Culture and Creativity Seminar Series

Abstract  This presentation introduces the initial findings of a cross-faculty research project that aims to develop a social sustainability rating system for medium- and high-rise residential complexes, with Canberra as the case study. The study examines how the built environment can support mental and physical health, building management, community cohesion, and other essential factors that...

Abstract  Analysing the feedback from the speaker’s major PhD exhibition, and looking at three recent Royal Commissions, this presentation focuses on key themes emerging from these large truth-telling/witnessing exercises. It explores ongoing research into art making centred on issues of social injustice examined in commissions of inquiry, and asks whether art, using a specific aesthetic appr...

Abstract  This presentation is a conversation about a research collaboration between academics from three universities. What started as a collaboration between three women from Edith Cowan University and four from Canberra University has grown to include another woman from both universities and one more from the University of Wollongong. We call ourselves the Kind Regards Collective.  Bi...

Abstract  Laser cleaning provides a highly controlled, non-invasive method for removing surface contaminants without damaging the underlying material, making it especially valuable in the preservation of sensitive cultural artifacts. Over the past year, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s conservation team has applied this approach across various materials and object types, such as plastics, mic...

Abstract  In this lecture, Manuela de Barros explores how technology has interfaced with the concept of magic since the Renaissance, influencing how beliefs and expectations about their capabilities are formed. She considers how these cultural beliefs endow technologies with magical powers to take care of social problems, inviting us to reflect on their significance in the context of expandin...

Abstract  In the first half of 2025, I was fortunate enough to conduct research on the Outside Studies Program towards completion of an academic textbook, How to Write Haiku, to be published by Bloomsbury Press. This included a month spent in Japan conducting background cultural research and, more specifically, interviewing and talking with contemporary poets and critics about Gendai Haiku. G...

Abstract  What are the essentials of Gille Deleuze’s philosophy? There is a multiplicity of Deleuzes, with multiple points of engagement. This presentation begins with the presupposition that they are all actualised examples of a philosophy of the event. Emphasising Deleuze’s philosophy as a philosophy of the event is largely congruent with major commentaries but is purposefully constrained a...

Abstract  The production of creative objects for wellbeing seems to have been part of human culture since the dawn of our emergence as a species. It did, though, take until the 20th century before it became formalized and institutionalized – first as art therapy and more recently as a part of social prescribing. In this seminar I will briefly touch the history of creative intervention for wel...

Abstract  This paper takes fire from Seamus Heaney’s comments on the “cultural depth charges latent in certain words,” and in particular from his analysis of poet Ted Hughes’s predilection for those with Anglo-Saxon roots. Heaney sees Germanic word choices as integral to Hughes’s attempts to evoke “the being-thereness. . . of sea, stone, wind and tree.” So Heaney makes critical mileage of the...

Abstract  This seminar explores the complexities behind a deceptively simple directive: just put it on a map. Drawing on recent web-based mapping projects, I will unpack the messy realities of transforming research data, often buried in Word documents or scattered across unstructured formats, into meaningful digital interfaces. From wrestling with datasets to navigating design dilemmas, I wil...

Abstract  Technological innovation has evoked anxiety in (some) contemporary writers. But writers are also well-placed to adapt to technological change by virtue of the multiple worlds they already inhabit. This paper examines two novels written contemporaneously with the pandemic by Ali Smith as a way of tracing the heightened embedding of people in the virtual world, made possible by improv...