Symposia
50th Anniversary, 2019
Special events
Public Lectures
Past events
Humanities, Arts & Culture Data Summit
The Academy’s second annual Humanities, Arts and Culture Data Summit and third international DARIAH Beyond Europe workshop was held 27-29 March 2019 in Canberra.
An Australia-Europe knowledge exchange, convened by the Academy with the Australian Research Data Commons (ARDC) and the European Digital Research Infrastructure for the Arts and Humanities initiative (DARIAH), this event will explore new horizons for data-driven humanities and arts research, digital cultural collections and research infrastructure.
Also see post-event reflections by ARDC and DARIAH and highlights on Twitter using #DARIAHBeyondEurope and #HACDS2019
Select presentations are available from the event:
- Professor Jean Burgess, Director, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology — Digital methods and the future of communication and media research
- Ian Duncan, Acting Executive Director, Australian Research Data Commons — Digital research infrastructures for the arts and humanities: Sustainability, collaboration, vision, imagination, inspiration, advocacy and impact
- Marco Fahmi (University of Queensland) and Dr Tyne Daile Sumner (University of Melbourne) — Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences Virtual Laboratory
- Professor Jane Hunter — Director, Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network(AURIN) — The Future Directions of the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network
- Dr James Rose — Indigenous Studies Unit, Melbourne School of Population and Global Health — Data Sovereignty in a Colonial Context: Towards an Integrated National Governance Framework for Australia
- Dr James Smithies, Director, King’s Digital Lab — Integrating DH into the longue durée: Research Laboratories, History, Methods
Knowledge Exchange session 1 — Infrastructural challenges for large scale digital text corpora
- Professor Michael Haugh FAHA and Dr Simon Musgrave, University of Queensland, Australian National Corpus — Towards an Australian Language Data Commons: Lessons from the Australian National Corpus
- Associate Professor Antonija Primorac, University of Rijeka, Croatia — Infrastructural Challenges for Large Scale Digital Text Corpora: A View From the European Margins
Knowledge Exchange Session 1 Community Notes
Knowledge Exchange session 2 — Geohumanities
- Dr Bill Pascoe, University of Newcastle — Colonial Frontiers Massacres Map
- Dr Michael Rigby, University of Melbourne, AURIN — Georeferencing: Theory and challenges
Knowledge Exchange Session 2 Community Notes
Knowledge Exchange session 3 — Audio-visual and new media and gaming
- Professor Jean Burgess, Director, Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology — Digital methods in the QUT Digital Media Research Centre
- Professor Erik Champion, Curtin University and UNESCO Chair of Cultural Heritage & Visualisation — 3D-DH & VH Downunder
Knowledge Exchange Session 3 Community Notes
The way forward
In the final session of the program, the convenors hosted a discussion on infrastructure, sustainability, and international collaborations – where are we, and where might we go together? See Way Forward Community Notes.
The Academy’s inaugural Humanities, Arts & Culture Data Summit was held on 14-15 March 2018 in Canberra. For the first time in Australia, the summit bought together more than 100 delegates from universities, peak bodies, national cultural and collecting institutions, government departments, key projects and organisations, and National Collaborative Research Infrastructure Strategy (NCRIS) facilities to help frame a national HAC research infrastructure agenda.
An overview of the event’s themes and highlights is available online, signalling next steps and opportunities for improving frameworks for accessing, analysing and sharing Australia’s rich and vast HAC data collections. Highlights have been made on Twitter using #HACDS2018
Select presentations from the inaugural summit:
Professor Linda Barwick FAHA (Sydney Conservatorium of Music, University of Sydney) and Associate Professor Nick Thieberger (ARC Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language) — PARADISEC Developments 2003-18
Adam Bell, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies — Transforming the Archive: Digital preservation and access at AIATSIS
Professor Robyn Owens (University of Western Australia and National Research Data Cloud (NRDC) and Adjunct Professor Rob Cook (NRDC Reference Group) — NRDC Future Design
Alison Dellit, National Library of Australia — Trove: Aggregator Host Platform Community
Professor Rachel Fensham, University of Melbourne — Research infrastructure for digital HASS at Melbourne: Research platforms, SCIP, and the Digital Studio
Professor Mark Finnane FASSA FAHA, Griffith University — The Prosecution Project: Investigating the criminal trial in Australian history
Andrew Gilbert, Bioplatforms Australia — National footprint, capability impact, and accessible infrastructure and data
Dr John La Salle, Atlas of Living Australia — The Atlas of Living Australia
Ingrid Mason, AARNet — Platforms for HASS
Dr Steve McEachern, Australian Data Archive — The Australian Data Archive as infrastructure for the HASS community
Roxanne Missingham, ANU — Data in the Humanities: Digital dancing
Jan Müller, National Film and Sound Archive — Platforms for HASS: CLARIAH – A case study
Professor Bert Roberts, ARC Centre of Excellence for Australian Biodiversity and Heritage — A Time Machine for Australia?
Dr Merran Smith, Population Health Research Network — Experience and opportunities
Professor Julian Thomas FAHA, RMIT — Linked Semantic Platforms for Social and Urban Policy and Practice
Special events
Held on Wednesday 14 November 2018, the Colloquium celebrated the twentieth anniversary of the establishment of the Cultural and Communication Studies Section of the Academy. The establishment of the Section was the result of a campaign led by the late Professor Ken Ruthven, a key moment of which was the Academy’s 1991 Symposium ‘Beyond the Disciplines: The new humanities’.
The event revisited some of the key topics discussed in that symposium – the discipline of cultural studies, multiculturalism, cultural policy studies, feminist/gender studies, and postcolonial/subaltern studies – and discuss how our disciplines have moved on since then. Our focus will be on the theoretical, political, and institutional challenges they have confronted, the changing contexts in which they have evolved, and the directions in which we think they are headed.
Presenters included some of the founding Fellows of the Section, some newer Fellows, as well as early and mid-career researchers.
The event was convened by Professor Tony Bennett AcSS FAHA, Professor John Frow FAHA, Professor Elspeth Probyn FASSA FAHA and Associate Professor Chris Healy FAHA. The event was hosted by Professor Gerard Goggin FAHA in the Social Sciences Building at the University of Sydney.
We acknowledge and thank the University of Melbourne’s School of Culture and Communication, the University of Sydney’s Department of Media and Communications, and Western Sydney University’ Institute for Culture and Society for their generous support of this event.
Program
Download the program, including abstracts.
Introduction
Welcome to Country by Uncle Allen Madden
Welcome by Professor Umberto Ansaldo (University of Sydney)
Opening remarks by Professor Tony Bennett AcSS FAHA (Western Sydney University) — Head of the Academy’s Cultural and Communication Studies Section
Session 1
Chair: Professor John Frow FAHA (University of Sydney)
Professor Meaghan Morris FAHA (University of Sydney) — Learned Academies: Why Bother?
Emeritus Professor Graeme Turner FAHA (University of Queensland) — The Humanities as Heuristic: Coordinating the sector
Professor Brett Neilson (Western Sydney University) — The academy as Logistical Institution
Respondent: Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham AM FAHA FAcSS (Queensland University of Technology)
Session 2
Chair: Professor Gerard Goggin FAHA (University of Sydney)
Dr Crystal Abidin (Deakin University & Jönköping University) — Somewhere between here and there: Interdisciplinary in cultural studies as a young scholar
Professor Jill Bennett (UNSW Sydney) — Embodied subjective experience and the limits (and possibilities) of empathy
Dr Shawna Tang (University of Sydney) — Sexuality in Cultural Studies: Doing queer research in Asia
Respondent:Professor Elspeth Probyn FASSA FAHA (University of Sydney)
Session 3
Chair: Associate Professor Chris Healy FAHA (University of Melbourne)
Professor Julian Thomas FAHA (RMIT University) — Contemporary Histories of Media Automation: Connecting policy, politics, and communications.
Associate Professor Fran Martin (University of Melbourne) — Australian Cultural Studies in the Asian century
Respondent: Professor Wanning Sun FAHA (UTS)
Session 4
Chair: Professor Tony Bennett FAcSS FAHA(Western Sydney University)
Matt Poll (Indigenous Heritage and Repatriation Project, Macleay Museum) — Reinventing Tradition: Repatriation in S.E. Australian Aboriginal Communities.
Emeritus Professor Tim Rowse FAHA (Western Sydney University) — Reconciliation as Public Culture: Taking Cultural Studies beyond Ghassan Hage’s ‘White nationalist’.
Respondent: Associate Professor Chris Healy FAHA (University of Melbourne)
Closing remarks
Professor Joy Damousi FASSA FAHA, President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities
The Academy was delighted to sponsor through its Section Workshop Scheme the ‘Trust and its discontents’ workshop which was held on 26 September 2018 in Melbourne.
The event was hosted by the Academy’s Cultural and Communication Studies Section and convened by Distinguished Professor Stuart Cunningham AM FAHA FAcSS (Queensland University of Technology),Professor Julian Thomas FAHA (RMIT University) and Professor Jean Burgess (Queensland University of Technology).
Highlights from the event have been made on Twitter using #AAHTrust
Overview
The Banking Royal Commission and the crisis in governance of world-spanning digital platforms such as Facebook have focused public discussion in Australia and elsewhere about falling levels of public trust in business, media, social media and government. The Edelman Trust Barometer, a widely-cited, survey-based report on the topic, is one example of a host of recent studies reporting an ongoing decline in trust for all institutions. Edelman’s 2017 report notes a particularly sharp fall in trust in the media, reflecting growing concern over disinformation, or “fake news”. Some of the basic systems by which we entrust others — such as the commonplace agreements in which we give “informed consent” — are said to be broken by new digital technologies of control and surveillance. The question of trust is now centre stage in our hyper-sceptical, highly-mediated and globalised world, and the humanities and social sciences should play a central role in explicating the challenges for, and mitigating the risks to, the social, cultural and democratic fabric arising from the erosion of trust.
The workshop aimed to illuminate critical aspects of the current problem and future prospects of trust, drawing on recent work in the humanities and related disciplines. It fostered a deeper examination of what trust involves, engaging with the complexity of its cultural practices, and the forms of technological and institutional design it relies upon. The event considered the remedies for mistrust in public institutions and the media, and the emergence of specialised systems of exchange designed to reframe radically the issue of trust. The workshop contributed to an exciting, interdisciplinary field, involving contributions from anthropology, cultural and communication studies, ethics, philosophy, history, economics and finance, and law.
Program
Download the program for all abstracts and biographies.
Select presentations are available below.
Session 1
AUTOMATING TRUST?
Key note presentation by Professor Genevieve Bell (Autonomy, Agency & Assurance Innovation Institute and Florence Violet McKenzie Chair, Engineering & Computer Science, Australian National University)
Session 2
MEASURING TRUST AND ITS DEFICITS
Steven Spurr (Edelman Australia) — Edelman trust barometer
Professor Frank Bongiorno FASSA (School of History, Australian National University) — Australian political trust in historical perspective
Emeritus Professor Tim Rowse FAHA FASSA (Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University) — The reconciliation barometer as a measure of trust between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians
Professor Justin O’Brien (Australian Centre for Financial Studies, Monash Business School) — Trust and its discontents
Session 3
MEDIATING TRUST AND DISTRUST
Dr Karen Jones (Philosophy, University of Melbourne) — A field-guide to everyday (social) pathologies of distrust
Associate Professor Nic Suzor (Law School, Queensland University of Technology) — A constitutional moment for the ‘net: protecting human rights online
Professor Jean Burgess (Digital Media Research Centre, Queensland University of Technology) — What fake Peppa Pig videos can teach us about trust
Professor Bronwyn Carlson (Department of Indigenous Studies, Macquarie University) — Indigenous Australians and informal networks of trust on social media
Session 4
TECHNOLOGIES OF TRUST
Dr Mikayla Novak (Blockchain Innovation Hub, RMIT University) — The cost of trust
Associate Professor Ellie Rennie (Digital Ethnography Research Centre, RMIT University) and Professor Julian Thomas FAHA (Social Change Research Platform, RMIT University) — Trust, AI and blockchains: Imagining automated decision making