Promotion and control of cancer quack Milan Brych in Australia
Seminar
In 1978, self-proclaimed cancer “doctor” Milan Brych set up a clinic in the Cook Islands offering a treatment that Brych claimed could cure 80% of terminal patients. The Australian media helped promote Brych as a miracle-worker; Brych said the medical profession who opposed him were ignorant and…
Aging effects in language and the wisdom of our elders, lessons from Papua New Guinea
Seminar
This is a trial project looking at elderly people's language in Papua New Guinea. Using over a decade of existing recordings, we plan to measure sounds in a language with a special kind of grammar often found in PNG, clause chains, and assess if elderly people maintain intonation like their younger…
Four Typologies of Repair in the Built Environment
Seminar
The question of repair is central to the Australian built environment. Repair is funded through government Home Builder schemes to enable renovation and made acutely necessary following environmental events such as the Black Summer bushfires of 2019/2020, when 3,000 homes destroyed and 5.52 million…
In his brain, which is as dry as the remainder biscuit...
Seminar
What exactly do we eat when we eat a biscuit? Everyday objects like biscuits contain unexpected, dense connections that illuminate material and cultural networks. Thousands of years before biscuits could be purchased in packets from the grocery store, twice-baked breads circulated as military…
Fighting with money: Patriotism, Thrift and Warfare in the British World, 1939-1950
Seminar
During and immediately after the second world war, propaganda educated British subjects around the world to consider their money as a weapon. Campaigners called for individual war savings, collective donations, sacrifice, and performative thrift. Propagandists, and their targets who read the news,…
SCIENCE. ART. FILM Blade Runner: The Director's Cut & Discussion
Arts & entertainment
What is in a memory? Why do we feel emotions? How do they relate to our sense of identity, self and responsibility? Blade Runner (1982) encourages us to reflect on how these questions about memories, emotions and selfhood not only define what it means to be human, but also how we relate to those…
Street Ethics: The rights and wrongs of recording a rough sleeper
Seminar
Over a few weeks I’ve been recording the experiences, thoughts and poetry of a rough sleeper named “Robert” and, with consent, playing his story on local radio. My hope is to offer a unique perspective on what it’s like to live on the streets and to live in Canberra. This work-in-progress…