumni Survey Series, an annual series which celebrates the work of faculty graduates and highlights the exceptional contribution they make to Australia's design culture and built environment.

DENTON CORKER MARSHALL has practised internationally for decades. Works such as the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Melbourne Museum and Australian embassies in Beijing, Tokyo and Jakarta demonstrate the practice’s significant contribution to the global architectural scene.

But, from time to time, the practice enjoys the opportunity to design houses, and this lesser-known story is showcased in this exhibition held at Melbourne University’s Wunderlich Gallery from May 17 to June 14 2013.

The DENTON CORKER MARSHALL - Land Art: Nine Small Buildings exhibition will feature photographs, sketches and models for seven residential houses and two small buildings – the Australia Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Italy, and the Stonehenge Visitor Centre and Interpretation Museum, UK.

As Deyan Sudjic, Director of the London Design Museum, writes in his Introduction of Denton Corker Marshall's new publication Houses (published by Birkhäuser):

“If site is one key to Denton Corker Marshall’s work, the other is the materiality of their buildings at every scale, from the towers that they have built in Manchester and Sydney and Melbourne, and many other cities, to the houses. They display a delicacy and precision that comes close to jewellery. This is a group of houses that together demonstrates a deft infusion of architectural energy.”

India and China today represent world’s two largest and fastest growing economies and societies. Even the continued global economic slowdown has not dented their growth. These unprecedented trends have triggered several internal and external systemic and cultural challenges for both these nations.

First and foremost, the strongest pillar of their rapprochement – bilateral trade- has witness fluctuations. With ever expanding trade deficit it is threatening to become one-sided and the $100 billion target for 2015 needs major course corrections. Recent years have also witnessed frequent diplomatic and military showdowns. The hope lies in their relationship expanding from once being purely bilateral, to increasingly involving interactions at regional to global level where China-India find larger convergence in their priorities and perceptions.

Dr Jenkins and his colleagues investigate CD4+ T and B cell activation in vivo by directly tracking antigen-specific cells. Dr Jenkins will outline the goal of his research is a basic understanding of lymphocyte activation that can be used to improve vaccines and prevent autoimmunity.

The community and governments here and around the world have increasing expectation that publicly funded research will reap benefits more quickly and fully. Expectations are particularly high for health and medical research because if offers solutions for better health care, restraining costs of providing care, and building national prosperity through innovative industry growth.

This talk will discuss who benefits from health and medical research, including individuals, health consumers, policy makers, practitioners, business, governments and researchers themselves; and how. It will outline the challenges that health and medical research faces in providing the benefits in 2013 and beyond, including the rapidly changing nature of health and medical research itself, international and local financial pressures, barriers to uptake of research findings, wider participation of the community in research, the role of the industry and private investors, ethical challenges, maintaining trust, and empowering researchers in health practice and policy development.

To improve the flow of the benefits from research, funding bodies such as the NHMRC need to address how the barriers to achieving benefits can be better overcome and ensure that its support evolves to meet these challenges.

5pm – 6pm Refreshments, 6pm – 7pm Lecture

What happened to Rome and the idea of Rome in the age of the Counter-Reformation and of the missions to America and the Indies? Even as Roman Catholicism was ‘going global’ to an unprecedented extent, that pre-eminent symbol of its claims to universality, Rome, was being re-invented to a degree which arguably had not been seen since the fourth century CE. The papal Jubilee of 1575 effectively relaunched the city not only as a pilgrimage destination but also as a setting for the daily processions of what surely remains the most kinetic of world religions.

The city ceased being simply a spectacle, whose ruins inspired numerous humanists to ruminate on the fickleness of fortune, and became also a stage for the mounting of sacred spectacles that engaged both mind and body.

This lecture also will examine how Roman Catholics all over the globe 'thought with Rome': not only via the Daily Office (and Roman Martyrology with its information about the city's martyrs), but also via its relics which were being exported at an unprecedented rate from the late 16th century (with a veritable 'feeding frenzy' post 1578 and the coming on stream of that 'mine of sanctity' the Roman Catacombs). Additionally this lecture will examine the role played by Indulgences here, since they were an important means by which the spiritual privileges attached to particular Roman shrines could be enjoyed by worshippers all over the world as if they were praying in Rome itself. This particularisation of the universal was associated with an intensity of feeling that accompanied the collapse of time and space and where Rome was 'present to behold' in the devout worshipper's mind's eye, wherever in the world s/he physically found him/herself to be.

Simon Ditchfield is Reader in History at the University of York, UK. He carried out his postgraduate research at the Warburg Institute, London and has been a Rome Scholar at the British School at Rome (1988-89). In 1991-94 he held a British Academy postdoctoral research fellowship at the University of York. In 1998 he was elected to membership of the Accademia di San Carlo in Milan and to the fellowship of the Royal Historical Society in the UK. In 2006-08 he held a British Academy Research Leave Fellowship.

Since 2010 he has been co-director of the AHRC-funded project: Conversion narratives in early modern Europe: a cross-confessional and comparative study, 1550-1700. He has published widely on the role of perceptions of the past in the construction of religious identity in the age of the Counter-Reformation and is currently writing a book entitled: Papacy and Peoples: the making of Roman Catholicism as a world religion 1500-1700 for Oxford University Press.

Dinner with a Scientist - Do you or does someone close to you suffer from Type 1 Diabetes?

Join Professor Len Harrison and his team of researchers for a three course dinner to talk about new research being done to treat and cure Type 1 Diabetes.

Tickets: $30

This is an Invite a Scientist to Dinner event, organised by the Australian Society for Medical Research and proudly sponsored by Inspiring Australia. For more information go to www.re-science.org.au

We will be holding an information evening for you and your families in Albury as part of our Meet Melbourne program. Please come along to hear more about what the University of Melbourne has to offer.

Do you or does someone close to you suffer from Type 1 Diabetes?

Join Professor Len Harrison and his team of researchers for a three-course dinner to talk about new research being done to treat and cure Type 1 Diabetes.

Two speakers, Professor Ross Garnaut AO and Dr Peter Jonson will each present their views followed by panel discussion and questions.

This lecture forms part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute postgraduate lecture series running from March to August this year.

Members of the public are welcome to attend at no charge.

Dr Ursula Betka, Research Fellow at La Trobe University, will talk on the exhibition and symposium held at the J. Paul Getty Museum, Los Angeles, in February 2013, and the significance of the relationship between panel painting and manuscript illumination at this high point in Italian art.

Please come join the Cultural and Global Mental Health Film Initiative in our second monthly film screening! This month we will be screening the documentary Hidden Pictures.

Hidden Pictures explores the experience of mental illnesses in India, China, South Africa, France and the U.S. What emerges are scenes of profound frustration, moments of true compassion and haunting insights.

No RSVP is required, everyone is welcomed and this is a FREE event!

Public Debate

Obama’s Foreign Policy: 2nd Term Success or Failure?

An American presidential election-style debate over the future of US foreign policy.

Two distinguished scholars with opposing views will face questions from each other and the audience as they grapple with the difficult politics and policy choices confronting Barack Obama at the beginning of his new term in the White House.

Will President Obama successfully chart a new course? Or were the policies of George W. Bush actually the best way forward? What is the Clinton legacy, and what are the prospects for a new one?

Bruce Jentleson is Professor of Public Policy and Political Science at Duke University, USA. He served as the inaugural Director of the Sanford School of Public Affairs, as well as a senior foreign policy advisor to Vice President Al Gore and at the US Department of State. He is the author of The End of Arrogance: America in the Competition of Global Ideas.

Timothy Lynch is Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Associate Professor in American Politics. He is the author of numerous books and articles on US foreign policy, including After Bush: The Case for Continuity in American Foreign Policy.

Exclusively for the Festival of Ideas 2013, Ben Goldacre will deliver a compelling talk touching on his two favourite issues, Bad Science and Bad Pharma – exposing the misuse of science and statistics in medicine, business, government and more.

Following Ben's lecture, a panel of eminent and emerging medical and science heavyweights will debate and counter balance Ben’s views in a lively, good humoured conversation, with audience and online input.

On the panel: Matthew Bird Professor Peter Doherty AC Melissa Lee Maxine McKew (Chair) Professor Sir Gustav Nossal AC Dr Brendan Shaw

The Festival of Ideas 2013 would like to acknowledge and thank Festival Partner, the Club Melbourne Ambassador Program.

Asialink, The U.S. Consulate General, Melbourne, The U.S. Studies Centre at the University of Sydney along with ACBC and Confucius Institute are proud to present

Bonnie Glaser, Senior Adviser for Asia, Freeman Chair in China Studies and Senior Associate, Pacific Forum, Centre for Strategic and International Studies in conversation with Dr Pradeep Taneja of the School of Social and Political Science, University of Melbourne for a robust discussion on U.S Policy Priorities and the 'Rebalance' to the Asia-Pacific.

The U.S. "rebalance" to Asia is a comprehensive diplomatic, economic, and military policy that seeks to advance American interests and reassure U.S. partners and allies of the U.S. commitment to sustaining peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region. Promoting good U.S. relations with China, as well as between China and the rest of the region, are key pillars of the "rebalance" policy.

Two of the worlds leading biomedical animators, Graham Johnson from the University of California, San Francisco (USA) and Drew Berry from the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute, will explore the tension between scientific accuracy and creating content that is appropriate for the non-scientific public audience.... with an astonishing resolution that consistently keeps all types of audience happy, engaged and entertained.

Please join us to celebrate the launch of the Australian Centre.

The Centre will be launched by Dr Chris McAuliffe.

The Australian Centre was founded in 1989 with the assistance of a grant from the Hugh Williamson Foundation. From 2013, following a refocus of its activities, the Australian Centre will be housed in the School of Culture and Communication with Professor Ken Gelder and A/Professor Denise Varney as its co-directors. The new Centre aims to develop innovative research projects in the Australian arts and humanities across a range of disciplines, including Art History, Theatre Studies, Literary Studies, Cultural Studies, Media and Communication, Cinema Studies, Indigenous Studies and Creative Writing.

During 2013-2015 the Australian Centre will develop research capacity in two key areas: The Colonial Australian Archive and Contemporary Australian Cultural Practices. The Australian Centre also aims to develop research and community interest across three annual topics. The theme for 2013 is Ecologies and the Environment. This will be followed in 2014 with Teaching and Learning Australia, and 2015 will focus on Ways of Living. Each year the Centre will host a number of lectures, conferences and symposia around the relevant theme. The Centre also administers several literary and arts prizes (including the Kate Challis RAKA award, the Peter Blazey Fellowship, the Vincent Buckley Poetry Prize and the DJ (Dinny) O'Hearn Memorial Fellowship), along with a number of seeding and postdoctoral fellowships.

Dr Chris McAuliffe is Honorary Fellow, School of Culture and Communication. He is a graduate of the University of Melbourne and of Harvard University. For ten years he was lecturer in Art History at the University of Melbourne before becoming Director of the Ian Potter Museum of Art at the University of Melbourne, 2000-2013. In 2011/12 he took up the Chair of Australian Studies at Harvard University. He has researched and written extensively on contemporary art and is the author of Art and Suburbia (1996), Linda Marrinon: Let her Try (2007), and Jon Cattapan: Possible Histories (2008).

The story of the bionic eye has captured the imagination of people all over the world. Following the announcement of Australia’s first successful bionic eye implants last year, testing of an early prototype device continues with three patients in Melbourne. What are the potential benefits for patients? How will medical bionics develop into the future? And what challenges will need to be overcome to make this clinically and commercially successful?

The Melbourne Neuroscience Institute and the Florey Institute of Neuroscience and Mental Health are pleased to present 'Boosting your Brain Power – The Hype and the Hope'.

Join us as we take a look at current research into cognitive performance and its decline as we age. How much truth is there to the ‘use it or lose it’ mentality? What are the actual medical effects of brain training methods on the brain, our ability to learn and memory? What preventative measures can you take to avoid cognitive decline and enhance wellbeing? We are excited to bring you a panel of cutting-edge researchers and experts to explore the hype and hope around cognitive enhancement.

Chaired by Hilary Harper, Presenter Saturday mornings 774 ABC Melbourne and ABC Victoria and featuring talks from Professor Nicola Lautenschlager, Dr Jee Hyun Kim, Dr Bob Wood and Dr Damian Birney.

Do you love creating solutions to problems and want to make a difference to the world? Come along to find out how to study Engineering at Melbourne. Hear from current students, academic staff and recent graduates about what it is like to study engineering at Melbourne. Learn about how we teach, and the career and personal development opportunities available to our graduates.

The world is awash with information. In the last five years, we’ve produced and recorded more information than in the previous 50,000 years; and almost all of this new information is digital. Hear from current students, academic staff and recent graduates about what it is like to study Information Technology at Melbourne. Learn about how we teach, and the career and personal development opportunities available to our graduates.

This seminar forms part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute Wednesday seminar series running from March to December this year.

Members of the public are welcome to attend at no charge.

Vascular anomalies are localised disorders of the blood vessels that predominantly affect children. They range from simple vascular birthmarks like ‘strawberry naevi’ and ‘port wine stains’ to complex lesions that can be life threatening. Vascular birthmarks have been recognised since antiquity but their causes are only now being understood. Modern genetics is showing how errors in the DNA code lead to some of the more common vascular anomalies, while the cause of others remains unclear.

The recent finding that the drug propranolol which has been widely used to treat blood pressure for over forty years, is a highly effective treatment for haemangioma of infancy has encouraged researchers to believe that drug treatments for other vascular anomalies may become available in the near future.

We will be holding an information evening for you and your families in Hamilton as part of our Meet Melbourne program. Please come along to hear more about what the University of Melbourne has to offer.

Since stories of dodgy colleges and violence against Indian students came to light a few years ago, accusations of racism have repeatedly hit the headlines. Racism is an issue that the Indian diaspora has had to deal with all over the world. While the heat has now died down in Australia, the question of racism remains. What evidence is there that Indians in Australia face racism? And has the Indian community itself been divide over the issue? The Indian diaspora in Australia is forecast to continue growing. What other issues might the Indian community face in the future as it carves out its place in Australian society?

There is an Afghanistan beyond the headlines of war and atrocities, a place of anonymous heroes and wild beauty.

In 1991, Christopher Kremmer landed in Kabul for the first time. The Afghan countryside was in the grip of an Islamist insurgency, but the capital was quiet, and largely untouched by the war.

The impressions on a young correspondent were vivid, from meeting the country’s wily president, a man who was later executed by the Taliban, to flying low over the Bamiyan Buddhas. And, of course, browsing in the quiet carpet stores of a city where lifelong friends were made, and small treasures acquired.

For the next decade Kremmer was a frequent visitor, following the twists and turns of Afghanistan’s conflict. Struck by the stark beauty of the terrain, he found a landscape denuded, a human settlement abandoned or lost, but always, just beneath the ground, a surviving history of preposterous grandeur. And encountered a people, heroically struggling for survival, undaunted, irrepressibly optimistic, and proud.

This lecture forms part of the ‘Afghanistan: Hidden Treasures from the National Museum Kabul’ lecture series held at the University of Melbourne and Melbourne Museum.

We will be holding an information evening for you and your families in Warrnambool as part of our Meet Melbourne program. Please come along to hear more about what the University of Melbourne has to offer.

Designing a mining tax that leaves enough incentive for future investment, treats past and future investments fairly, deals with Federal and State interests and collects some tax in the process is not easy. The recent Mineral Resources Rent Tax proves just how difficult designing a tax to successfully meet these competing needs is. This seminar will explore these issues and look at how Australia’s mining tax can be improved from here.

Chair: Professor John Daley, Chief Executive Officer, Grattan Institute

Speakers: Professor Michael Crommelin, Zelman Cowan Professor of Law, University of Melbourne & Professor Ross Garnaut, Vice Chancellor's Fellow and Professorial Fellow in Economics, University of Melbourne

In 1928 Percy Grainger married his ‘Nordic Princess’ Ella Viola Ström in front of 25,000 people at the Hollywood Bowl. They had met two years earlier sailing from Australia to the United States on the S.S. Aorangi. Grainger had been drawn to Ella from the moment he saw her and a tentative romance began during the voyage. At the time Ella was thirty seven years old, an artist and poet living primarily at Pevensey Bay, in East Sussex in the United Kingdom.

Ella was born outside Stockholm in 1889 and left Sweden in 1907, seeking a life of adventure. She worked as a travelling companion for wealthy Jamaican-born artist Madam Ivy de Verley before settling in London. She attended the Slade School of Fine Art on a Bernard Shaw Scholarship for Foreign Students. She also studied at the Atelier of André Lhote and the Académie de la Grande Chaumière in Paris. An attractive and charming young woman, Ella’s bohemian social circle included well known artists, musicians and authors, as well as members of English high society. During her time in London she had a series of love affairs, most notably with British Conservative Member of Parliament, artist and collector, the Rt. Hon. Frederick Leverton Harris, and Japanese diplomat to Australia Iyemasa Tokugawa.

The Grainger Museum holds an extensive collection of material covering Ella’s life prior to meeting Percy, including letters, diaries, artwork and photographs. This talk will present a fascinating insight into a creative woman who was determined to live life on her own terms.

This lecture forms part of the Walter and Eliza Hall Institute postgraduate lecture series running from March to August this year.

Members of the public are welcome to attend at no charge.

In order to improve the understanding of the vertical transport of momentum and kinetic energy across a boundary layer flow with wind turbines, wind-tunnel experiments were performed to include a scaled down wind farm of 3x5. Particle-image-velocity measurements in a volume surrounding a target wind turbine are used to compute mean velocity and turbulence properties averaged on horizontal planes. The impact of vertical transport of kinetic energy due to turbulence and mean flow correlations is quantified. It is found that the fluxes of kinetic energy associated with the Reynolds shear stresses are of the same order of magnitude as the power extracted by the wind turbines, highlighting the importance of vertical transport of turbulence in the boundary layer and thus in wind farms.

The concept of coherent transfers of energy is employed here as means to uncover the scales responsible for the entrainment of mean kinetic energy into the array. The major contributions to the MKE entrainment are achieved by large-scale motions associated with sums of the Reynolds shear stress, (idiosyncratic) modes. Thus, the sum of the first 9 modes yield 54% of the total energy entrainment, with scales given by L ~ 13D associated with this sum. From these results, it is clear that scales of the order of the total wind farm size are those which are critical in determining how much power can be extracted from the atmospheric boundary layer. In addition, during this seminar it will be shown that dispersive stresses are also important in the energy entrainment and dissipation in wind arrays with complex topography and where proximity between turbines exists.

The Student Symposium has proven to be a friendly environment for students to gain confidence in presenting and answering questions on their research. Thanks to the new venue this year there are over 30 speaking slots available this year.

This event is open to all members of the public.

Cost is just $75 for ASMR members (Student membership is $65) or $150 for non-members.

The University of Melbourne’s series of Tertiary Education Policy Seminars is an important platform for discussion and debate of current tertiary education issues, and the 2013 election-year series is primed to be one of the most interesting and thought-provoking yet.

Commencing with ‘Students and Money’ the University will launch this year's series with speakers Bruce Chapman (Director, Policy Impact, Crawford School of Public Policy, ANU), Professor Paul Wellings (Vice-Chancellor, University of Wollongong) and Professor Ian Young (Vice-Chancellor, ANU).

Gradual degeneration of auditory neurons following sensorineural hearing loss is normally caused by depleted supply of neurotrophins as a result of the death of cochlear hair cells responsible for secreting the signalling proteins. Animal studies show that the neurodegeneration could be prevented by exogenous administration of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Optimum therapeutic benefit, however, requires continuous administration for a prolonged period. Although many novel delivery strategies (e.g., gene therapy, mini osmotic pumps and polymer hydrogels) have been previously proposed, none has been utilised at the clinical stage due to concerns about safety, cost and insufficient protein release. The primary objective of this research is the assembly of therapeutic carriers for sustained delivery of BDNF to the cochlear. Two different carriers, namely capsosomes and calcium carbonate (CaCO3) supraparticles, were evaluated. The capsosomes were assembled by incorporation of liposomal compartments within polymer capsules, while the supraparticles were assembled by evaporation-initiated self-assembly of mesoporous calcium carbonates particles. These carriers exhibit long-term release profiles in simulated physiological conditions. The capsosomes release behaviour is mainly dependent on the composition of the liposomal compartments, while particle size and porosity govern the protein release from the supraparticles.

Nanoscale polymeric films and interfaces are central to a broad range of advanced materials and emerging nanotechnologies, with applications including micro- and optoelectronics, biomaterials, energy capture/storage and chromatography stationary phases. This seminar will introduce a versatile and generalizable approach to form polymer films via the continuous assembly of polymers (CAP) we recently developed. CAP process can be facilitated by three methods and the process affords surface-confined, cross-linked polymer films with nanoscale-tunable thickness and functionality through the single-step deposition of macromolecules. Uniform nanoscale films, either substrate-supported or freestanding, are assembled under mild conditions in aqueous or non-aqueous media on substrates with different chemical functionality, size, and shape. Additional reinitiation steps lead to thicker and stratified polymer films. This strategy is applicable to synthetic and natural macromolecules and substrates, making it suitable for physical and life science applications.

This presentation will then describe how we apply this new CAP process in surface modification, composition film formation, antifouling and biologically selective surface formation, and composite membrane construction for gas separations.

East Asia’s burgeoning importance within the global political economy requires greater understanding of the peculiarities of capitalist systems and their governance within the region. This discussion brings together some of the world’s leading experts on capitalism in East Asia, from the fields of Anthropology and Political Science to consider this, with a predominant focus on the prescient issue of governing financial crises in the region.

Hirokazu Miyazaki Associate Professor of Anthropology Cornell University

Hirokazu Miyazaki’s recent work has been driven by a simple question: how do we keep hope alive? He is interested in this question because of ongoing efforts to claim and even instrumentalize the category of hope in a wide spectrum of genres of knowledge from psychotherapy to conservative and progressive political thought. He has investigated the question in two radically different field sites, a peri-urban village in Suva, Fiji and a trading room of a major Japanese securities firm in Tokyo. His first fieldwork project (1994-1996) focused on Suvavou people, descendants of the original landowners of Suva, Fiji's capital. His second fieldwork project (1998-2010) focused on a team of Japanese derivatives traders at a major Japanese securities firm. He has written two books, The Method of Hope: Anthropology, Philosophy, and Fijian Knowledge (Stanford University Press, 2004), and Arbitraging Japan: Traders as Critics of Capitalism.

Annelise Riles Professor of Anthropology and Jack G. Clarke Professor of Far East Legal Studies Cornell University

Annelise Riles is renowned as an anthropologist whose work engages with subjects that appear to be most resistant to ethnographic study. In particular, she is committed to anthropology's unique contribution to contemporary legal, political and epistemological debates. Ethnographic subjects that interest her include bureaucracies and institutions, law, markets, theories (from law to economics, science and gender) and modern knowledges of all kinds. This interest emerges for out of her engagement with the remarkable contributions of feminist anthropology, the anthropology of science, and Melanesian anthropology to the anthropology of the contemporary. Her first book, The Network Inside Out, concerned knowledge practices among UN bureaucrats and NGO activists working on "gender issues" in the Pacific. There, the problem was a set of practices (networking, debating the nature of a "gender perspective") that overlapped with anthropology's own methods of analysis. A more recent edited collection, Documents: Artifacts of Modern Knowledge, concerned how to bring documents and documentary practices into view as ethnographic subjects, and what these subjects might tell us about the state of anthropological theory and its engagement with kindred disciplines at this moment. After her ethnographic work in Fiji, she conducted two years of fieldwork among financial regulators and lawyers in Japan and expects to return for further fieldwork in the near future. A first book to come out of that project is an ethnographic rendition of legal theory.

Professor Riles' visit is hosted by the Department of Management and Marketing in the Faculty of Business and Economics, and under the auspices of the Cluster for research on Organisation, Society and Markets (COSM).

Andrew Walter Professor of International Relations University of Melbourne

Prior to coming to Melbourne, Andrew Walter was Reader in International Political Economy at the London School of Economics. From 2001-2012 he was an Academic Director of the TRIUM Global Executive, an alliance between the LSE, NYU Stern School of Business, and the HEC School of Management, Paris. Externally, over 2009-2012 he served as a member of the Council of Chatham House, a leading British think-tank of international affairs. He currently sits on the Academic Advisory Panel of The International Centre for Financial Regulation and on the editorial board of the Review of International Studies, the house journal of the British International Studies Association. Until 1997 he was a Fellow of St. Anthony’s College, Oxford, and University Lecturer in International Relations, where he taught international relations and political economy. He specializes in research on International Political Economy, specifically in the international political economy of money and finance, financial regulation and international standard setting. East Asia in the global political economy is a regional specialization. His most recent book, East Asian Capitalism: Diversity, Change, and Continuity (Oxford University Press, 2012) edited with Xiaoke Zhang argues that East Asia’s increasing economic and political importance in the global political economy requires a deeper analysis of the nature of the capitalism.

Ross Buckley Professor, Scientia Professor, Centre for International Finance and Regulation (CIFR) King & Wood Mallesons Chair of International Finance Law University of New South Wales

Ross Buckley joined UNSW in January 2007, having previously led a research centre into global trade & finance at another Australian University for six years. He edits two book series for Kluwer, and currently holds a Discovery Outstanding Researcher Award -- a professorial fellowship from the Australian Research Council. His principal area of research interest is in regulatory measures to increase the resilience and stability of financial systems: Australia's, East Asia's and the international system. He has led three major three-year research projects funded by the ARC and his work has received numerous other grants. In 2013 he was appointed to the CIFR King & Wood Mallesons Chair in International Financial Law, and as a Scientia Professor, at UNSW. In the past he has consulted to banks, finance houses and government departments, including the U.S. SEC, Comptroller of the Currency and Department of Justice, the Australian Tax Office, the Indonesian Ministry of Finance and the Vietnamese Ministry of Trade. These days I Chair the Research Committee of Jubilee Australia, the global anti-poverty NGO, and serve on the Expert Group for Aktion Finanzplatz Schweiz. In a past life, he once practised banking and finance law in Australia and Hong Kong and on Wall Street for nine years.

China’s rise is the most intriguing economic phenomenon of our time. One of the world’s poorest economies at the end of the nineteenth century, China has, for over three decades, been experiencing average annual growth of over 9 percent, with growth in foreign trade of over 16 percent. In this presentation, Professor Lin will offer an insider’s analysis of China’s miraculous economic ascension, bringing findings from his recent publication “Demystifying the Chinese Economy” to a Melbourne audience for the first time.

Professor Lin will explain how Deng Xiaoping succeeded in turning the economy around, using a dual-track approach, rather than the “Washington Consensus” formula of rapid privatization and trade liberalization. He will describe how China managed to achieve stability and incredible growth rates simultaneously, and discuss the valuable lessons that other developing countries can learn from this stellar achievement.

This lecture will address key questions that underpin current global economic debate: Will China’s growth be maintained? Can it be replicated? What effect does rising inequality within China have on its economic prospects? For an audience located squarely in Asia, at the beginning of the Asian Century, the chance to hear from this highly influential speaker is not to be missed.

Dr Walkley completed a Bachelor of Pharmacy at the University of South Australia in 1999 and completed a PhD at the Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in 2003.

He then undertook post-doctoral training with Prof. Stuart Orkin at the Dana-Farber Cancer Centre/Children’s Hospital in Boston, USA. In 2008 Dr Walkley returned to Australia and co-head’s the Stem Cell Regulation Unit at St. Vincent’s Institute of Medical Research in Melbourne.

His primary interests are generating models of human cancer focusing on myelodysplastic syndrome and osteosarcoma and in the roles of RNA editing in haematopoiesis.

Host: Ben Kile

Dean's Lecture

Professor Michael Fried Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore

In 2011 the German artist Thomas Demand made a two-minute stop-motion film called "Pacific Sun." Michael Fried will show this film and analyse it in detail, with a view to explaining what he regards as its particular significance in and for the present situation in the visual arts.

Michael Fried is a poet, art historian, art critic and literary critic. He is Professor, J. R. Herbert Boone Chair in the Humanities (secondary appointment: Department of the History of Art) at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore. He has written extensively about an array of subjects, spanning abstract painting and sculpture since World War II to French painting and art criticism from the mid-eighteenth century to the advent of Edouard Manet (and beyond).

He has also written about writers and artists Charles Baudelaire, Joseph Conrad, Gustave Caillebotte, Roger Fry, Bernd and Hilla Becher, Jeff Wall, Thomas Struth, Andreas Gursky, Thomas Demand, and other contemporary 'art' photographers. Fried has also written on Caravaggio and the transformation of Italian painting circa 1600, and most recently about the contemporary artists Anri Sala, Charles Ray, Joseph Marioni, and Douglas Gordon. He is currently embarked on a short book on 'Madame Bovary,' to be called Flaubert's Gueuloir.

Deepening political instability in many regions of the earth, compounded by the effects of climate change, will probably cause more people to be uprooted than were uprooted last century. Strong nations are likely to protect themselves in ways that become increasingly brutal, testing the relevance and authority of international law. We must therefore think in new ways about how to respond morally, legally and politically to the fact that mere luck ensures that some people enjoy the fruits of the earth while others suffer the miseries of the damned. That amounts to no less than thinking about what it means to be a human being on this fragile earth.

This lecture forms part of the Wednesday Lecture Series hosted by Raimond Gaita.

Featuring works for all manner of ensembles, these concerts are always popular. The Ensemble Series will run from 21 May to 7 June 2013. Admission is free.

Composition Concerts - Exciting concerts of new works from the talented composition department at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music (MCM). Tuesdays 21, 28 May, 5 June, 7.30pm

World Music Choir Concert Friday 31 May, 12.15pm

World Music Combined Ensembles Concert - A gala concert featuring an array of performances highlighting the variety of ensembles on offer at the MCM. The program will include Javanese Gamelan, African Drum and Dance, Shakuhachi and World Music Choir. Wednesday 5 June, 3pm

Flute, Brass and Saxophone Ensembles Concert Thursday 6 June, 6pm

Choir Concert Friday 7 June, 7pm

This winter The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning (ABP) plays host to an exciting exhibition which gives rare insight into the design process of architectural practice DENTON CORKER MARSHALL.

The exhibition is part of ABP’s Alumni Survey Series, an annual series which celebrates the work of faculty graduates and highlights the exceptional contribution they make to Australia's design culture and built environment.

DENTON CORKER MARSHALL has practised internationally for decades. Works such as the Manchester Civil Justice Centre, Melbourne Museum and Australian embassies in Beijing, Tokyo and Jakarta demonstrate the practice’s significant contribution to the global architectural scene.

But, from time to time, the practice enjoys the opportunity to design houses, and this lesser-known story is showcased in this exhibition held at Melbourne University’s Wunderlich Gallery from May 17 to June 14 2013.

The DENTON CORKER MARSHALL - Land Art: Nine Small Buildings exhibition will feature photographs, sketches and models for seven residential houses and two small buildings – the Australia Pavilion for the Venice Biennale, Italy, and the Stonehenge Visitor Centre and Interpretation Museum, UK.

As Deyan Sudjic, Director of the London Design Museum, writes in his Introduction of Denton Corker Marshall's new publication Houses (published by Birkhäuser):

“If site is one key to Denton Corker Marshall’s work, the other is the materiality of their buildings at every scale, from the towers that they have built in Manchester and Sydney and Melbourne, and many other cities, to the houses. They display a delicacy and precision that comes close to jewellery. This is a group of houses that together demonstrates a deft infusion of architectural energy.”