ANU Vision

Student Experience of Learning and Teaching

Fri, 25 May 2012 13:44:06 +1000

Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington, talks about the student experience of learning and teaching survey. Also see http://unistats.anu.edu.au/surveys/selt/

The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe: Giant Black Holes (Quasars)

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

Dr Paul Francis sheds some light on some of life's big questions in this web series - The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. In this third episode, he looks at the mysteries of Giant Black Holes. Each episode in this series explores a mystery in-depth, in an accessible and light-hearted way. Dr Francis will also be delving into some of the comments left on his previous video to answer some viewers' mysteries. If you have a universal mystery you'd like Paul to have a look at, leave it as a comment on this video. He'll be picking a few to look at throughout the series. The series builds on his video from 2010, The Greatest Unsolved Mysteries of the Universe. Dr Paul Francis is an award-winning astrophysics researcher and lecturer at The Australian National University. His research focuses on comets, galaxy formation and novel teaching methods.

Shifting the shape of Australian history - Grace Karskens

Tue, 22 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

Associate Professor Grace Karskens FAHA, School of Humanities, University of New South Wales delivers this public lecture at ANU on the 15 May 2012. The talk is entitled 'Shifting the Shape of Australian History'. For over forty years now, historians have been researching and writing about the economic, social, cultural and biological contributions and legacies of the convicts sent to Australia between 1788 and 1868, and about the key foundational developments of the early colonial period 1788-1822. Yet so many scholars who write about later periods of Australian history still routinely quarantine the convict era as irrelevant to what happened next in our nation's history. And in the popular imagination, convicts are still brutal, evil or humorous caricatures, forever shackled, faceless, helpless and hopeless. Why, in the face of the vast and growing mountain of evidence, have we still got it so wrong? What would it take for the truth to be known? And how would a true understanding of the convict legacy and the early colonial period shift the shape of Australian history as we know it? Grace Karskens teaches history in the School of Humanities at the University of New South Wales. Her research areas include Australian colonial history, urban history, cross-cultural history and urban environmental history. Grace is interested in promoting historical understandings and awareness to wide audiences and is currently a Trustee of the Historic Houses Trust of New South Wales and the Dictionary of Sydney. Her books include Inside the Rocks: The Archaeology of a Neighbourhood and the multi-award winning The Rocks: life in early Sydney. Her latest book, The Colony: A History of Early Sydney won the 2010 Prime Minister's Literary Award for non-fiction. Grace was elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities in 2010.

Ben Wellings: The politics of Great War commemoration

Fri, 18 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

Dr Ben Wellings of the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences discusses issues of national commemoration, celebration and identity with Professor Laurence van Ypersele, Department of History, Catholic University of Louvain; Dr Matthew Graves, Centre for Research on the Anglophone World (LERMA), University of Provence (Aix-Marseilles) and Professor Jim MacAuley, Co-director of the Academy for British and Irish Studies, University of Huddersfield.

Asia-Pacific future trends: episode 3

Tue, 15 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

A new partnership between ANU and Columbia University is exploring the biggest issues in the Asia-Pacific region today. In the final episode of this three-part series, scholars from the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific and Columbia's Weatherhead East Asian Institute outline how countries like Australia and the United States can prepare themselves for the Asian century. From managing China's rise to increasing equality across the world's governing institutions the challenges and opportunities presented by Asia's increasing impact on the world are many. However, for some of our commentators, the Asian century may not be so Asian after all.

Wikileaks' lawyer Jennifer Robinson in conversation with Don Anton, ANU

Mon, 07 May 2012 00:00:00 +1000

Jennifer Robinson, an ANU law graduate, is a London-based human rights lawyer, known internationally for her work as legal advisor to WikiLeaks and its editor-in-chief, Julian Assange. In this video, she talks to ANU College of Law researcher Associate Professor Don Anton about her career and experiences. Jennifer Robinson has acted in numerous high profile free speech and freedom of information cases before both the English courts and the European Court of Human Rights, advising clients such as The New York Times, Bloomberg, Associated Press, Human Rights Watch and Global Witness. Through her work with Geoffrey Robertson QC, she has provided international law advice to governments and non-governmental organisations, including investigations into crimes against humanity in Iran and the liability of the Vatican and the Pope for child sex abuse within the Catholic Church. She has also conducted international human rights and trial observation missions on behalf of the International Bar Association.

Lawrence Freedman: US Grand Strategy, lecture at ANU