Events

Innovation in the biotechnology sector: San Diego compared with Australia

3 September 2010

Dr Thomas Barlow, leading research strategist, presented on the topic "Innovation in the biotechnology sector: San Diego compared with Australia".

Thomas Barlow is Australia's leading research strategist. He provides independent policy advice to governments and strategic advice to high-tech companies, universities, and research organisations. Highly regarded in Australia for his independence and imagination, he is the author of an influential book about Australian innovation, The Australian Miracle, published by Picador. He also produces a major study on The State of Research in Australian Universities. Dr Barlow is on the advisory board of two Australian companies, of two leading university research departments, and of a federal government research agency.

The Icarus Syndrome: A History of American Hubris

25 August 2010

Peter Beinart, Associate Professor of journalism and political science at the City University of New York, and the senior political writer for The Daily Beast.

The Icarus Syndrome tells a tale as old as the Greek–a story about the seductions of success. Peter Beinart portrays three extraordinary generations: the progressives who took America into World War I, led by Woodrow Wilson, who for a moment became the closest thing to a political messiah the world had ever seen.

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Cold War by Design

17 August 2010

Greg Castillo’s talk, based on his new monograph Cold War on the Home Front, examined the postwar era’s two global aesthetics – International-Style Modernism in the capitalist West, and Socialist Realism in the East – and their deployment in a battle to win the hearts and minds of cold war consumers. Beginning in 1950, the U.S. State Department staged home expositions in West Berlin intended to convey the household triumph of capitalism. Model homes stocked with modern furnishings (and model families) presented an idealized vision of the lifestyle soon to be enjoyed by the consumer-citizens of Marshall Plan Europe. Stung into action, Party authorities in East Berlin staged socialist home expositions invoking the dream homes of a cultured proletariat.

US-China relations: Fragile positive equilibrium - will it endure?

17 August 2010

The Obama government came into office seeking to sustain and develop the positive equilibrium in US-Chinese relations seen in the later years of the George W. Bush administration. Repeated episodes of perceived Chinese assertiveness toward the United States on issues involving public complaints about US policies and practice regarding Taiwan, Tibet, the South China Sea, and economic policies have underlined important differences between the United States and China and raised questions as to future cooperation or conflict between the United States and China.

Biofuels policy in the US and EU: a sustainable future or an agrarian past?

12 August 2010

Professor Adrian Kay, Associate Professor, Policy & Governance Program, Crawford School of Economics and Government, ANU discussed the topic "Biofuels policy in the US and EU: a sustainable future or an agrarian past?"

The capacity to coordinate or `join-up' policy making has been widely identified as an essential part of the effective governance of sustainability. Without such capacity, sustainability policy is liable to remain in functional silos with its requirements for cognate policy areas being variously attenuated, resisted and mediated by existing policy institutions.

US College Night - Understanding the US college admissions process

11 August 2010

“US College Night” was held for high school aged students interested in applying to colleges in the US. The presentation provided extensive information about the US college application process which will aid students who choose to pursue their higher education at American colleges.

Cold War on the Home Front

11 August 2010

Greg Castillo, Associate Professor of Architecture at the University of California, Berkeley gave a presentation on his new book Cold War on the Home Front.

Greg Castillo received a B.F.A. in photography at the Rochester Institute of Technology in 1975, an M.A. at the Annenberg School of Communications at the University of Southern California in 1978, an M.Arch at the University of California, Berkeley, in 1995, and a Ph.D. in architectural history at the University of California, Berkeley, in 2000. He has taught architectural history at the University of Miami School of Architecture and at the Faculty of Architecture at the University of Sydney, where he remains a research associate at the United States Studies Centre.

Scottie's dream, Judy's plan, Madeleine's revenge

5 August 2010

In his appearances on “Alfred Hitchcock Presents,” Hitchcock declared his contempt for the world according to 1950s television – a world in which father knows best, that morality always pays and crime never does, that marrying, raising children, and being good consumers equals living happily ever after. Hitchcock, too, claimed to know best, but what he claimed to know was that in the real world there is no guarantee that good will prevail, that faith will be rewarded.

Focusing on Vertigo, William Rothman explored the relationship of moral perfectionism to the Hitchcock thriller during this lecture. By so doing, he helped chart the ambiguous place of Hitchcock’s films, which are at once inside and outside the ever-shifting constellations of genres, within American cinema as a whole.

Energy security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region

5 August 2010

Dr Vlado Vivoda, Research Fellow, Centre for International Risk, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages, UniSA will be presenting on the topic "Energy security cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region"

Vlado is Research Fellow at the Centre for International Risk, School of Communication, International Studies and Languages. He completed his PhD on the international political economy of oil at Flinders University in March 2008. He has previous lecturing and tutoring experience from Flinders University, the University of Adelaide and the University of South Australia, where he taught on a wide array of topics, including the political economy of oil, energy security, international political economy, international relations theory, international security, environmental politics, Australia’s foreign relations, and international relations and politics in the Asia-Pacific region.

US foreign policy: Where to now?

3 August 2010

Professor John Mearsheimer, from the University of Chicago, is America's boldest and perhaps most controversial thinker in the field of international relations and an authority on US foreign policy and national security. His book, The Israeli Lobby and US Foreign Policy, which he co-authored with Stephen Walt of Harvard University aroused furious debate, and has been translated into 17 languages.

Twenty five students attended Mearsheimer's seminar which was co-hosted by the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney. Students had the opportunity to interact with one of the world’s foremost thinkers in international relations.