A series of webinars created by the Hothouse at ANU, discussing the intersections between climate change, inequity, and human health. The focus is on actions that enable transformative change away from the harmful consumptogenic system to systems that promote good health, social equity and environmental wellbeing.

In this episode, Sharon Friel, Megan Arthur and Nick Frank, will discuss the problem of the global consumptogenic system that generates intersecting climate change, social inequity, and health inequity crises, while drawing on emerging work from the ARC Laureate Fellowship Planetary Health Equity Hothouse.

In beginning to unpack the consumptogenic system that incentivises the excessive production and consumption of fossil fuel-reliant goods and services they will discuss ways in which the structure of global capitalism and different capitalist growth models undermine planetary health equity. They will also present a framework for pursuing governance for planetary health equity - and new lines of research that flow from this.

The work of Australia’s intelligence and security agencies largely occurs in secret. Yet, in a democracy underpinned by the rule of law, it is essential that the workings of government are transparent and accountable. A key part of balancing this apparent conflict is to place the powers and functions of intelligence and security agencies on a statutory footing.

In Australia this began in 1956 with the first Act governing the Australian Security Intelligence Organisation (ASIO). That Act was 5 pages long. Today the laws governing the powers and functions of Australia’s six main intelligence and security agencies runs to around 1500 pages. The law in this area is complex and at times almost impenetrable. Moreover, changes in technology change the way these laws work in practice.

This presentation will provide a brief overview of the key powers and functions of Australia’s main intelligence agencies and will explore the way changing technology can affect statutory powers by looking at the history of ASIO’s power to intercept telephone services.

About the speaker

Jake Blight has been working in the field of National Security Law for over 20 years. This includes roles in the Australian Government Solicitor, as a General Counsel and as the Deputy and Acting Inspector-General of Intelligence and Security. He is currently an Associate Professor at the ANU National Security College. Jake has recently been appointed as Australia’s 5th Independent National Security Legislation Monitor – a role he will commence on 27 November 2023.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be dual-delivery.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Image of ‘top secret’ stamp by TayebMEZAHDIA on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence

In this talk, Sharon will discuss findings from the Lancet series on people, profits, and health: the commercial determinants of health.

Many commercial organisations’ practices and products are contributing to growing health problems and harming the environment, with industries that produce tobacco, alcohol, highly processed foods, and fossil fuels responsible for over a third of preventable global deaths each year. Issues of corporate power, government failure to regulate and the role of civil society in holding commercial actors to account will be explored.

About the speaker

Sharon Friel is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow, Professor of Health Equity and Director of the Planetary Health Equity Hothouse and Australian Research Centre for Health Equity (ARCHE) in RegNet, Australian National University. Her work focuses on governance of the planetary, social and commercial determinants of health inequities. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences of Australia and the Academy of Health and Medical Sciences of Australia.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Photo of processed food for sale at a local store in Gizo, Western Province, Solomon Islands by Filip Milovac from flickr, used under CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 DEED licence .

This seminar looks at the changing forms and uses of technologies of surveillance, and the implications of their application for the criminal justice system. The work stems from a commissioned chapter written with Mark Wood (Deakin University) for the forthcoming Oxford Handbook of Critical and Cultural Criminological Theory, edited by Kevin Haggerty and Lois Presser.

Through a series of theoretical reflections and case studies, it explores how surveillance is changing form as well as expanding into new spheres of public and private life. These changes are evident across the institutions of criminalization and criminal justice.

Notions of sousveillance and dataveillance are identified and explained, noting that surveillance is no longer the preserve of the visual, and that data monitoring offers new and more insidious ways of conducting surveillance.

About the speaker

Andrew Goldsmith is Matthew Flinders Distinguished Professor Emeritus of Criminology at Flinders University. His research over 40 years has focused on policing and organised crime, and more recently, cybercrime. He has a particular interest in how new technologies are influencing how crimes are committed as well as how they shape the practices of policing, courts, and prisons. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and has degrees from the University of Adelaide, Monash University, University of Toronto and the London School of Economics.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Image of surveillance camera graffiti art by Republica on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence.

Despite human rights being contested in the Pacific, all Pacific Island Forum (PIF) Member States have various normative and institutional framework that ensures their protection and promotion.

The human rights architecture at the national and regional level varies significantly with various institutional and normative gaps. At the national level, many Pacific States continue to struggle with the conceptualisation of human rights and reconciling its conflicts with culture and religion, the two dominant narratives that characterise Pacific States. This project looks at the importance of creating institutional frameworks for the protection of human rights at the national level.

It also examines the current human rights architecture at the regional (PIF) level which is weak despite the aspirations of Pacific Leaders captured in various regional frameworks including the 2009 Pacific Plan, the 2019 Framework for Pacific Regionalism and recently the 2050 Strategy for the Blue Pacific Continent calling for a region known for its ‘full observance of democratic values, the rule of law, the defence and promotion of all human rights.’ To strengthen the protection of human rights at the regional level, the region needs to add “teeth to its bark”. The time has come for the Pacific to explore the creation of institutional and normative frameworks that ensure accountability and enforceability of human rights commitments by Pacific leaders.

This seminar is Romulo’s final presentation of his doctoral candidature.

About the speaker

Romulo Nayacalevu is a Fijian lawyer who has worked in the area of human rights across the Pacific for over 15 years before deciding to do his PhD in an area that he is passionate about, strengthening human rights regimes in the Pacific. He holds a Bachelor of Laws from the University of the South Pacific, and postgraduate degrees in governance, international affairs, diplomacy and law both from USP and ANU. He took up his PhD studies in the middle of the Covid pandemic.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be dual-delivery.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Public domain image from the Young Pacific Leaders 4-6 Oct 2023 Human Rights Workshop, Apia, Samoa from US Embassy NZ flickr account.

Since September 2022 the Albanese government has looked to expand the previous government’s Agriculture Biodiversity Stewardship Market Bill 2022 into a more sophisticated and spatially far-reaching framework to financially underwrite biodiversity conservation and monitor its expected improvement.

This is a part of the new government’s response to the 2020 Samuel Review of the Environmental Protection and Biodiversity Conservation Act, found to be deficient, and the 2021 State of the Environment Report documenting ongoing biodiversity loss. In December 2022 a lengthy exposure draft of the Nature Repair Market Bill was released for comment.

In this seminar, based in part on his submission on the exposure draft, Jon explores how workable the proposed regulatory framework to ‘repair nature’ might be on First Nations titled lands that are fast expanding as the main portion of the Australia’s National Reserve System.

The proposal is modelled on the perceived success of the commodification of carbon (emissions) although carbon as property is clearly very different from biodiversity as property. The proposal to commodify nature is a radical policy departure with an eye no doubt on possible global ‘nature-related’ financial disclosures requirements currently being considered by an international Taskforce.

But if passed, will Nature Repair Market law be effective in financing biodiversity conservation and what might be its shortcomings from the perspective of First Nations landholders?

About the speaker

Jon Altman is an anthropologist, economist and policy analyst who has had a decades-long interest in development alternatives on First Nations lands that will help protect and enhance their exceptional cultural and environmental values while delivering livelihoods. He currently a non-executive director of a number of Indigenous led not-for-profit organisations including the Karrdakd Kanjdji Trust and Original Power and is an adviser to the First Nations Clean Energy Network.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

Image credit: Image of beautiful billabong with buff and pig damage in Kakadu supplied by the speaker.

While much is known about the barriers that prevent policy and governance for public health, less is known about the strategies and conditions that can enable effective public health advocacy. In this presentation Belinda Townsend presents findings from two large scale narrative reviews of advocacy strategies in the commercial determinants of health.

Belinda presents a review of 65 relevant studies that identifies 6 strategies and 4 conditions that have enabled the elevation of public health issues in domestic, regional, bilateral and global trade policymaking.

The second review applies a political science typology to 144 studies of NGO tactics in the extractive, tobacco, food, alcohol, pharmaceuticals, weapons, and asbestos domains. The analysis identify 18 different inside and outside strategies applied by NGOs to attempt to influence commercial, government and intergovernmental organisations.

This event will be delivered online via Zoom only.

Image credit: Image of “ADVOCACY” in white font against black background supplied by Julia Wee, no copyright is claimed.

Beliefs in sorcery and witchcraft and the violence they generate across the globe are often seen as remote from modern realities, and likely to gradually dwindle of their own accord.

This is a mistake on both counts. In dozens of countries across the globe - from the United Kingdom to Nigeria to Papua New Guinea - belief in magic or the supernatural still exists, and is used to explain misfortunes of various kinds, particularly death and sickness, but also unequal economic development.

These beliefs structure the lives of individuals and communities in multiple ways, sometimes leading to out-casting or violence against those accused of having used witchcraft or sorcery to cause harm.

This talk will discuss updated data from PNG and also the actions of activists across the globe to address the issue at both the level of the United Nations and through grassroots advocacy.

About the speaker

Miranda Forsyth is a Professor at RegNet. Prior to coming to ANU, she was a senior lecturer in criminal law at the law school of the University of the South Pacific, based in Port Vila, Vanuatu.

The central analytical question animating Miranda’s scholarship is how people’s diverse justice needs can best be met in contexts of multiple legal and normative orders. Her geographical focus has been primarily in the Pacific Islands region, particularly Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea.

Current research projects focussing on the Pacific include the potential of Restorative Justice for the Pacific islands region, particularly in relation to gender based violence; the promise and challenges of Community Rule-Making as regulatory innovation; and a multi-year project on overcoming sorcery accusation related violence in Papua New Guinea. Miranda is also working on the development of a new agenda for Environmental Restorative Justice in both Australia and internationally.

Miranda draws creatively upon theories and methodological approaches from the disciplines of law, anthropology and criminology to interrogate these issues, working in close partnerships with Pacific islands researchers and research institutions.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Image of newspaper headlines related to sorcery accusations, provided by Miranda Forsyth.

THIS EVENT HAS CHANGED.

This event was formerly titled ‘Safe legal pathways’ or new colonial frontiers? Grappling with the new enthusiasm in refugee policy and was to be presented by Associate Professor Matt Zagor ANU College of Law, Associate Professor and Director of the Law Reform and Social Justice program

REVISED EVENT

This paper arises from the author’s recent experience of completing an impact study of an international NGO’s pro-poor social mobility program, based in Quảng Nam province and Đà Nẵng City in central Vietnam. The Bright Scholars program is aimed at improving the life chances of scholastically talented young people from socio-economically disadvantaged families by providing a small stipend to enable them to undertake tertiary study in the city. Virtually all of the eligible students come from rural or periurban backgrounds, meaning that winning a Bright scholarship is the start of a rural-urban migration journey over a modest spatial distance, but a significant sociocultural one.

By many measures the Bright Scholars program is spectacularly successful as an intervention in the life chances of the children of chronically poor farming families, and the paper will reflect on how certain characteristics of Vietnamese rural-urban migration networks might facilitate this success, among other things. Inevitably this NGO intervention also has its limitations, and we’ll consider whether access to tertiary education alone is enough to give these young people equality within the opportunity structure of post-reform Vietnam relative to their privileged urban peers, asking what further interventions the NGO might make here.

Key concepts for this paper include social class as a geographical category, returns to education, social and cultural capital, and rural-urban networks as avenues for spatial and social mobility.

About the speaker

Dr Ashley Carruthers teaches in the School of Archaeology and Anthropology, CASS, ANU. His recent research and consulting in Vietnam has been focused on rural people in and on the edge of the city in Vietnam, and how they deploy rural-urban networks as a means of livelihood and various forms of mobility.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below
https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By Svetazi on Adobe Stock

In this presentation I will argue that in order to decolonise migration studies, scholars must not only acknowledge persisting imperial and colonial legacies, but also centre Indigenous sovereignty. This is particularly important for scholars who research about migration to settler colonial nations. Still too often First Nations are rendered invisible in migration scholarship. The complicity and implicated subjectivity of migrants in settler colonial societies, which is apparent in Indigenous and settler colonial scholarship, is still largely overlooked within migration studies. I will discuss some of the main methodological implications of centring Indigenous sovereignty in migration studies. These include: centring Indigenous perspectives, epistemologies and methodologies; recognising the entanglements of national, transnational, imperial and colonial histories; rejecting Eurocentric and Nation-centric approaches to the study of migration and mobility; avoiding any conflation of Indigenous struggles for sovereignty with white nationalism and nativism; developing community-informed and participatory approaches; decentring English and other colonial languages; and acknowledging the growing complexity and richness of contemporary identities, material realities, and decolonial struggles.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

About the speaker

Dr Francesco Ricatti is Associate Professor of Italian Studies at the Australian National University. He currently lives and works on Ngunnawal and Ngambri land. He is an historian of Italian migration to Australia, and his current research focuses on transcultural and decolonial approaches to migration studies, Australian history, and Italian transnational studies. He is a former President of Oral History Victoria, and a former Deputy Director of the Monash Migration and Inclusion Centre. His most recent book is Italians in Australia: History, Memory, Identity (Palgrave, 2018).

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below

https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By sebastianbourges on Adobe Stock

Challenges in emergency contexts, including systemic problems in the humanitarian sector, require dedicated labour to carry out efforts on the ground. Jenna focuses on crisis response in Lebanon to unpack technological and regulatory transformations in humanitarian systems.

Investigating two distinct but intertwined aid systems in the nation — digistised cash-based assistance (e-cards) and emergency response to the Beirut Port explosion — Jenna’s doctoral research answers the following question: in light of recognised critiques of humanitarian efforts, how do actors on the ground work to ensure the viability of humanitarian interventions?

Given the transnational nature of humanitarian response, her findings are informed by a multi-sited ethnography comprised of participant observations and interviews across North America, Europe, and the Middle East. By focusing on the experiences and adaptation strategies of humanitarian employees, refugees, and impoverished residents, she reveals forms of overlooked labour and “repair work” (Steve Jackson, 2014) that are necessary to overcome breakdown in aid interventions.

She draws upon regulatory governance, feminist techno-science, and critical humanitarianism literatures to highlight the relationship between social inequality, regulation, and digitised “solutions” in humanitarian reform and aid delivery.

This seminar is Jenna’s final presentation of her doctoral candidature.

About the speaker

Jenna Imad Harb is a PhD candidate and member of the Justice and Technoscience Lab at the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies and Business, as well as a Master’s degree in Sociology—both from the University of Waterloo.

Jenna’s research examines the intersections of regulation, digital technologies, and crisis response, with particular focus on social justice and the experiences of marginalised groups. She has published in areas of protest surveillance, policing technologies, anti-sexual violence technologies and data protection, and financialised welfare surveillance.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Mural art in Lebanon photographed and supplied by Jenna Harb.

The governance of food systems in Australia is largely fragmented, and tends to focus on singular issues such as exports, food safety, or nutrition at a national level. Less attention is paid to food systems from a holistic perspective, and how local governments are involved. In this presentation, Amy Carrad will discuss what the findings of an ARC Discovery Grant project tell us about the role Australian local governments are playing in food system governance.

About the speaker

Amy Carrad is a researcher with a background in public health, health promotion, and organisational change. She is currently a Research Fellow within RegNet, working on the NHMRC Ideas Project ‘Evaluating Systems Change for Health Equity: A Case Study of Australia’s COVID-19 Policy Response’. Prior to joining RegNet, Amy was working on an ARC funded project exploring the role of Australian local governments and civil society organisations in food system governance. She was also the lead research assistant on a large systematic literature review on nutrition labelling policy for the World Health Organization’s Nutrition Guidance Expert Advisory Group.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

Image credit: Photo of waste and recycling bins on suburban Sydney street by Anders Vindegg on flickr under CC BY-NC-SA 2.0 licence.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

About the speakers

Associate Professor Kate Ogg ANU College of Law, Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Higher Degree Research)

Dr Jessica Hambly Senior Lecturer at the ANU College of Law, and Co-Director of the Law Reform and Social Justice program

Associate Professor Matt Zagor ANU College of Law, Associate Professor and Director of the Law Reform and Social Justice program

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Image credit: Tierney on Adobe Stock

The ideas and institutions that we deploy to “save nature” are important because they shape the socio-natural contours of our world.

In her new book Corporate nature: an insider’s ethnography of global conservation, Sarah Milne raises questions about the kind of world that emerges from mainstream green intervention – as seen in the work of big international NGOs, which have significant influence over nature conservation in the global south.

Sarah’s book draws on a decade of ethnographic observation and practical experience with Conservation International, and its operations in Cambodia. She reveals how big international NGOs struggle in the face of complexity; and how neat policy ideas like Payments for Ecosystem Services (PES) are transformed on the ground, often with perverse side-effects. New insights emerge about the power and ethics of global conservation in practice.

Three respondents - Jenson Sass, Rosie Cooney and Sango Mahanty - will reflect on the book in relation to their own work on corporate power, global conservation, and Cambodian resource frontiers respectively.

About the author

Dr Sarah Milne is a Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy, College of Asia and the Pacific. She gained her PhD in Geography from the University of Cambridge, and has over twenty years’ experience with conservation projects - as a practitioner, scholar and advocate. Her book Corporate nature: an insider’s ethnography of global conservation was published by the University of Arizona Press in late 2022.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

Image credit: Book cover from The University of Arizona Press website.

Kate will present research being undertaken for her ARC project on refugee community sponsorship (Discovery Project with Professor Susan Kneebone and Dr Anthea Vogl). The project is the first large-scale study of community or private sponsorship of refugees in Australia and includes comparisons with Canada, UK, Ireland and New Zealand. There are myriad models of refugee community sponsorship but most involve citizen groups funding and assisting with refugee resettlement. While Canada has had such programs for over 40 years and Australia’s first program started in 1979, until very recently there has been minimal academic literature on community sponsorship. Early scholarship celebrated the successes of Canadian programs and aimed to export Canadian sponsorship models to other countries. However, scholars are now raising more critical questions about the role and practice of community sponsorship.

Kate, Susan and Anthea’s project will investigate how notions of citizenship, community and sanctuary are conceptualised and mobilised by different community sponsorship actors and critically evaluate community sponsorship’s role nationally (against the background of Australia’s infamous refugee policies) and globally in the context of growing displacement and Global North/South inequities in refugee responsibility. Kate is particularly interested in exploring sponsors’ understandings and enactments of ‘sanctuary’.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

About the speaker

Associate Professor Kate Ogg has been at the ANU since 2013. She completed her PhD at RegNet and is now an Associate Professor and Associate Dean (Higher Degree Research) at the ANU College of Law. Her areas of research are refugee law, forced migration and displacement, human rights law (with a focus on human mobility), litigation, and feminist legal theory and method. Kate is the author of Protection from Refuge: From Refugee Rights to Migration Management (Cambridge University Press, 2022). The monograph is the first global and comparative examination of the role courts play in refugee journeys.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below

https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By Dedraw Studio on Adobe Stock

Canada was one four countries which voted against adoption of the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (UNDRIP) by the United Nations General Assembly on 13 September 2007.

However, Indigenous Peoples’ leadership and diplomacy successfully changed Canada’s position. In 2019, the Canadian province of British Columbia passed legislation to incorporate UNDRIP into its domestic law.

Indigenous diplomacy is not limited to global governance and state mechanisms. It is also important for academic institutions such as UBC, where Sheryl has championed incorporation of UNDRIP into its strategic plan.

This seminar aims to share these experiences and the lessons learned, contributing to the context of Australia, Asia Pacific countries and global governance for Indigenous Peoples.

About the speaker

Sheryl Lightfoot is a Professor in Political Science of the University of British Columbia (UBC) and Canada Research Chair in Global Indigenous Rights and Politics. She was a Senior Advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs and led implementation of the 2020 Indigenous Strategic Plan across UBC.

As one of the world’s experts in global Indigenous politics, Sheryl specializes in complex questions of Indigenous Peoples’ rights and how they are claimed and negotiated. In 2021 she became the first Indigenous Canadian woman appointed to the United Nations Expert Mechanism on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples (EMRIP) and this year became EMRIP Chair.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

No registration is required for in-person attendance for this event as ANU and ACT Health no longer require registration for the purposes of contact tracing.

This seminar presentation will be a hybrid presentation. It will not be recorded.

Note: unfortunately, a larger capacity venue was unable to be secured for this presentation. It is thus being delivered in hybrid format so it can be accessed online if the venue reaches maximum capacity.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Former UBC President Prof. Santa J. Ono, Dr. Sheryl Lightfoot, Senior Advisor to the President on Indigenous Affairs, and Assembly of First Nations National Chief Perry Bellegarde | UBC (2020).

The humanitarian crisis on the EU-Belarus border has been unfolding since mid-2021, mostly out of public sight. Increasingly anxious about the raising numbers of people dying on the forested border, the EU came to realize that “this is the moment now for a European migration management policy” to gain speed (Ursula von der Leyen). In the meantime, Poland, Lithuania, and Latvia declared a state of emergency, accusing Belarussian President Lukashenko of using migrants as weapons for a hybrid war aimed to threaten the security of the EU.

In June 2022, Poland completed a 5.5-metre-high steel wall on a 186-kilometre border to deter migrants entering from Belarus. Yet, the wall has neither stopped migrants nor prevented unnecessary deaths, illegal pushbacks or violence. Today, the tough measures employed at the border continue to be seen, on the one hand, as flagrant violation of human rights, and on the other hand, as necessary and unavoidable. And while Europe can indeed step up to a challenge – as it’s response to millions of Ukrainians fleeing Russia’s invasion has shown – it can also, and at the same time, rationalize the crisis and accept the normalization of violence.

This event is presented in person and online. Please see Zoom details below.

About the speaker

Dr Katarzyna K Williams is Deputy Director of the ANU Centre for European Studies. Her research focuses on migrant cultures and diaspora, particularly life narratives, issues of displacement and transcultural experience. She is also interested in memory studies, memorialization and the politics of memory.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below:
https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By Marcin on Adobe Stock

The perspectives of ethnic-minority and migrant-background women are pivotal to understanding the history of multiculturalism as an access and equity issue. This paper draws on oral histories conducted with welfare advocates and migrant women in Sydney and Melbourne, in combination with archival records and government funded reports on migrant industrial workers and welfare concerns from the 1970s to the 1990s.

The research is part of a broader project that historicises the development of welfare and social service delivery to culturally and linguistically diverse communities in Australia, beginning with the perspectives of grassroots advocates and community welfare workers in the 1970s. In that economic and social context, they were concerned with: the availability of culturally appropriate and accessible occupation health and safety measures; workplace entitlements for migrant workers and their families (including workplace rehabilitation and compensation); and broader health (including mental health) care access for non-English-speaking background communities.

The issues they tackled were complex and, in many ways, remain prescient nearly fifty years since the introduction of a national multicultural policy, and state multicultural bureaucracies.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

About the Speaker

Dr Alexandra Dellios is a historian and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies at the Australian National University. She teaches cultural heritage management and oral history, and has published on popular representations of multiculturalism; immigration centres and hostels; the intersections of migrant, industrial and labour heritage; migrant public history practices.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below
https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09 (Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: sewing machine by Kohei Take purchased from Adobe Stock 467633988

An estimated 30,000 asylum seekers have been living for up to ten years under conditions of prolonged uncertainty in Australia, due to freezes and other delays in visa processing. In 2022 and 2023, many began to receive the welcome news that they were to be granted permanent visas. Thus, at short notice, people who had been living under conditions of prolonged precarity found that abiding fears around safety and protection could be set aside, and they were able to access the full range of social protections and supports available to other permanent residents.

This talk addresses the combined consequences of long-term physical and ontological insecurity for former asylum seekers in Australia. Drawing on clinical and social work among asylum seekers, I argue that many will experience new forms of precarity and ontological insecurity after the grant of permanent visa.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below

About the speaker

Christine Phillips is Professor of Social Foundations of Medicine at the School of Medicine and Psychology, College of Health and Medicine. For over two decades she has been Medical Director of Companion House Medical Service, the ACT’s refugee health service, and was a co-founder of the national Refugee Health Network of Australia. She has worked as a consultant with the Australian Government, UNHCR and the World Health Organization over resettlement policies.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below

https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09 (Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Image credit: svetazi on Adobe Stock

This research seeks to understand the extent that migrant characteristics (such as age, gender, education and English language skills, geographic location, permanent visa category, temporary visa history and country of birth) can predict the economic outcomes or Australian permanent migrants. This analysis is conducted using data from the Multi-Agency Data Integration Project (MADIP).

The research uses three main techniques: Descriptive analysis that visually presents the aggregate economic outcomes of migrants in the years following the grant of a permanent visa. ‘Mincer’ regressions that estimate the marginal impact of covariates on migrant outcomes. These regressions can answer questions such as “If other factors were held equal, how much more does a migrant with a university degree earn compared to one that has not completed high school?”

Oaxaca-Blinder analysis that decomposes the difference in economic outcomes between groups of migrants into components that can be explained by different observable characteristics and unobservable and unexplained components. These decompositions can answer questions such as “how much of the higher income level of Employer Sponsored Migrants can be explained by higher levels of education or English language skills?” and “How much more do Employer Sponsored migrants earn compared to other migrants that can’t be explained by observable characteristics?”

This presentation will also briefly cover two extensions. The first compares the determinants of migrants’ outcomes with similar analysis for the non-migrant population. The second examines how well nominated income predicts the incomes of Employer Sponsored migrants and the extent to which migrants with higher levels of nominated income are explained through observable characteristics.

This event is presented in person and online. Please see Zoom details below.

About the speakers

Professor Robert Breunig, is the director of the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy. From 2015 to 2016 he was the Director of the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Dr Peter Varela is a Research Fellow at the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute with a focus on the economics of migration and tax policy. Prior to joining the TTPI, Peter has worked at the Australian Treasury, the Australian Productivity Commission and the Centre for International Economics.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below:
https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By Lightfield Studios on Adobe Stock

In our paper, we present a methodology to infer the age and sex profiles of net migration. This research supports the United Nations Population Division’s estimation and population projection procedures for producing the World Population Prospects (WPP). Age and sex profiles of net migration are required as inputs into demographic accounting models for population estimation and projection. However, most countries in the world do not directly measure migration and residual methods for inferring the patterns have proven inadequate, due to errors in the measures of populations, births and deaths.

As net migration does not exhibit regularities across age and sex, we developed a strategy to first estimate flows of immigration and emigration by age and sex, which do exhibit regularities. Differences from these estimates are then calculated to obtain net international migration by age and sex. Based on empirical tests, using data from Sweden, South Korea, Australia, Canada and New Zealand, the methodology shows great promise for overcoming a major data limitation countries around the world. Further, we apply the model to countries where the age and sex patterns of net migration are unknown and show the results. The paper ends with a discussion of next steps and further extensions.

This event is presented in person and online. Zoom details below.

Speaker
James Raymer is a Professor of Demography at the Australian National University. His research focuses on developing innovative methodologies and analytical frameworks to study migration processes. His current research focuses on estimating international migration flows in the Asia Pacific region and small area population projections in Australia. For the past four years, he has been an active participant in the United Nations’ Expert Group on Migration Statistics.

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

In this presentation Annika will engage with the question of what role migration researchers might play in creating a more nuanced understanding of the backlash against refugees and migrants following the summer of displacements 2015 in Europe. Annika will suggest that due to its closeness to people’s everyday processes of meaning-making, ethnographic research can play a crucial role in understanding the xenophobic, anti-cosmopolitan and illiberal sentiments that are currently sweeping through European societies. This, however, means that migration scholars need to overcome their traditional reluctance of studying groups they cannot sympathise with.

By reflecting on her previous and on-going research Annika will show why, after a decade of studying refugees’ struggles for emplacement in Western host societies, she decided to “change sides” and study the experiences of people who believe that the influx of refugees is a threat to their values and ways of life. Annika will argue that if we are to understand the current backlash against liberal and cosmopolitan ideas we need to pay attention to genealogies of exclusionary practices, or “cultures of unwelcome”.

This event is presented in person and online. Please see Zoom details below.

About the speaker

Dr Annika Lems is a senior lecturer in anthropology at the School of Archaeology & Anthropology at the Australian National University. Her work broadly concerns the ways people experience, negotiate and actively create place attachments in an age of rapid global transformations. This has included research on Somali refugees’ placemaking practices in Melbourne, unaccompanied refugee minors navigating the Swiss asylum landscape and exclusionary ideas of belonging to place in the Austrian Alps. She has published extensively, including two monographs: Being-Here: Placemaking in a World of Movement (Berghahn, 2018) and Frontiers of Belonging: The Education of Unaccompanied Refugee Youth (Indiana University Press, 2022).

This series is spearheaded by the ANU Migration Hub hosted at RegNet, in collaboration with the School of Archaeology and Anthropology.

For online attendance, see Zoom details below:
https://anu.zoom.us/j/86557701787?pwd=cnIreVB5eG8vNmlibWtHMjRKaEtIZz09
(Meeting ID: 865 5770 1787. Password: 836061)

Photo credit: By adzicnatasa on Adobe Stock

Policy change does not exist in a vacuum. This research explores the role of a network of actors in locking down the financing mechanisms in the health system in Australia. The aim is to gain a better understanding of the influence of the network of policy actors (advocates, lobbyists) on the health care system.

Structural changes have been implemented in other countries, however, attempts to alter the financing rules that would incentivise greater integration in Australia have not been successful. This research analyses three major attempts to vertically integrate healthcare, reduce fragmentation and increase the efficiency of the system through altering what funders can pay and how they can pay for it.

Based on a unique application of the concepts of path dependency, resource dependency and network methods, this research found that actors formed coalitions that established two broad roles: those attempting to alter the payment and access rules, or those attempting to cement them. Across the three attempts, the structure of the network altered, however key players remained in control of their coalition. The coalition that prevented change consistently demonstrated an ability to control the system, demonstrating that regulation of the rules sat outside government.

Successive governments appear to have been constrained from reforming the financing rules and seem to have lost interest in major reforms in this space. This is unfortunate for consumers who have indicated that they want an integrated system but did not coalesce as one group to find a voice to make a clear ‘ask’ of any government on how this could be achieved.

To effect policy change the research suggests that a number of criteria should be present:

a. develop a set of policies that can clearly fund the cost of the change for medical providers, funders and consumers;

b. ensure consumers are supported to find a voice to develop a position during the debate;

c. and either have the AMA, or a very strong coalition supporting.

This is Jodette’s final presentation of her doctoral candidature.

About the speaker

Jodette Katz has over 25 years’ experience in both the public and non-government sectors. She was previously the CEO of Parkinson’s Australia and is now currently advising the Government on funding strategies for the Aged Care system. She has extensive knowledge and practical skills in policy development and analysis, advocacy, strategic communications planning, political relations and social media. She is passionate about improving health outcomes in Australia and globally.

Jodette has a Master of Public Health (Research) from the Australian National University.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Illustration of stylized human figures in networks, by opensource.com from flickr, (CC BY-SA 2.0) licence.

Neurotechnologies are a set of technologies which can interact with the brain, spine, or peripheral nerves in various ways. Over about the last five years, ethical and policy issues around neurotechnologies have become the subject of significant global discussions, even in the absence of an organised social movement or acute scandal.

Drawing on the nodal governance and ecology literatures, this presentation explores the social and political dynamics involved in opening a ‘de novo’ space of global governance around neurotechnologies. In doing so, preliminary findings will be reported from data collected from interviews, participant observation, and archival research.

This seminar is Walter’s mid-term doctoral candidature presentation.

About the speaker

Walter G. Johnson is a PhD scholar at RegNet. Prior to joining RegNet, he completed a JD and research fellowship at Arizona State University focusing on analysing the ethical, social, and legal aspects of emerging technologies including mitochondrial donation.

Walter’s research examines the law, policy, and politics of governing current and emerging technologies with the overarching goal of promoting health, safety, and equity. His current thesis project explores the sociolegal and political dynamics of the emerging system of global governance forming around neurotechnologies.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation is dual-delivery. Please register if you wish to attend by Zoom.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Abstract illustration of human brain, face and radiating waves by geralt on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence.

In November 2019, Canberra officially committed to becoming a “restorative city”. The idea of a restorative city emerged in the 2000s and has since gained momentum around the world. This seminar introduces the concept of a restorative city, outlines its potential for promoting social cohesion, and unpacks some of the challenges of realising a restorative city vision.

About the speaker

Dr Janet Hope graduated from the ANU in 1996 with first class honours degrees in Biochemistry and Law. For several years she worked as a barrister and solicitor in Australia and New Zealand. After earning her PhD at RegNet in 2005 in intellectual property law and policy, she stayed on as an ARC Postdoctoral Fellow and Senior Fellow until 2010.

Janet left academia in 2010 to support a relative who had suffered severe complex trauma as a result of violent crime. Through this work, she decided to train as a professional coach. Janet now maintains a Professional Certified Coach credential from the International Coaching Federation. Before joining Canberra Law School in 2020, she ran a private practice offering coaching for conflict resolution.

Janet is currently Senior Lecturer at Canberra Law School, convening Administrative Law and Criminal Justice. She joined the Canberra Restorative Community in 2017 and is developing a research program in the field of restorative justice.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Photo of Canberra from top of Mount Ainslie by Sam Ilić from flickr, used under (CC BY-NC 2.0) licence.

From the global geopolitical arena to the smart city, control over knowledge - particularly over data and intellectual property — has become a key battleground for the exercise of economic and political power. For companies and governments alike, control over knowledge — what scholar Susan Strange calls the knowledge structure — has become a goal unto itself. The rising dominance of the knowledge structure is leading to a massive redistribution of power, including from individuals to companies and states.

The new knowledge: information, data and the remaking of global power is a guide to and analysis of these changes, and of the emerging phenomenon of the knowledge-driven society. It highlights how the pursuit of the control over knowledge has become its own ideology, with its own set of experts drawn from those with the ability to collect and manipulate digital data. Haggart and Tusikov propose a workable path forward — knowledge decommodification — to ensure that our new knowledge is not treated simply as a commodity to be bought and sold, but as a way to meet the needs of the individuals and communities that create this knowledge in the first place.

About the authors

Blayne Haggart is an associate professor of political science at Brock University in St. Catharines, Ontario, Canada. He is a Senior Fellow at the Centre for International Governance Innovation and a Senior Fellow at the Balsillie School of International Affairs in Waterloo, Ontario. He is the author of Copyfight: The Global Politics of Digital Copyright Reform (2014) and co-editor of two volumes on the political economy of internet governance and knowledge governance, in addition to several journal articles on these subjects.

Natasha Tusikov is an associate professor in the Department of Social Science at York University in Toronto and a visiting fellow with the Justice and Technoscience Lab (JusTech Lab), School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) at the Australian National University. Her research examines the intersection among law, crime, technology, and regulation. She is the author of Chokepoints: Global Private Regulation on the Internet (2017). She is a co-editor of Information, Technology and Control in a Changing World: Understanding Power Structures in the 21st Century (2019) and co-editor of Power and Authority in Internet Governance: Return of the State? (2021).

Image credit: ‘The new knowledge: information, data and the remaking of global power’ book cover supplied by Natasha Tusikov.

As climate change and geopolitical tensions place pressures on governments to respond with industrial policy interventions, export-credit agencies (ECAs), or government-owned banks that support national exports through subsidized credit, are being swiftly repositioned as part of national climate, economic, and security strategies.

However, tensions between the preferences of domestic political interest groups and global governance regimes are impacting the ways and extent to which different ECAs are responding to these changes. Leveraging interview evidence with senior ECA officials in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, and France, compiled with Christian Downie, Maxfield Peterson will present new findings on the ways in which these public financial institutions are reshaping global politics and energy finance.

About the speakers

Dr. Maxfield Peterson joined the ANU School of Regulation and Global Governance in 2022. Max is a political scientist whose work investigates questions at the intersection of governance, political economy, energy politics, and international development.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: wind and solar renewable energy sources by seagul on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence.

In this special event, Lilly Be’soer, Director of the non-governmental organization (NGO) Voice for Change in Jiwaka province, Papua New Guinea, will discuss the work of grassroots peace-building.

Lilly will discuss the challenges of security and violence in the region and the strategies that her NGO has developed in building sustainable peace and mediating conflicts. She will also discuss the multi-scalar ways that NGOs are required to engage with local communities, provincial and national governments and also international partners.

About the speaker

Lilly Be’Soer is founder and director of Voice for Change, PNG.

Read more about Lilly at this Pacific Community 70 Inspiring Pacific Women profile.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Screengrab of Lilly Be’soer from Voice for Change PNG homepage, used with Lilly’s permission.

Fossil fuels are responsible for 86% of carbon dioxide emissions, however until relatively recently, the dominant focus of both domestic and international climate policy has centred on curbing demand, with limited national or international attempts to regulate the supply of fossil fuels. To address this challenge, the ‘Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative’ was launched in 2020, advocating for a treaty focused on non-proliferation, disarmament, and a just transition towards renewable energy.

The Fossil Fuel Treaty Initiative is the latest in a long line of examples of transnational advocacy networks aimed at securing the negotiation of new treaties in international law. In recent decades, coordinated social movements have played a key role in the formation of treaty instruments in the humanitarian, environmental, health and human rights fields.

However, while it is increasingly recognised that non-state actors have a role to play in international law, there is relatively limited research on the role of transnational advocacy networks in the formation of new treaty instruments.

This research applies a case study approach, drawing on process tracing, actor network mapping and participatory action research methodologies, to understand what factors lead to the success of transnational advocacy network campaigns for new treaty instruments across multiple policy domains. It aims to provide a theoretical contribution to the literature by identifying and explaining the role of transnational advocacy networks in treaty-making.

This seminar presentation is Rebecca’s Thesis Proposal Review, in which she presents her thesis proposal to her supervisors, peers and other RegNet scholars.

About the speaker

Rebecca Byrnes is a PhD Scholar focusing on the role of transnational advocacy networks in the formation of new international law instruments. She simultaneously works with the Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative, which is itself a transnational advocacy network working towards a new treaty governing fossil fuel production. Rebecca has Masters degrees in Law, and Environmental Change and Management from the University of Oxford, and has previously worked in the NSW Government and the Grantham Research Institute at the London School of Economics.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only. It is open only to RegNet academics, staff, students and visitors.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Image of a rally for a Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty at the United Nations Environment Program Stockholm+50 conference, from Fossil Fuel Non-Proliferation Treaty Initiative 3 June 2022 press release.

We are witnessing a rapid diffusion of so-called “generative AI”—that is, machine learning technologies that simulate human languages, communication, arts, and cultural expression through the statistical modelling of vast troves of internet data. This rise has generated questions about the prospective impact on creative practice, knowledge production and methods of learning. Concerns around copyright infringement, misinformation, plagiarism and the spread of harmful content have highlighted how these machine learning systems can create and exacerbate forms of injustice and inequity. What, then, can be done to foster proactive responses to these issues? Can different approaches to design help ensure these technologies work in the public interest and are safe, accountable and inclusive to the wide range of communities who engage them?

Join an interdisciplinary panel of international AI researchers to discuss these emerging shifts and their implications for design and questions of justice.

Panel (3:30-5pm)

Chair: Kate Henne (Director of RegNet, School of Regulation and Global Governance, ANU)

Panelists: Michelle Jasper (Cybernetics, ANU), Katrina Sluis (Photography and Media Arts, ANU), Matthew Stone (Computer Science, Rutgers University), Wesley Taylor (Graphic Design, Virginia Commonwealth University)

Reception (5-6:30pm)

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please contact the event organiser.

Funded by the Consortium of Humanities Centers and Institutes as part of the “Design Justice AI Global Humanities Institute”

Image credit: Image by Alan Warburton / © BBC / Better Images of AI / Virtual Human / CC-BY 4.0

In 2022, 32.6 million people fled their homes in response to environmental stressors, which disproportionately affect Pacific communities and households (IDMC, 2023; IPCC, 2018). So, how are Pacific governments responding to the growing challenge of environmental migration and displacement?

The project adopted the human geography method of ‘following policy’ to trace the emergence of ‘best practices’ in the issue area. By interviewing and observing policy experts operating at multiple sites and scales, the project identified three approaches to regulating environmental migration and displacement: planned relocation, labour migration and humanitarian protection.

It seeks to explain variation in the extent to which these ‘models’ have become institutionally embedded in the Pacific. In doing so, the study contributes to theories of policy mobility.

This seminar is Lakshmin’s final presentation of her doctoral candidature.

About the speaker

Lakshmin Mudaliar is a geographer and a PhD candidate at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. She holds a Bachelor of Science, Post-Graduate Diploma of Science and Master of Science from Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Image of a sign on South Tarawa, Kiribati, warning of the threat of sea level rise to the island, with its highest point being 3 metres above sea level, from Wikipedia Commons, (CC BY 2.0).

Policy integration is one of the main challenges in promoting sustainable development. Global governance mechanisms, such as the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), highlight the importance of coordinating different policies to promote effective outcomes. However, these mechanisms often overlook how trade regulation, such as patent protection, impacts sustainability.

Patent protection can affect the achievement of several SDGs, including public health, energy transition, and food security. While granting monopoly rights to patent holders can incentivise local innovation, it can also affect how developing countries access technologies crucial for sustainable development.

Employing a mixed-method research design and drawing on international and comparative political economy theories, Alex’s PhD research interrogates how Latin American countries have promoted sustainability goals in recent patent regulation. His research identifies the conditions that enable the integration of patent protection and sustainable development and demonstrates how competing public and private interests shape policymaking for sustainability.

This seminar is Alex’s final presentation of his doctoral candidature.

About the speaker

Alex San Martim Portes is a PhD Scholar at the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance. His research focuses on the intersection of trade regulation and socioeconomic/sustainable development. He investigates how trade agreements affect developing countries’ capacity to design public policy and how emerging forms of domestic regulation affect international trade. Alex is an interdisciplinary researcher who studies international political economy, intellectual property rights, trade law, climate change, human rights, sustainability, and mixed-methods.

This seminar presentation will be online-only.

Image credit: Abstract illustration of patent process flowchart by Adrienne Yancey for opensource.com, from flickr, used under CC BY-SA 2.0 licence

The health of economies and that of people are related. How this relationship is best governed, however, is contested. EU policymakers must make sense of this relationship when developing pandemic recovery strategies. One point of contention relates to whether economic growth is a necessary precondition for a healthier population.

The mainstream assumption is that economic growth is good and necessary for population health, provided it is ‘green’ and ‘inclusive’. But heterodox research highlights the fundamental unsustainability – and health-harming effects – of seeking continuous economic growth in a world of finite resources.

Amidst this landscape of contested knowledge, this article maps out the discourses relating health and growth in pandemic recovery-related documents in four EU institutions (Commission, Parliament, Council, and the European Central Bank) over three years (2020-2022). Using discourse network analysis (DNA), it presents a visualisation of the relationship between prevailing ideas on economic recovery and health.

This is a work-in-progress presentation.

About the speaker

Charlotte Godziewski is a Lecturer (Assistant Professor) in International Politics at City, University of London. Her research explores the politics of health, with a current empirical focus on the EU. Her doctoral thesis was awarded the 2021 Best PhD Thesis Prize by the University Association for Contemporary European Studies (UACES). Charlotte is a coordinator of ‘EUHealthGov’, the UACES-funded research network on EU Health Governance, and an Associate Editor of Health Promotion International.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Photo of KN90 mask against a background of € notes and coins, by romanakr on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence.

Social movement organisations mobilise shareholders and other investors to lobby corporations on a range of issues including climate change, modern slavery, and migration, utilising tactics including shareholder resolutions, divestment, boycotts, legal action, and naming and shaming campaigns.

Existing conceptualisations of these acts relegate them to business management scholarship or conflate them with political consumerism, failing to capture the unique political role of investors.

In this seminar, Erin presents a conceptualisation of ‘political investorism’ as a cohering term for investment-based political participation. Drawing upon a study of political investorism in Australia, Erin considers the opportunity structures that shape political investorism, and the insider/outsider dynamics of this form of lobbying, identifying a new category of ‘unnatural insider.’

About the speaker

Dr Erin O’Brien is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Associate Professor in Policy and Politics in the School of Justice, Queensland University of Technology. Her research examines political advocacy, lobbying, and participation, with a particular focus on market-based activism.

Her DECRA Fellowship project investigates the framing of responsibility between the state, civil society, and market actors for addressing complex multi-jurisdictional issues, specifically modern slavery. Prior to entering academia, Dr O’Brien worked in strategic communications in the government and not-for-profit sectors in Australia and the United Kingdom.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Greenpeace protest at Nestle Annual General Meeting on flickr, (CC BY-NC-ND 2.0 licence).

This informal talk will explain how the International Court of Justice (ICJ) works, focussing on its deliberative methods.

This presentation is jointly hosted by the Centre for International Governance and Justice, School of Regulation and Governance (RegNet), ANU and the Centre for International and Public Law, College of Law, ANU.

About the speaker

Hilary Charlesworth is Harrison Moore Professor and Melbourne Laureate Professor at Melbourne Law School. She is also Honorary Professor at RegNet. She held an ARC Federation Fellowship from 2005-2010 and an ARC Laureate Fellowship from 2010-2015.

Her research includes the structure of the international legal system, peacebuilding, human rights law and international humanitarian law, international legal theory, particularly feminist approaches to international law and the art of international law.

Hilary was elected to the Institut de Droit International in 2011 and she was awarded an Honorary Doctorate by the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium in 2016. She has served as a Judge of the International Court of Justice since late 2021.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

No registration is required for this event as ANU and ACT Health no longer require registration for the purposes of contact tracing.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: View of the ICJ courtroom on 1 December 2022, at the reading of the Judgement of the Court in the Dispute over the Status and Use of the Waters of the Silala (Chile v. Bolivia), from the ICJ website (free to use for educational institutions per ICJ Media Services Item C conditions).

Reynol’s dissertation examines the implementation of restorative justice in the context of Taiwanese juvenile justice.

Given the relational nature of restorative justice, his findings are based on participant observation and interviews with a wide range of respondents, including people responsible, people harmed, their supporters, and justice practitioners such as judges and facilitators. Theoretically informed by Reintegrative Shaming Theory, Transformative Mediation Studies and Confucian Relationalism Studies, this research reveals a form of shame transformation and a pluralistic justice system.

This seminar is Reynol’s mid-term doctoral presentation.

About the speaker

Reynol Cheng is a PhD candidate at the ANU RegNet. Prior to joining RegNet, he was a police inspector and restorative justice facilitator in Taiwan. He holds a Bachelor’s degree in Police Administration and a Master’s degree in Gender Studies from Taiwan, and an Honours degree in Criminology from the University of Tasmania.

Reynol’s research explores restorative justice, gender equality and relationality, with a particular focus on juvenile justice and the experiences of marginalised groups. The aim of Reynol’s work is to build bridges that promote understanding between different communities and to collaborate on innovations that can contribute to social harmony.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be a hybrid presentation.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Illustration of Taiwanese flag in a fingerprint pattern by CatsWithGlasses on pixabay (free to use under pixabay licence); ‘Restorative Justice’ Chinese calligraphy output from https://chinese.gratis, used with permission.

Australia is contending with a slew of new facial recognition technologies and their uses, in the context of regulatory gaps and insufficient understanding of the historical, social, and cultural contexts in which they are used.

Conversations about best practices for governing facial recognition systems at both the design and application levels are largely motivated by research ethics, competitive industry advantage, and public accountability to citizens, not the advantage of the people whose facial data will be fuelling facial recognition.

Considering the expanding scope of facial recognition uses, these discussions put into question the meaning of best practices and how to implement them. For example, regulatory gaps allow facial recognition technologies to be used intrusively and covertly.

The project is built on 30 qualitative multi-stakeholder interviews with government, corporate, and academic respondents, the data thematically analysed. The findings suggest that the governance of facial recognition technologies requires a comprehensive framework of laws, including a reform of the ongoing Privacy Act and a national law or charter of human rights at the first instance.

Furthermore, the study calls into question what “best practices” constitute in the national context of Australia, in particular considering the impacts on Indigenous Australians.

About the speaker

Dr Ausma Bernot is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Australian Graduate School of Policing & Security, Charles Sturt University.

Ausma’s doctoral research explored the dynamic interaction between surveillance technologies and social context and questions totalisation of surveillance in China. Her current research focuses on the effects that the merging of infotech and biotech triggers in the fields of governance, surveillance, policing, and public safety.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image credit: Illustration of a mobile phone scanning a geometrically stylized face by Mike MacKenzie on flickr (CC by 2.0 licence)

THIS SEMINAR WAS OIRGINALLY PUBLISHED WITH THE TITLE RISK, REWARD, AND RESILIENCE – APPLYING AI AND LLMs. THE PRESENTER, TITLE AND CONTENT OF THE SEMINAR HAS SINCE CHANGED.

Striking a balance between risk, reward, and resilience is now the centre of many public discussions and policy-making around the world. Addressing complex policy challenges is difficult as they are inherently complex, crossing disciplinary silos and departmental divides.

This presentation explores an integrative framework, called the RRR framework, which synthesizes insights from diverse disciplines and domains. It provides a new mental model for thinking about and working through cross-cutting issues across a variety of topics.

About the speaker

Anthea Roberts, a Professor at RegNet, is an interdisciplinary researcher and legal scholar who focuses on new ways of thinking about complex and evolving global fields. Her research areas include international law, trade and investment, the effect of geopolitical change on global governance, and understanding and navigating complex systems. She is the creator of the Risk, Reward and Resilience Framework for dealing with complex policy issues that require integrative approaches.

COVID protocols

The ANU strongly encourages you to keep a mask with you at all times (for use when COVID-19 safe behaviours are not practicable) and to be respectful of colleagues, students and visitors who may wish to continue to wear one. Please continue to practice good hygiene. If you are unwell, please stay home. The ANU’s COVID Safety advice can be accessed here.

This seminar presentation will be in-person only.

If you require accessibility accommodations or a visitor Personal Emergency Evacuation Plan please email regnet.communications@anu.edu.au.

Image of female robot head against a background of programming code by Gerd Altmann on pixabay, free to use under pixabay licence.