The Right Hon Malcolm Fraser, AC, CH , Former Prime Minister of Australia
Mr Fraser addressed the current state of nuclear weapons acquisition and distribution and the present danger and opportunities facing the world. He covered the failures in disarmament and non-proliferation…
The Hon Stephen Smith MP , Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs
In this speech to the ANU China Institute The Hon Stephen Smith MP, Australian Minister for Foreign Affairs, spoke on the Australia-China Relationship and discussed China's importance…
Rod Quantock, Comedian, Writer and Climate Change Activist
Rod Quantock says, "If climate change doesn't scare you, then you don't get the science." Fortunately Quantock does, and when he gives you his take on the physics, chemistry, biology, geology, palaeontology,…
Professor M. Nazif Shahrani, Professor of Anthropology, Central Asian & Middle Eastern Studies, Indiana University
Shifting resources from Iraq to the so called ‘war of necessity' in Afghanistan by President Obama, while significant, is unlikely to be effective. This is largely because the fundamental assumptions…
Emeritus Professor R.G. Gregory, Professor of Economics, Research School of Social Sciences
Professor Gregory will look back and analyse employment, skill imbalances, hours worked and welfare interactions in each of the economic booms and slumps over the last four decades and…
Professor Greg Gibson, Professor of Biology and Director of the Center for Integrative Genomics Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta
This address introduces the ideas in Professor Greg Gibson's new book It Takes a Genome. The last two years have seen a revolution in genome scientists' ability to find the genes…
Richard Woolcott AC , Prime Minister’s Special Envoy for the Asia Pacific Community
In June 2008, the Australian Prime Minister, the Hon. Kevin Rudd, spoke of the need to begin a "regional debate about where we want to be in 2020". In particular, he outlined the need for an Asia Pacific…
Dr Stephen Campbell, Senior Research Fellow, National Primary Care Research and Development Centre, University of Manchester
Governments, internationally and in Australia, are increasingly encouraging team-based care in frontline health systems using various incentives. Dr Campbell will provide an overview of the impact of…
Terri Janke, Solicitor Director, Terri Janke & Company
In the past 20 years Indigenous Australians have called for greater recognition of Indigenous cultural and intellectual property rights. The intellectual property system doesn't acknowledge Indigenous…
Dr Kurt Stange, Professor of Family Medicine, Epidemiology & Biostatistics, Oncology and Sociology, Case Western Reserve University, Cleveland
Commonwealth Government needs to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of Australia's health care system. Primary health care provides the first point of contact for patients and is touted as the…
Professor Stanley Ulijaszek, Professor of Human Ecology & Director, Unit for Biocultural Variation & Obesity, University of Oxford
Obesity has increased dramatically across the world, and there is currently no solution to its control. While obesity is easily understood as the positive imbalance of energy intake and…
Professor Simon Conway Morris, Professor of Evolutionary Palaeobiology, Department of Earth Sciences, University of Cambridge
Orthodox neo-Darwinism very much emphasises the random and contingent. Re-run the tape of life, as Steven Jay Gould famously observed, and the outcomes would be utterly different. Terrestrial…
-75pxx98.jpg "Professor Terence Tao")
Professor Terence Tao, Professor of Mathematics, University of California, Los Angeles
"God may not play dice with the universe, but something strange is going on with the prime numbers" - Paul Erdos The prime numbers are a fascinating blend of both structure…
Professor Ross Garnaut AO, Distinguished Professor, The Australian National University
Professor Ross Garnaut presented the final report of the Garnaut Climate Change Review to Prime Minister Kevin Rudd on 30 September 2008, the morning of the largest ever one day…
David Malouf , Author
This lecture was give at the official launch of the new ANU Bachelor of Classical Studies and the Classics Endowment.
John Ashton, Special Representative for Climate Change, The United Kingdom’s Foreign and Commonwealth Office
John Ashton, Special Representative for Climate Change at the United Kingdom's Foreign and Commonwealth Office presented a public lecture called, Coal: The Elephant in the Room
Professor Graeme Davison, Sir John Monash Distinguished Professor, Monash University
Fifty years after its publication Russel Ward's book The Australian Legend remains the classic account of our national origins. In tracing Australia's national ethos to the folksongs…
Bruce Haigh, Political Commentator and Former Diplomat
Bruce Haigh argues that Australian foreign policy has been, and remains, inept in advancing Australia's national interest. Given the limited independence of Australia's Foreign Minister,…
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister of Australia
The Hon Kevin Rudd MP, Prime Minister of Australia, gave the 2009 Burgmann College Annual Lecture.
Emeritus Professor Ian Ferguson , Forest & Ecosystem Science, University of Melbourne
The sustainability of the Ash forests of Victoria is contentious for a number of reasons, not least because of the pressures of population and economic growth, and climate change on their diverse uses.…
Host: Dr Richard Denniss, Executive Director
Indigenous Australians residing in communities in regional and remote Australia are among Australia's most disadvantaged partly because of limited formal economic opportunity. In these…
Emeritus Professor Paik Nak-chung , Seoul National University, Republic of Korea
The partition of the Korean peninsula has since the end of the Korean War solidified into a ‘division system' encompassing two otherwise contrastive societies. This notion enables an important…
Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy, Department of Archaeology, University of Durham, UK
Aspects of Australian archaeology have had widespread repercussions upon archaeology beyond the Antipodes. In this talk Professor Peter Rowley-Conwy explored a series of ways in which Antipodean…
Professor Hugh White, Adjunct Professor Peter Bailey, Dr Jane Golley and Professor Geremie Barmé, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and ANU College of Law
The arrest of Rio Tinto executive Stern Hu, and more recently China's cancellation of a ministerial visit over Canberra's decision to grant a visa to Uighur figurehead Rebiya Kadeer has put Australia-China…
Dr David Prosser, Director, SPARC Europe
The internet is having a profound impact on the 300-year-old model of scholarly communication. New technologies allow for new modes of interaction between researchers, and a wider audience of administrators,…
Professor Geoffrey Sayre-McCord, Morehead Alumni Distinguished Professor and Department Chair, Department of Philosophy, University of North Carolina
Adam Smith offers a wonderfully lucid argument for thinking that people can legitimately be praised or blamed only on the basis of the agent's "intention or affection of the heart" and not on the actual…
Professor Debra Humphris, Pro Vice-Chancellor of Education & Professor of Health Care Development, University of Southampton, United Kingdom
Research findings and government reports indicate Australia's primary health care workforce is facing significant challenges and is lagging behind in its use of teamwork approaches. The National Health…
Professor Reinhard Genzel, Max-Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics, Germany and Department of Physics, University of California, Berkeley
Evidence has been accumulating for several decades that many galaxies harbor central mass concentrations that may be in the form of black holes with masses between a few million to a few billion time…
-75pxx50.JPG "Professor Amin Saikal")
Professor Amin Saikal, Professor of Political Science and Director of the Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies
The Islamic government of oil-rich Iran is faced with its worst legitimacy crisis since the Iranian revolution that toppled the Shah's pro-Western monarchy and replaced it with an Islamic regime thirty…
Professor Dale Henderson, Visiting Professor of Economics, Georgetown University
The lecture comprised a description and an analysis of (some aspects of) the current financial crisis. The crisis is viewed as a "financial perfect storm" resulting from a combination of developments…
Virginia Haussegger, Julie Posetti and Dr Shakira Hussein
A public debate hosted by The Australian National University and The Canberra Times.
Muslim women's dress codes have come into the political spotlight in both Muslim-majority…
Professor Ned Block, Silver Professor of Philosophy, Psychology and Neural Science, Department of Philosophy, New York University
There are good reasons for thinking that the physical basis of cognition can be reasonably taken to extend outside the brain to the body and the world. But not so for consciousness. This…
Professor W. Graham Richards, Head of the Centre for Computational Drug Discovery, Oxford University
One of the few attractive ways of escaping the current economic depression is to create new companies and new industries. Scientific research provides perhaps the best starting point. Just how this…
His Royal Highness Prince Turki AlFaisal, Chairman of the Board, The King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies Riyadh
HRH Prince Turki AlFaisal is Chairman of the Board of the King Faisal Centre for Research and Islamic Studies in Riyadh. He is one of Saudi Arabia's leading intellectuals, with a very rich record…
Professor Mark R. Rosenzweig, Frank Altschul Professor of International Economics and Director of the Economic Growth Center, Yale University
This lecture examined the growing phenomenon of international skilled migration with particular attention to its impact on developing countries. A framework was developed for understanding the…
Dr David Kilcullen, Counterterrorism Strategist
In the first few years of the post-9/11 era, the established models for fighting ‘small wars' proved distressingly ineffective against resilient insurgencies in Iraq and Afghanistan.…
Professor Timothy C. Beers, University Distinguished Professor of Astronomy, Michigan State University
Human beings are, by nature, curious about their beginnings. Often, such questions of "how we came to be" are confined to the origins of modern society, or the development of human beings as a species.…
George Friedman, Founder and Chief Intelligence Officer of STRATFOR
In his book The Next 100 Years, George Friedman offers a lucid, highly readable forecast of the changes we can expect around the world during the twenty-first century. He explains where and why future…
Professor Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU
This year's Defence White Paper is more than a shopping list for the military. Behind the force priorities and budget estimates lie key judgments about the kind of regional we expect to live in,…
Dr Andrew Glikson, ANU School of Archaeology and Anthropology and Research School of Earth Science
The evolution of Australopithecines and subsequently the Genus Homo from about 4.5 million years ago was intimately related to an overall cooling trend associated with orbital forcing…
Commissioner Andris Piebalgs, European Commissioner for Energy
The world faces monumental challenges of ensuring energy supply can meet ever growing needs, while urgently reducing greenhouse gas emissions. The current course we are on will see global energy demand…
Dr Thomas E. Mann, W. Averell Harriman Chair and Senior Fellow in Governance Studies at The Brookings Institution
Thomas Mann examined President Obama's transition to governing and his first months in office. Particular attention was paid to the organization and staffing of his administration and the setting of…
Professor Stuart Harris, Dr Robert F. Miller and Dr Kirill Nourzhanov, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies and Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies
Speaking shortly after his election as President of the Russian Federation in 2008, Dmitry Medvedev highlighted his priorities in office: to maintain economic stability, to strengthen freedoms, to promote…
Professor Michael Good AO, Director of The Queensland Institute for Medical Research
Learning how to harness the power of the immune system to combat infectious killers has been one of the most dramatic developments in the history of medicine. Eradication of smallpox and the near…
Professor Daniel G. Nocera, Henry Dreyfus Professor of Energy, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA
The supply of secure, clean, sustainable energy is arguably the most important scientific and technical challenge facing humanity in the 21st century. Rising living standards of a growing world population…
Dr Peter Dowling, Heritage Officer, ACT National Trust, Canberra
During several visits to the Anzac Battlefield at Gallipoli, Turkey, since 2003, Dr Peter Dowling has located human remains exposed in areas of high tourist activity laying on road banks and verges…
Dr Guy Pearse, Environmental Advocate & Author
In this lecture Dr Guy Pearse will spoke about the mindset that sees Australia's greatest asset as its mineral and energy resources - coal especially, asking how has this distorted our national…
H.E. Dr Seyed Mohammad Khatami, Former President of the Islamic Republic of Iran
Our interdependent world creates both new opportunities and new challenges. The gravest danger today is insecurity, which has taken on global proportions. In order to deal with the threat…
Professor Thomas Lemieux, Professor of Economics, University of British Columbia
Wage inequality has been increasing is most industrialised countries over the last two or three decades. There are, nonetheless, major differences across countries in terms of the timing and magnitude…
Professor Jeffrey Williamson, Harvard University and the University of Wisconsin
A secular decline in emigration rates from the Third World since the 1990s has gone unnoticed. The recent rise in unemployment in high-wage countries has accelerated the secular decline. These trends…
The Honourable Stephen Smith, MP, Minister for Foreign Affairs
The Minister for Foreign Affairs discusses where the Australian Government is taking a relationship that Prime Minister Aso recently described as having reached the most productive time in its…
Hugh White, Professor of Strategic Studies and Head of the Strategic and Defence Studies Centre
We often behave as if National Security is too important to think clearly about. Some risks are ignored, while others are exaggerated. Policies are adopted to meet threats without any clear…
Professor Steven T. Katz, Director Elie Wiesel Center for Judaic Studies, Boston University and Alvin & Shirley Slater Chair in Jewish & Holocaust Studies
This lecture covered the essential features of medieval Christian antisemitism and the very different features of modern racial antisemitism, culminating in Nazi antisemitism. It concluded with…
Professor Marc Mangel, University of California, Santa Cruz
One of the great challenges of this century is to answer the question: How
do we bring first class basic science to bear on important applied
problems? Although the path is not completely…
Emily Maguire, Novelist, Essayist and Commentator
Many of us born after the success of the 1970s women's liberation movement were raised to think of ourselves as 'people not genders'. We grew up believing that being female would not affect our opportunities…
Dr Martin Parkinson, Secretary, Department of Climate Change
The presentation focuses on three key questions on climate change: what set of policies are desirable? What are the impacts of policy action, and is global action achievable?
The first question…
Andrew Macintosh, Associate Director, ANU Centre for Climate Law and Policy
On Friday, 5 September 2008, Professor Ross Garnaut released his much awaited supplementary draft report on targets and trajectories. The report argues that Australia's mid- and long-term targets should…
Dr Alan Stern, Principal investigator, New Horizons Pluto-Kuiper Belt mission, NASA
New Horizons is the first scientific investigation to obtain a close look at Pluto and its moon Charon. Scientists hope to find answers to basic questions about the surface properties, geology, interior…
Dr Bruce Jenks, Assistant Secretary General of the UNDP and Director of the Bureau for Resources and Strategic Partnerships
Graduate students from The Australian National University have greater access to show their skills on the world stage now The United Nations Development Program (UNDP) and ANU have signed…
Professor Ian Chubb AC, Dr Henry Reece and Dr Bruce Moore
Speaking Our Language: The Story of Australian English was launched at ANU on 9 October 2008. The book is the first of its kind to trace the development of the Australian accent and the Australian…
Deputy Chief Minister Katy Gallagher and Deputy Leader of the Opposition Brendan Smyth
This forum is the second of three public forums hosted by The Australian National University and The Canberra Times. The three forums pit 2008 ACT Election candidates…
H.E. Dr. Kim Woo-sang, Ambassador of the Republic of Korea
This lecture starts by briefly defining the middle power and its role in the regional system. The security environment that the Korean peninsula is facing is later introduced including the…
Frank Pangallo and Richard J Mulcahy
This forum is the first of three public forums hosted by The Australian National University and The Canberra Times. The three forums pit 2008 ACT Election candidates against…
Dr Maggie Brady and Professor Robin Room, The Australian National university and The University of Melbourne
This public lecture challenges some of the common beliefs that surround Indigenous Australians and the history of 'grog', by discussing the findings of the newly released publication First Taste:…
Andaleeb Akhand, Amanda Alford, Hae-Young (Connie) Chong, Kirill Talanine, Tamie Balaga, Thomas Conyers, Contestants in the 2008 Lions Oratory Competition
The 14th Annual Lions Oratory Competition saw selected ANU students from across the University present eight minute orations to convince the judges and the audience that they deserved to win the ANU…
Michael Piggott, University Archivist at the University of Melbourne
Are archivists complicit in helping the victors write history, privileging some voices and silencing others? Are they alchemists transforming ‘turds and sticks' into the gold of societal heritage?…
Ms Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science & Environment and Director of the Society for Environmental Communications
"Why Environmentalism Needs Equity: Learning from the environmentalism of the poor to build our common future". Ms Sunita Narain, Director of the Centre for Science & Environment; Director…
Dr Jim Fanson, Kepler Project Manager, NASA Jet Propulsion
Dr Fanson speaks about the Kepler project, NASA's first mission capable of discovering Earth-size planets orbiting other stars in our galaxy. Scheduled for launch in early 2009, Kepler seeks to answer…
Dr Clinton Fernandes , Senior Lecturer in Strategic Studies, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, UNSW, ADFA
Dr Fernandes provides a critical evaluation of what is often portrayed as a noble moment in Australia's history of overseas interventions. He shows that a series of Australian strategists and policymakers…
Allan Behm
Australian security policy is increasingly irrelevant to the looming realities of the 21st century. A lack of strategic direction, a mish-mash of unconnected policies, and policy institutions…
Major General Jim Molan
The war in Iraq is as awful as any war, but that is never an excuse to wage it illegally or immorally. The only thing that will make the Iraq war worse than it is will be to ‘lose’. Major…
Mr Mike Gallagher and Professor Bruce Chapman, Chief Executive Office of Group of Eight, Professor ANU Crawford School of Economics and Government
Mr Gallagher and Professor Chapman set the scene on the Higher Education sector and how it operates in both Australia and the US, highlighting the different historical settings, funding arrangements,…
Professor Warwick McKibbin, Director of the Centre for Applied Macroeconomic Analysis, ANU College of Business and Economics
As a mechanism for controlling climate change, the Kyoto Protocol has not been a success. Over the decade from it’s signing in 1997 to the beginning of its first commitment period in 2008, greenhouse…
Dr Norman Abjorensen, School of Social Sciences, ANU
Was the federation of the six Australian colonies into a Commonwealth of Australia really such a good idea? What were the alternatives? Might there have been a better way of doing things? The hard and…
Professor Ross Garnaut, Professor of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies
Decisions on whether and how much mitigation of the risks of dangerous climate change is justified raises exceptional challenges. In this lecture Professor Garnaut discusses the issues that arise when…
Professor David Kennedy, Vice-President for International Affairs, Brown University
Warfare has become a legal institution. Law organises and disciplines the military, defines the battle-space, privileges killing the enemy, and offers a common language to debate the legitimacy of waging…
Professor Mauricio Tenorio-Trillo, University of Chicago and, Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económica, Mexico City
Mexico furnished the era of social and cultural change that started ‘right around 1910’ with its first popular revolution. By 1919 Mexico City had become a refuge for the world’s radicals.…
Emeritus Professor Ted Moore
As a pioneer in paleoceanography who has contributed to three generations of scientific ocean drilling programs, Ted Moore questions whether lessons learned from Earth's past will help us better appreciate…
Professor Michael Wesley, Professor of International Relations and Director of the Griffith Asia Institute, Griffith University
Officially we are still fighting a "War on Terror", but few people in Australia would say we are still living in an "Age of Terror". Oil prices have quadrupled, but we have not seen the same panicked…
Professor Hugh White, Head, Strategic and Defence Studies Centre, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
In this lecture, Professor White discusses the morality and ethical challenges of war, as examined by Professor Coady in his new book, Morality & Political Violence. Political violence,…
Professor Christopher C Goodnow, Director, Immunology and Genetics Division, John Curtin School of Medical Research, ANU
World Day of Immunology 2008 Public Lecture What defines us as individuals? What makes us both similar and different to other individuals, other species? These are great…
Professor R.G. Gregory
The talk looks back over the period of the Hawke, Keating and Howard governments and discusses what has been learned and what has been forgotten. It offers conjectures on likely economic outcomes…
Various speakers
In delivering an apology to the Stolen Generations the Prime Minister set a concrete target to halve the gap in infant mortality rates between Indigenous and non-Indigenous children within a decade.…
Professor Anette Reenberg
Human driven changes to the land surface have wide ranging influence on the functioning of the Earth System. The intensity of land cover change has increased rapidly over the last three hundred years,…
Hosted by Professor Ian Chubb AC
In this debate, ANU plays host to a number of influential public figures including ACT Attorney General Simon Corbell; Dr Clive Hamilton, The Australia Institute; Professor Peter Bailey, ANU; Channel…
Marian Sawer and Roslyn Dundas
Lecture One
Recipes For Revolt: What Made the Women's Movement Move?
In this lecture, Marian Sawer draws on her forthcoming history of Women's Electoral Lobby to explore…
Professor Ian Chubb, Vice-Chancellor, ANU
We now have an opportunity to reposition higher education for the future and to move away from tinkering and adjusting rather than coherently changing. While it will take some time to unstitch the knotted…
Professor Malcolm Dando, Professor, International Security, Department of Peace Sudies, University of Bradford, UK
In this lecture Professor Dando reviews international control of the biotechnology revolution, the threat of deliberate disease - from biowarfare, bioterrorism, and the possible misuse of benignly…
Colin Keating, Executive Director, Security Council Report, NY
2008 has already brought major new challenges for diplomats. The situations in Kenya and Pakistan underline the depths of the problems in Africa and elsewhere. The Security Council and UN peacekeepers…
Professor Michael Pusey, Australia & New Zealand School of Government
Has economic reform run its course? What potential remains for the resumption of nation building progress? Contrary to expectations Canberra emerges from 20 years of neo-liberalism with…
Professor Ross Garnaut, Professor of Economics, Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies, College of Asia and the Pacific
In the inaugural S.T. Lee Lecture on Asia and the Pacific Professor Garnaut asks: How the risks of climate change will interact with the 'Platinum Age' of global economic growth? What are the limits…
Professor Larry May, Professor of Philosophy, Washington University
For several thousand years, philosophers, lawyers, and theologians have developed a theory of the just war, where rules are set for deciding when a war should be fought and what tactics can be employed…
Moderated by Mark Baker, Editor, The Canberra Times, Panel: Dr Rachel Bloul, Professor Kim Rubenstein, Clive Williams
Part of a series of public debates hosted by the Australian National University and The Canberra Times. Join a diverse panel of ANU experts in a lively discussion of the major issues driving this election.
Moderated by Andrew Fraser, Political Reporter, The Canberra Times, Panel: Dr Norm Abjorensen, Professor Job Altman, Dr Daniel Connell, Dr Andrew Leigh
Part of a series of public debates hosted by The Australian National University and The Canberra Times. A diverse panel of ANU experts in a lively discussion of the major issues driving this election.…
Moderated by Kate Hannon, The Canberra Times, Panel: Professor Bob Gregory, Dr Rick Kuhn, Dr Lindy Edwards
A series of public debates hosted by the Australian National University and The Canberra Times. A diverse panel of ANU experts in a lively discussion of the major issues driving this election.…
Professor Robin Jeffrey, Dean, ANU College of Asia and the Pacific
The Sixth Annual Sir Leslie Melville Lecture Ranging over a period from the 19th century until today, this lecture examines various aspects of India’s ‘growth’…
Hosted by Jack Waterford, Editor at large, The Canberra Times
On 21 June 2007 Prime Minister John Howard and Minister for Indigenous Affairs Mal Brough declared a ‘national emergency’ in relation to child sexual abuse in the Northern Territory. In…
Hugh MacKay
Fifteen years ago social researcher Hugh Mackay wrote the bestseller Reinventing Australia , which analysed with forensic skill what was happening within Australian society. In this public…
Roger Clarke
Google is increasingly being perceived as the company that will follow IBM and Microsoft in dominating the IT industry. In this presentation, Professor Clarke will outline the many business lines that…
Professor Ann Curthoys, Manning Clarke Professor of History, ANU
In recent debates over truth and fiction in history, the Holocaust has loomed large. It is often seen to be a litmus test for historians, in terms of historical method, truth, questions of moral judgement…
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