University of Melbourne Events Calendar

Join us at the 2025 Mental Health Symposium featuring the Alice Barber Public Lecture, presented in collaboration between the Department of Psychiatry and the Melbourne School of Psychological Sciences.

Mental Health Symposium

The event will commence with the Mental Health Symposium, featuring presentations from Christopher Winkler, Dr Andrea Putica, Dr Hope O’Brien and Professor Ben Harrison, focussing on a range of current mental health topics.

Alice Barber Public Lecture, presented by Professor Bronwyn Graham

Lecture overview

Cracking the XX code: The hidden science of how the female brain regulates fear

Women have a twice greater lifetime prevalence of anxiety disorders than men. The reasons underlying this imbalance are poorly understood. Moreover, current knowledge on anxiety and its treatment is based on studies conducted almost exclusively in males, a bias that is evident across almost all areas of biomedical research. As a consequence, the role of female-unique factors, such as differential exposure to sex hormones across the lifespan (e.g., puberty, the menstrual cycle, peri-partum, and peri-menopause, as well as exposure to synthetic hormones in contraceptives), is overlooked in the clinical care of women.

In this talk, Professor Graham will present evidence that illustrates the crucial roles of these female-unique factors in the onset of anxiety symptoms, their severity, and even the effectiveness of psychological and pharmacological treatments for anxiety. She will also highlight how recent changes to research policy and practice are propelling sex- and gender-tailored healthcare for all people.

This year marks the 30th anniversary of the Alice Barber Lecture, held annually at the University of Melbourne in honour of Dr Alice Barber, a pioneer in psychotherapy and a medical graduate of the university in 1906.

Host: Professor Emma Johnston AO, Vice-Chancellor, the University of Melbourne
MC: Juliet Rieden, author and journalist
Panellists: Dame Quentin Bryce AD, CVO, The Honourable Julia Gillard AC, Laureate Professor Marcia Langton AO

At this Melbourne launch of Quentin Bryce: The Authorised Biography you’ll have the unique opportunity to hear from Australia’s first female Governor-General Dame Quentin Bryce, first female Prime Minister the Honourable Julia Gillard and Foundation Chair of Australian Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne Laureate Professor Marcia Langton. These eminent leaders will discuss historic moments when their lives intersected and reflect on how Australia has evolved over the past half century, battles fought and the challenges that still lie ahead.

Refreshments and book signing opportunities will take place after the panel discussion.

About the book

When Quentin Bryce was sworn in as Australia’s first female governor-general in 2008, she made history. It was one of many firsts in a singular career dedicated to reform and serving community.

Her early childhood in a western Queensland bush town shaped her sense of self and her destiny. Young Quentin dreamed of changing the world and then set out to do it. She was the first from her school to go to university and among the first women admitted to the Queensland Bar. In revolutionary times her advocacy for human rights – especially for women, children and Indigenous Australians - underpinned her every role which included teaching in the male-dominated university law faculty, federal sex discrimination commissioner, CEO and Chair of the National Childcare Accreditation Council, Principal of Sydney’s Women’s College, governor of Queensland and Australia’s governor-general.

This biography traces the triumphs and the barriers as Quentin shattered glass ceilings and reveals the woman behind the high offices she held. Mother of five and grandmother to twelve, it is her partnership with soulmate Michael Bryce and the love of family, enduring friendships and belief in community that have sustained her. Her passion for the arts and elemental connection to Australia’s ancient landscape feeds her soul.

Fascinating, candid and insightful, Quentin Bryce: the Authorised Biography tells the remarkable story of one of Australia’s most impactful changemakers.

About the author

Juliet Rieden is an author, journalist, magazine editor, book reviewer and royal correspondent. Her previous books include The Writing on the Wall, a personal investigation into Juliet’s family’s fate in the Holocaust; Rising Heart, the memoir of Sierra Leonean kidnap survivor Aminata Conteh-Biger; and The Royals in Australia. Juliet spent more than two years researching and writing Quentin Bryce: The Authorised Biography, involving more than 120 exclusive interviews covering every aspect of Dame Quentin’s life.