Events

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.

9 speakers and a world of maps

Please join us for a public symposium exploring three of the most important early map collections in Australia with a particular focus on Dutch Golden Age maps showcasing recent innovations in their care and conservation.

This symposium will feature engaging presentations from historians and researchers formative in the development of the map collections of the National Library of Australia, the Kerry Stokes Collection, and MONA as they discuss the history, significance, and motivation for these collections in the context of Australian mapping.

Conservators from the University of Melbourne will describe their recent award-winning journey to conserve two different copies of the rare and beautiful 17th-Century wall map, Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus (Eastern and Asian archipelago), from the workshop of Master Cartographer for the Dutch East India Company Joan Blaeu, and share the insights they gained into the materials and construction of these rare, beautiful, and complex maps.

Archipelagus Orientalis, sive Asiaticus is the first published map depicting in detail the journeys of Abel Tasman including the sighting of Tasmania by the crew of the Zeehan on 24 November 1642, and Tasman’s mapping of New Zealand; it is the first large-scale published map of New Holland and the map on which all subsequent maps of Australia were based until the additions of Cook over a century later. The National Library of Australia map has recently been added to the UNESCO Australian Memory of the World Register.

Only five complete copies are known to exist, and of these the only two wall maps are held in Australian collections and were conserved by the University of Melbourne.

Inclusions: Registration ticket includes entry to the symposium, Symposium Program and event lanyard.

Lunch break: There will be a 50 minute break for lunch from 12 noon. Please make your own arrangements. Refer to the Symposium Program for the event schedule featuring session times.

Accessibility: The Forum Theatre is wheelchair accessible. Enter via Professor’s Walk, and take North Wing lifts to Level 1.

Further information: gcs-info@unimelb.edu.au or call Grimwade Conservation Services contact Libby Melzer on (03) 9348 5700.

Speakers include:

Dr Martin Woods, Former Director, Curatorial and Collections Research, National Library of Australia, Canberra

Erica Persak, Kerry Stokes Collection, Perth

Jane Clark, Museum of New and Old Art (MONA), Hobart

Libby Melzer, University of Melbourne

Peter Mitchelson, University of Melbourne

Victoria Thomas, ArtLab Australia

Briony Pemberton, Pemberton Conservation

Marion Parker, Marion Parker Textiles Conservation

Christine Mizzi, State Library of Victoria