In celebration of NAIDOC Week 2023, MGSE is delighted to welcome Professor Barry Judd, Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Indigenous), to present  a special Dean’s Lecture on Monday 3^rd July:

Giving Voice to Indigenous Australia: Formal education, help or hinderance?

As the Referendum on the Indigenous Voice to Parliament approaches later in the year, Judd reflects on the role formal education has played in shaping the ongoing relationship between Indigenous peoples and settler-colonial Australians.

Drawing on his own experiences, Judd asks if formal education in Australia has worked to facilitate mature national debate on issues like the Voice proposal or whether it has in fact hindered and undermined such possibilities.

These questions go to the heart of the assertion by legal academic, Megan Davis, that Indigenous Australia continues to remain unknown to settler-colonial Australia. As well as the related refrain of Australian historian, Henry Reynolds, when pondering contemporary ignorance of the Australian past and the place of Indigenous Australia within this history, Why weren’t we told? (2000).

Judd critically discusses why formal education in Australia continues to be a largely unhelpful “friend” to Indigenous Australia in the task of overcoming the mistruths and misrepresentations that continue to characterise discussion and debate about the place Indigenous people occupy or should occupy in Australian society.

Join us at 5.30pm for registration and refreshments.

Lecture commences at 6.00pm.

Registration is essential.

2023 Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow Public Lecture

In Australia, and around the world, bushfires and wildland fires are becoming more common and more destructive. People, property, infrastructure, and the environment are all impacted. The reasons for this fast-growing problem are rooted in complex phenomena combining climate and socio-economic changes.

In an exclusive event hosted by the Faculty of Science, internationally renowned fire researcher Professor Albert Simeoni will be speaking about “Resilience in the face of fire” in his only public event in Australia as a Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellow to the University of Melbourne.

Professor Simeoni will introduce the idea of Fire Protection Engineering with an emphasis on the Wildland-Urban Interface (WUI). His ideas about engineering solutions at the WUI come from 20 years’ experience developing experimental, analytical, and numerical techniques to better understand fire dynamics and to predict fire and wildland fire behavior and are now being explored through collaborations with international research institutions and government agencies.

Join us for networking drinks in the foyer before the lecture, from 5pm.

The Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Program

The Miegunyah Distinguished Visiting Fellowship Program enables overseas scholars of international distinction to make an extended visit to the University of Melbourne and contribute to the university’s academic, intellectual and cultural life. The fellowships are awarded annually and generously supported by The Russell and Mab Grimwade Miegunyah Fund.