Do climate models leave us cold? Devices, felt-virtualities and the sociology of heat
Seminar
The paper seeks to ground heat and temperature more sociologically. The starting thought, which is possibly completely wrong, is that the modelling of global average temperature undertaken by climate scientists over the last few decades, is affecting a wide range of experiences of heat. Not only is…
Decolonising minority citizenship: promises of an ethnographic sensibility (Sagnik Dutta, OP Jindal Global University)
Seminar
Who is a minority? The answer to this seemingly innocuous question is not obvious. Colonial constructions of the minority were shaped by racialised assumptions about the cultural other. The minority as the cultural other has seeped into nationalist imaginaries of postcolonial nation-states.…
Tom Wills: The Insubordinate Life of an Australian Sporting Legend
Seminar
There are many versions of the origins of our Australian game of football, but all of them include T.W. Wills in some way. A champion cricketer, he had been exposed to the game of rugby when he was at Rugby School in England. In Melbourne in 1858, with several other men, he organised the first…
What is History in a Settler Colonial Society? Mapping the limits and possibilities of ethical historiography
Lecture
In his 1995 study of history, Silencing the Past: Power and the Production of History, Michel-Rolph Trouillot insisted on the need to recognise the discipline’s power to curate and control. Critical, structural analysis of history-making would expose not only the past under examination, he…
Representing Identity in Online Networks
Seminar
Researchers often know very little about social media users other than their public actions on a platform (for example, posting, sharing, liking) and when these actions occurred. In this sense, big data has been described as “thin” in that it lacks information on social context and the motivations…
Toxic parliaments and what can be done about them
Book launch
In recent years, Australia has been rocked by serious allegations of sexual assault and harassment within parliaments. Widespread reports of misconduct, nationwide protests and the #MeToo movement led to a reckoning that could not be ignored. In their new open-access book,…
End of an era? The UK General Election of 2024
Panel discussion
On 4 July, the UK is due to go to the polls. Barring a polling miss of historic proportions, this election is likely to put an end to fourteen years of Conservative Government, fourteen years in which the UK and its relations with the outside world have been altered in profound ways.Join this…