Sydney Ideas
Episodes
An Ancient and Dynamic History: Current and Future Approaches to Aboriginal Archaeology
22 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This event, co-presented with the Department of Archaeology, brings together two archaeologists to discuss the status of Aboriginal archaeology, as we...
Global and Diverse Leadership: Jean Lau Chin
17 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Jean Lau Chin from Adelphi University in New York examines what successful 21st century leadership should look like in our increasingly dive...
The Landscape of Poetry: Mark Tredinnick in conversation with Robyn Ewing
15 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Australia poet Mark Tredinnick discusses the landscape in and of contemporary poetry, the role of the lyric in a time of spiritual and ecological cris...
Is the health sector key to a low-carbon world?
01 May 2018
Contributed by Lukas
This event brings together a panel of experts to discuss how the Australian healthcare system is a major contributor to the nation's carbon footprint....
2018 Michael Hintze Lecture: Global Security Cultures
24 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Mary Kaldor will introduce the concept of global security cultures in order to explain why we get stuck in certain ways of doing security. S...
The False Friends of Democracy
17 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Nadia Urbinati, one of Italy's most distinguished scholars, analyses the main forces that are nowadays tearing apart more than a few democracies aroun...
Digital Rights and Governance in Asia: The State of the Arts
12 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
A panel of distinguished international visitors and Australia-based experts discuss and debate the ‘hot button’ issues being raised by Asian digit...
Cultural diversity in leadership: where does Australia sit in 2018?
11 Apr 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Australia is widely celebrated as a multicultural triumph, but any such success remains incomplete. The findings of a new report, produced by the Aust...
Inverse problems and Harry Potter's cloak
26 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Can we make objects invisible? Professor Gunther Uhlmann explores inverse problems, and the progress scientists are making to achieve invisibility.
The Rise of Authoritarianism
22 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Authoritarian populists have disrupted politics in many societies, as seen in the U.S. and the UK. This event brings two leading scholars to discuss t...
Interlocutors in the archive: Aboriginal women and the collection of anthropological data
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Ngarigu woman Professor Jakelin Troy discusses intimate details of the lives, language and knowledge of the Aboriginal women she has discovered among ...
Strange physics: drones, artificial intelligence and quantum computers
15 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
From the atom bomb to the microprocessor, physics produced many of the great transformations of the 20th century. In the 21st, a convergence of artifi...
Outrage: The Psychic Life of Trump's America
13 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Outrage. Is it an affect? An agency? A meme? This talk by Professor Robyn Wiegman attempts to decide whether outrage offers political instruction or i...
Working the past: Aboriginal Australia and psychiatry
07 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples have historically been subject to much more misdiagnosis, mistreatment, incarceration and coercion than ...
Same-sex marriage and the state: global perspectives
05 Mar 2018
Contributed by Lukas
We’ve just legalised same-sex marriage, but where does the rest of the world stand? Bronwyn Winter and Maxime Forest explore the ways in which sam...
Symbolic technologies and challenges for education in digital societies
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Roger Saljo, University of Gothenburg, argues that learning as we know it is currently changing in nature from its traditional focus on repr...
Engaged anthropology, collaborative research and the Atikamekw First Nation
14 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Sylvie Poirier reflects on her trajectory of engagement and collaborative research with the Atikamekw First Nation (north-central Quebec, Ca...
Charles Perkins Centre Annual Lecture 2018: Is there a cure for ageing?
13 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What if getting old didn’t mean getting ill? Although we're living longer in most parts of the world, advancing age has been revealed as the major r...
Translating culture and talking with translators
05 Feb 2018
Contributed by Lukas
What is the position of the translator as cultural mediator? A panel of distinguished scholars explore the significance of translation, its impact on ...
Nuclear weapons: stigmatise, prohibit, eliminate
30 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A forum with Tim Wright, Asia-Pacific director of ICAN (International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons), winner of the 2017 Nobel Peace Prize for i...
Gideon Levy: The Israelis and the Occupation
29 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Gideon Levy is an Israeli journalist, writing opinion pieces and a weekly column for the newspaper Haaretz often focusing on the Israeli occupation of...
The Chaser at USyd 2017: El Chigüire Bipolar on fake news and satire
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The makers of Venezuela's leading satirical news site El Chigüire Bipolar discuss the politics of satire with the makers of Australia’s in no way l...
Inside the Plaster: scanning the victims of Pompeii (Season 2017)
28 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The way Pompeii was covered by the eruption material ejected by Mt Vesuvius in 79 CE has made it possible to reveal the forms of organic remains prese...
Digital Rights: what are they, and why do we need them?
27 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Panel discussion & Launch – The University of Sydney’s 2017 Digital Rights report A panel of leading experts looks under the hood of digital righ...
The Transformational Impact of Genomics on Medicine and the Healthcare System
21 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Soon individual genome sequences will be a standard part of health records, which will revolutionise biomedical discovery, personal healthcare, and he...
Truth, Evidence, and Reason: who can we believe?
20 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The international panellists who are at the forefront of current debate on rational discourse and the post-truth crisis, dissect the current state of ...
Which Comes First: overeating or obesity?
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Conventional treatment for obesity assumes that all calories are alike, and that to lose weight one must simply “eat less and move more.” However,...
Rediscovering Elizabeth Harrower
14 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Elizabeth Harrower’s writing has engaged and challenged her readers since she began publishing in the late 1950s. Her work is concerned with the mor...
Water, Energy, Food and Conflict: regulation and security in the Indian Subcontinent
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Water, energy and food security are fundamental strategic challenges for India and its neighbours. In this Sydney Ideas conversation Professor Brahma ...
Sleep: the new health frontier
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A recent report by Deloitte Access Economics found that some 40% of Australians experience some form of inadequate sleep. Sleep disorders, such as obs...
The 19th Party Congress: what will Xi Jinping use his power for?
08 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The just-held 19th National Congress of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) has conferred President Xi Jinping with unprecedented authority. He is now t...
A moment or a movement? Black Lives Matter and the future of US race relations
03 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Protesting police brutality, mass incarceration and racial disparities in all areas of American life, Black Lives Matter has spanned two very differen...
David Cay Johnston - Trump's U$A: ways to fix a dishonest system
01 Nov 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The United States, like Australia and other countries with modern economies, gets played by multinational corporations who earn profits in their count...
Mathematical heroes and social justice
31 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
One of the best kept secrets about mathematicians is that we are often at the tip of the spear in the struggle for social/political causes. We are ins...
Unwinnable Wars: Afghanistan and the limits of western military power
26 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The 2017 Michael Hintze lecture presented by the Centre for International Security Studies At sixteen years and counting, Afghanistan is the longest ...
Learning Lessons from Europe’s Multiple Crises
26 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor of European Integration at the University of Athens, Loukas Tsoukalis looks into the reasons behind the successive crises in the EU in recen...
Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Mental Health
26 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The forum brings together expert First Nations Community and University speakers to discuss the importance of increasing awareness about mental illnes...
Australia and China: Before and Below the Nation
25 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
December 2017 marks 45 years since Australia and the People's Republic of China established formal diplomatic relations. In celebrating such anniversa...
Globalisation
25 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There is no word with more purchase in present political discourse than Globalisation. But what does it mean, and why is it so important? This panel ...
Demarchy for Better Public Policy
23 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Democracy depends on sound public opinion about the major issues of the day. Today these issues are of unprecedented complexity and difficulty, requir...
Food Choices and their Determinants: an economics perspective
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The study of food choice is at the forefront of research in economics today due to its repercussion on nutritional issues for the population and conse...
50,000 years of Australian History: a plea for interdisciplinarity
19 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How do we understand, imagine, visualise and create narratives for 50,000 years of Australian history? As commonly presented, Australia’s past seem...
Omar Musa: reflections on writing
17 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The 2017 ASAL Patron's Lecture (with special thanks to the Cultural Fund of the Copyright Agency) Malaysian-Australian author, rapper and poet from Q...
Professor Mark LeVine: Year 51. Alternative Futures for Palestine-Israel
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor of Middle Eastern History at University of California, Irvine, Mark LeVine asks us to engage in the process of thinking outside the box, and...
An Analysis of Western Images of China
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Colin Mackerras surveys how the West has viewed China over time. He notes distinct worsening over the last half decade or so, both in the Un...
Your Smartphone and You: how technology can impact our mental health
16 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Are you addicted to social media? Is this such a big deal? Or can you improve your mental health with technology? Our panel of experts from the Brai...
Authoritarianism
11 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Historians these days probably get less sleep than anyone else – kept up by the echoes of the past in the radically shifting world political landsca...
Fighting Corruption in Indonesia: current issues, challenges and prospects
10 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Indonesia’s anti-corruption commission has investigated and prosecuted many big-fish corruption cases, and has secured many dozens of convictions, i...
Future Imperfect: integration in the time of change
10 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A Sydney Ideas talk by Dr Mark Stafford Smith, Chief Coordinating Scientist – Adaptation, CSIRO. Co-presented with the Planetary Health Initiative a...
Dr Keith Devlin - Finding Fibonacci
03 Oct 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In 2001, Stanford mathematician Dr Keith Devlin, also known as ‘The Math Guy’ on NPR’s Weekend Edition, set out to research the life and legacy ...
Dean's Lecture Series: Consumer Directed Care: myths and mysteries
28 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
There are many accounts of consumer directed care (CDC )in England. Some focus on its ambitions, some on its achievements, some on its problems and so...
Reimagining Home in 21st Century
28 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Is home a closed-off and self-sufficient place, or can it be reimagined to be where we find our connections to others and the world? By exploring hom...
Alzheimer's: Where we've come from and where we're going
22 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
As part of World Alzheimer’s Day, four dementia experts from the University of Sydney’s Brain and Mind Centre share the latest research breakthrou...
Health Hacks: how to keep the mind and body sharp
20 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
‘Health hacks’ telling us how to stay young in mind and body are everywhere these days, but are they true? Can we trust their advice? In this hea...
Journalism, Resistance and Metadata
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Paul Farrell (Buzzfeed Australia), Benedetta Brevini (Senior Lecturer in Communication and Media), Julie Posetti (journalist and academic) and Gabor S...
Gatekeeping (forum at the launch of 'ab-Original' magazine)
14 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
'Gatekeeping' continues to be a rousing and provocative word with regard to Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations. Gatekeeping pertains to the vario...
Battlefields of Memory: Contested Narratives of the Gallipoli Campaign in Turkey
11 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Ayhan Aktar from Istanbul Bilgi University discusses the turning points in the Turkish process of rewriting the history of the Gallipoli Cam...
Space, Urban Conflict, and the Future of Urban Society: A Comparative View
07 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
For many years now, anthropologists and urban scholars alike have identified ‘gentrification’ as a process of class conflict in which poorer peopl...
The Physics and Philosophy of Time: Jonathan Tallant and Elay Shech
04 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Join visiting philosophers Jonathan Tallant (University of Nottingham, UK) and Elay Shech (Auburn University, USA) in a conversation with Associate Pr...
Tibor Molnar: Scientists and Philosophers ... Need to Talk!
01 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Science used to be 'natural philosophy'; but Francis Bacon and the scientific revolution of the 16th and 17th centuries saw a parting of ways. Many sc...
Feminism and Women's Political Activism in North Africa: challenges and perspectives
01 Sep 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Women’s political activism has one century of history in North Africa, a history that intersects other social movements, and that has been documente...
Dean's Lecture Series: Contact and Openness in Adoption
31 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Sydney Ideas co-presented with the Institute of Open Adoption Studies, School of Education and Social Work Join us for a panel discussion to explore ...
Wrongful Conviction and Truth
29 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
When does evidence obscure the truth? Join us for a forum on the avoidable causes of wrongful conviction. Wrongful convictions can and do happen – ...
Tools for Truth: A 2017 Storyology event
28 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Forget what you think you know about fake news. Our neighbours in Asia have been dealing with fake news, lies and propaganda for years. More recently,...
Feminism in the Age of Populism
23 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
It’s the 21st century, 100 years since Australian women were lucky enough to get the vote, and we’ve arrived at the age of Pussyriot and Pussyhats...
Hong Kong Twenty Years after the Handover: developments since 1997 and prospects for the future
22 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This forum examines developments in Hong Kong in the 20 years since it became the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region of the People's Republic of ...
An Afternoon with Glenn Greenwald
20 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Journalist Glenn Greenwald discusses his favourite subjects: power and accountability, surveillance and privacy, Trump and fake news, threats to democ...
Why we need a Universal Basic Income
16 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Karl Widerquist discusses an idea which is increasingly viewed as the only viable way of reconciling poverty relief and full employment. A Sydney Ide...
The Future of Work
15 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The World Economic Forum estimates that young people can expect to change careers at least seven times over the course of their lives, and 35 percent ...
Alice P Albright: The Global Education Opportunity Faces a Financing Challenge
10 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Alice P Albright, Chief Executive Officer of the Global Partnership for Education speaks about global education crises and how the Global Partnership ...
Dava Sobel: The Glass Universe
09 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
An exclusive Sydney Science Festival presentation by acclaimed science writer Dava Sobel. In conversation with Jessica Bloom, a young University of Sy...
Pop Up Justice. Reflecting on Relationships in the Temporary City
08 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From community gardens to pop-up cinemas, from outdoor art installations to mobile libraries, temporary urban interventions are increasingly visible i...
Australian Book Review: Meditations on Mortality, Sorrow and Lament
07 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The winners of the Australian Book Review prestigious Calibre Essay Prize this year, Michael Adams and Darius Sepehri, read extracts from their Prize-...
In Conversation with Christina Lamb
07 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Christina Lamb, a multi award-winning foreign correspondent for the UK Sunday Times in conversation with Aparna Balakumar, a final year Media and Comm...
Addiction: is it the new normal?
02 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Causes of compulsive behaviour are complex and unexpected. What are they? Our researchers reveal the mental, physical and social origins of addiction ...
New International Orders (The Thinker’s Guide to the 21st Century)
02 Aug 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Experts in law, security, and international relations consider why have cultural, religious, and national issues reappeared in the new international o...
The Films of Mohamed Al-Daradji
31 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A multi-award Iraqi film director, producer and civil activist in in conversation with Dr Lucia Sorbera from the Department of Arabic Language and Cul...
Professor Devoney Looser : The Making of Jane Austen
20 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
How did Jane Austen, a no-name author in her own day, become an international literary icon? It started long before Colin Firth’s wet-white-shirt Da...
Portraits and Place
19 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
This forum explores the shifts in assumptions, mindsets and ways of thinking that are required to achieve gender equality and how symbols, such as por...
Millennials Strike Back
12 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Millennials, those born in the final decades of the twentieth century, have come of age in an unsettled world – one that offers few clear or establi...
Dr Ruth Harley: my life and times in the trans-Tasman screen trade
07 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Our culture is our identity. It is multiple expressions of plural identities. Nobody owns it. We share it with each other. More…or less. The stories...
Fusion: the perfect energy source
06 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Fusion power is one of a very few sustainable options to replace fossil fuels as the world's primary energy source. Although the conditions for fusion...
The extraordinary life of Hanna Neumann, Australia’s first female professor of mathematics
05 Jul 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A phenomenal mathematician, Hanna Neumann achieved her success in the face of the Nazis, an imprisoned husband, and entrenched misogyny. She arrived i...
The War in Syria: abuses of human rights and the destruction of culture
27 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The civil war in Syria has entered its seventh year. With death toll estimates ranging from 220,000 to 400,000 casualties and more than 11 million civ...
Anna Greenberg: Women in politics
21 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What is the impact of Hillary Clinton's loss and will it discourage or motivate women to become more politically engaged? In conversation with Gerald...
Turning Urban: strengths and vulnerabilities of China’s collectives in the process of urbanisation
20 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What does it mean to urbanise? Are industrialisation and urbanisation two aspects of the same process? How do villages have a chance to thrive if a st...
Belkis Wille: Abuses in the Fight Against ISIS
15 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Belkis Wille is senior Iraq researcher in the Middle East and North Africa division, Human Rights Watch. She discusses the worsening situation for ci...
Yolanda Moses: Diversity, Social Justice and Inclusion in the Age of Trump
09 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Professor Yolanda Moses, Fulbright Distinguished Chair in Cultural Competence, National Centre for Cultural Competence. Based on an article ‘Confro...
Dean's Lecture Series : How can schools be relevant in the 21st century?
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The challenges that face schools are not simple but there are local, national and international models that may provide some pathways to changing scho...
The Future of the Auto Industry with Carlos Ghosn, Chairman and CEO, Renault-Nissan Alliance
08 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Carlos Ghosn, one of the world’s most influential business leaders and was the first executive to run two Fortune Global 500 companies simultaneousl...
Civil Wars: a history in ideas
06 Jun 2017
Contributed by Lukas
We think we know civil war when we see it. Yet ideas of what it is, and what it isn’t, have a long and contested history, from its fraught origins i...
What's Wrong with our Kidneys?
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
What’s wrong with our kidneys? And what we are doing about it at the University of Sydney. Professor Steve Chadban reviews the state of the nation ...
Arts and Aboriginal Australia: decolonisation or reconciliation?
31 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
In the last 50 years museums have slowly changed from exhibitions ‘about’ Indigenous peoples to exhibitions by Aboriginal and Torres Strait Island...
Susan Faludi in conversation
25 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
A Sydney Writers’ Festival event presented with the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. Susan Faludi is a Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist and th...
‘The time-travelling brain’: how we remember the past and imagine the future
16 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Associate Professor Muireann Irish, School of Psychology and Brain and Mind Centre at the University of Sydney, gives a fascinating overview of her wo...
Renaissance 2.0: the disruptive changes shaping our world and future
15 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
The extraordinary growth of the past thirty years is due to unprecedented globalisation and accelerating technological change. Connectivity has been a...
Pain: a symptom or a disease?
10 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Pain is both personal and global and despite all that we know about its origins and treatments, countless people live with chronic pain. In this heal...
Eurovision and the European Project: a political guide to the song contest
09 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
With an audience of over 180 million viewers each year, the Eurovision Song contest is one of the longest running and most watched television events i...
Associate Professor Joan Steigerwald - Alexander Von Humboldt: views of nature
03 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
From 1799 to 1804 Alexander von Humboldt made an extraordinary trip through Spanish America, a trip that resulted in a scientific and an aesthetic vis...
Professor Guy Thwaites - Bad Bugs and Bad Drugs: antimicrobial resistance in Southeast Asia
03 May 2017
Contributed by Lukas
Part of the 21st Century Medicine Lecture Series. Professor Guy Thwaites, an academic infectious diseases physician and clinical microbiologist, whos...