Events
Centre for Artificial Intelligence and Digital Ethics (CAIDE) at the University of Melbourne
Featured events
The Planets
May
11
5:00pm - 7:00pm
Performance
The University of Melbourne Symphony Orchestra presents Gustav Holst’s The Planets.
Holst had not received critical acclaim before writing The Planets, and at its premiere in 1916 the work received some very negative reviews. However, within a year, it was universally acclaimed as his “greatest work”, and remains an audience favourite to this day.
Written during the First World War, the seven-movement work represents our neighbouring planet’s astrological, rather than their astronomical, characteristics.
Before the interval the orchestra will present the World Premiere of Stuart Greenbaum’s Sixth Symphony – Pulse of the Earth. And to open the concert, they will perform a short work by Lili Boulanger, D’un Soir Triste (Of a Sad Evening). This piece was also composed during the First World War, just months before the composer’s untimely death at 24 years of age.
The NSW Builders Labourers Federation and Aboriginal rights activism in the 1960s
May
14
12:00pm - 1:00pm
Public Lecture
The first webinar in the Australian Centre’s 2025 Critical Public Conversations series: Settler Nationalism and its Discontents.
The NSW Builders Laborers Federation played a central in the fight against the racist Aborigines Protection Act and in broader struggles for self-determination and land rights in 1960s. Strong and effective anti-racist action by the BLF was led by socialist construction workers who gained leadership of the union in 1961, including growing number of Koori members, who had recently migrated to Sydney from rural reserve communities. This presentation will explore both key moments in the struggle and the anti-racist ideas that animated these union activits, including a rejection of “White Australia” nationalism and support for global struggles against colonialism and war.
ACCESSIBILITY
If you have any support requirements in order to participate fully, please let us know via aust-centre@unimelb.edu.au.
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THE SERIES
Settler Nationalism and its Discontents
In 2025, the Critical Public Conversations (CPC) series we will explore the fragility, incoherence and contradictions of contemporary settler-colonial nationalisms. We seek to understand the associated politics of race, sex/gender and identity, to analyse the connections between settler colonialism, settler nationalism, and neoliberalism.
Across the series, CPC25 will track the violence of settler nationalism within and beyond so-called Australia. This is a critical juncture. Neoliberalism is dead, but the new is not emerging. The climate catastrophes of colonialism and capitalism loom. Old imperial alliances are revived; new reactionary ones emerge. The nation and its borders are obsessively reasserted.
Sovereign Indigenous people have always been on the frontline of resisting the violence of settler nationalism. CPC25 will foreground trans/national solidarities against settler trans/nationalism, making space to explore resurgent projects of Indigenous Nation-building alongside other possibilities for living otherwise. The series will diagnose the disorders of ‘the nation’ in its present moment. In highlighting the empty, incoherent and contradictory nature of settler colonial nationalism, the series seeks to contribute to its unraveling.
