University of Melbourne Events Calendar

‘These were indeed strange times. Yet the forces at work in them were not new. Men like Donald Trump are embedded in US history, mythology and popular culture. Rank populists, hucksters, fakers, grifters, rent-seekers, blowhards, tycoons, kleptocrats, narcissists, psychopaths and delinquents – or, from the other point of view, rugged individualists, entrepreneurs, men of vision, men of destiny, instruments of God. No diorama of mainstream American life in any era could be without them.’
– Don Watson, The Shortest History of the United States of America

Join Don Watson as he traces how the central conflicts of the United States – those over freedom, race, frontiers, enterprise, religion and violence – play out through its history: a country at war with itself in the 1860s, the leader of the free world less than a hundred years later, and a nation beset by wild division and turmoil in the twenty-first century.

Featuring an introduction from Professor Michael Wesley, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Global Culture & Engagement), at the University of Melbourne.

This event is presented by University of Melbourne Arts and Culture and Readings

A reflection on the realities of service delivery in resource-poor communities, the importance of good mentoring and life-changing moments, and the ability of effective community-based research to change policy and delivery models. Most of all is the impact of meeting people along the way and being changed by that (for the better). Some thoughts on contemporary research paradigms (the innovation-crushing effect of peer review and the compartmentalisation of “health”), insights from Indigenous approaches to knowledge and practice, and how “progress” is not always in the forward direction. Last, some insights from Hedgehogs and Foxes.

This will also be online, please email onemda-info@unimelb.edu.ai for webinar link.

Held during NAIDOC Week