Experience ANU

Along with the increase in focus on the need for policymakers and the community to implement and support initiatives on countering violent extremism, there has been a tendency to put migration high on the agenda too. The phenomenon of foreign fighters in Iraq and Syria – small in number but significant in political impact – is at risk of dominating the migration and security discussion. Recent eve...

Are we headed for a geological event horizon? Dr Andrew Glikson explains how the rise of atmospheric greenhouse gases of 2-3 parts per million CO2 per year has reached an order of magnitude similar to rates associated with mass extinctions of species. Dr Andrew Glikson, an Earth and paleo-climate scientist, graduated from the University of Western Australia. He has conducted geological surveys of...

Michael Cooney was Julia Gillard's speechwriter for most of her time in office. He came to the job a true believer in every sense, with years of Labor experience behind him, including Policy Director to Federal Labor leaders Kim Beazley and Mark Latham. But this was the prime minister's office. The stakes were high and the game had changed. From mining to the economy to Afghanistan, Cooney wrote t...

One in five of the world's population is Chinese, 300 million Chinese are under 30, and of these, most are only children as a result of the One Child Policy. What do these only children think and do? A generation burdened with high expectation and unprepared for responsibility. With journalistic acumen and a novelist's flair, Xinran tells the remarkable stories of men and women born and raised und...

In this talk Professor John C Turner, from the School of Psychology at The Australian National University, poses the basic question, "what is the nature of "prejudice"?

If Australian politics and public policy debates are a war of ideas, the National Press Club (NPC) is the battleground. For the past half-century, the NPC has been the epicentre of political and social debate in Australia. Leaders and opinion-makers have used its stage to launch leadership bids, rattle the cage of public opinion with courageous and sometimes outrageous ideas, and make a stand. Sta...

The South China Sea is a major strategic waterway for trade and energy shipments to Asia’s major economies. It has been the focus of maritime disputes which have continued for more than six decades, with competing claims from China, Vietnam, the Philippines and others. In recent years, growing Chinese assertiveness in pressing its claims has unsettled the regional security order, drawing the atten...

When Kate Grenville’s mother, Nance Russell, died she left behind many fragments of memoir. These were the starting point for One Life, the story of a woman whose life spanned a century of tumult and change. Nance’s story reflects the changing patterns of the twentieth century which offered a path to new freedoms and choices. One Life is an act of great imaginative sympathy, a deeply moving homage...

The belief that China will soon become the dominant power in Asia is based on assumptions that its continued and rapid economic rise, and its emergence as a regional peer of America’s in military terms is all but assured. Such a belief underpins arguments that a fundamental strategic reorganisation of Asia is inevitable, and that it will be necessary and perhaps even desirable to concede to China...

ANU/Canberra Times meet the author event with Anna Bligh in conversation with The Hon Tanya Plibersek MP Anna Bligh knows something about hard knocks and high walls. She was raised by a single mother in the working class Gold Coast, a young girl with a soon-to-be-estranged dad who struggled with alcoholism. She spent over 17 years in the rough and tumble of the Queensland Parliament (seven of them...

Antibiotic resistance is rapidly rising internationally. Many bacterial infections are now very difficult, and sometimes impossible, to treat. Gram negative bacteria are the pointy end of this growing problem, including very common bacteria such as E. Coli. Antibiotic resistance is proportional to use. The more antibiotics used, the more resistance develops and spreads. This is both in individuals...

The incoming Head of the ANU National Security College, Professor Rory Medcalf, offers some assessments on the long-term policy choices Australians and their governments will need to make to advance their country’s security interests in the uncertain decades ahead. Professor Rory Medcalf commenced as the Head of the National Security College in January 2015. His professional background spans diplo...

His Excellency Kay Rala Xanana Gusmão is the Minister of Planning and Strategic Investment for the Democratic Republic of Timor-Leste. He has served as President of his country for five years, Prime Minister for seven and a half years and was a central figure in his country’s 24-year struggle for the restoration of independence. In this public address he discussed Political Transition and National...

Internationally acclaimed author David Malouf joins Gerard Vaughan AM in conversation for a discussion featuring art, literature and music. After exploring the idea of home, where and what it is in A First Place, what does it mean to be a writer and where writing begins in The Writing Life, David Malouf moves on to words, music, art and performance in Being There. With pieces on the Sydney Opera H...

The rise of the so-called Islamic State (IS) on vast swathes of territories in Syria and Iraq, and the US-led military response to it, have introduced another complex dimension to an oil-rich but already very volatile Middle East. The old correlation of forces in support of maintaining the status quo, especially following the Iranian revolution more than 35 years ago, has been changing. A set of n...

Science has evolved over thousands of years of human enquiry to provide a rational basis for understanding and predicting what happens in the world around us. We rely on science to enhance our standard of living, to keep us healthy and to address the problems and challenges that we face. Science has put men on the moon, probed distant planets, discovered DNA and cured disease. And yet, there are m...

In today’s classrooms academics and teachers are increasingly expected to incorporate new communication technologies into their curriculum. However, by adopting these new mediums are we reducing the quality of students’ educational experience or is this just the way of the classrooms of tomorrow? In the final ‘blow up the lecture’ event for the year, our panel of experts examine the future of educ...

Professor Steven Chu gives the plenary opening at the Light, Energy and the Environment Congress held on 5 December 2014.

The Australian community has, to an unprecedented extent, become involved in reconciliation through Reconciliation Action Plans and other initiatives. There is acceptance that there is a broad responsibility beyond governments to help close the gap. At the same time we have sharpened political and government focus with a Prime Minister for Aboriginal Affairs, massive reorganisation of how the Comm...

In his valedictory address, outgoing Head of College Professor Michael L'Estrange argues that the NSC is a good example of how the worlds of public policy and academia can best work together.

In this podcast ANU classics expert Dr Ioannis Ziogas delivers the 2014 Last Lecture. Classics, the study of the ancient Greek and Roman world, deals with the traditional literature of Greece and Rome and the themes of history, philosophy, and culture. Dr Ziogas says it makes it a multi-faceted and diverse subject for students to learn, especially since the topic is always on the news and in movie...

This talk was given at The Australian National University on 22 October 2014. The Art of Belonging advances the argument put forward in Mackay's bestselling The Good Life: a 'good life' is not lived in isolation or in the pursuit of independent goals; a good life is lived at the heart of a thriving community, among people we trust, and within an environment of mutual respect. Drawing on 50 years'...

The 2014 OAA-ANU Lecture The world’s tallest flowering plants – the Mountain Ash forests – lie just 90 minutes’ drive north-east from the Melbourne Cricket Ground. They are the world’s most carbon dense ecosystems. They yield almost all of Melbourne’s water supply and are a critical environment for a wide range of native plants and animals. Mountain Ash forests are also subject to widespread loggi...

One of the major questions raised regarding many protracted and violent intergroup conflicts is why the adversaries do not succeed in reaching a settlement that seems obvious and easily attainable to outsiders. This question is of special importance because despite great losses, destruction, and personal suffering, many members of societies engulfed in these conflicts remain entrenched in their co...

Seventeenth Geoffrey Sawer Lecture 2014 Geoffrey Sawer was the first Professor of Law at The Australian National University, appointed in 1950 at the age of 40. His fluid and incisive writing, especially on Australian constitutional law and politics, has had a significant impact on succeeding generations of academics, practitioners and judges. In 1998, two years after Sawer’s death in 1996, in hon...