People attending lecture

Past lectures

IAS public lectures aim to attract and stimulate lively discussion. Lectures, often tied to a longer visit to UWA by a distinguished visitor, are part of the University's long-standing goal to share the research activity at UWA with the community at large. 

The Institute also sponsors a number of named, endowed or memorial lectures each year with both internal and external partners.

Many of our talks were recorded and the audio file and slides can be viewed by selecting one of the links below.

  • Lectures held in 2024
  • Lectures held in 2023
  • Lectures held in 2022
  • Lectures held in 2021
  • Lectures held in 2020
  • Lectures held in 2019

    Arts, Humanities and Social Sciences

    Indigenous

    • The Art of Healing
      The 2019 Robin Winkler Lecture by Helen Milroy, Professor of Psychiatry at The University of Western Australia.

    Italian Series

    This lecture series celebrated the 90th Anniversary of Italian Studies at UWA.

    Health and Medical Sciences

    Sciences, Engineering and Mathematics

    UWA Research Week Events

    Rembrandt – 350th Anniversary Lecture Series

    To commemorate Rembrandt's death 350 years ago, museums across the globe, from Amsterdam to the Arabian Gulf, are staging exhibitions to commemorate his artistic legacy, and a life that was far from a masterpiece.

    • The Global Rembrandt
      Speaker: Arvi Wattel, School of Design (History of Art), UWA
    • Finding Rembrandt in Love and Life
      Speaker: Dr Susan Broomhall, School of Humanities (History), UWA
  • Lectures held in 2018

    Arts and Humanities

    • ‘The Unexpected Horrible Side Effect of this Law’: the criminalization of inter-racial sex and white male suicide in South Africa, 1950-1985
      A public lecture by Susanne M. Klausen, Professor of History, Carleton University in Ottawa, Senior Research Associate, Faculty of Humanities at the University of Johannesburg and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Encountering: The Conceptual Body, or a Theory of When, Where, and How Art “Means”
      A public lecture by Amelia Jones, the Robert A. Day Professor, Roski School of Art and Design, University of Southern California.
    • Reading for Little Rebels: internationalism and radical writing for children
      A public lecture by Kimberley Reynolds, Professor of Children’s Literature, School of English Literature, Language and Linguistics, Newcastle University and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Resisting the Orientalization of the Enemy: Korean Americans, Japanese American Incarceration, and Moral Imagination on the Homefront during World War II
      A public lecture by Lili M. Kim, Associate Professor of History and Global Migrations, School of Critical Social Inquiry, Hampshire College, Amherst, Massachusetts, USA and 2017-2018 Fulbright Senior Scholar, Hankuk University of Foreign Studies, South Korea.
    • Moment of Truth: History and Australia’s Future
      A public lecture by Mark McKenna, Research Fellow, History, University of Sydney.
    • How to Treat Persons: two anchors of moral judgement
      A public lecture by Robert Audi, John A. O’Brien Professor of Philosophy, University of Notre Dame (Indiana, US) and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Black Bodies, White Gold: cotton, art and the materiality of race
      A public lecture by Anna Arabindan-Kesson, Assistant Professor of Black Diasporic Art, Princeton University.
    • The Feeling of Eugenics
      A public lecture by Rob Wilson, Professor of Philosophy, La Trobe University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Where did language come from?
      A public lecture by Michael Corballis, Emeritus Professor of Psychology, University of Auckland
    • A Scandalous Empire
      The 2018 Fred Alexander Lecture by Kirsten McKenzie, Professor of History, University of Sydney.
    • Dante, an iconoclast in his age, a model for our own
      A public lecture by Rodney Lokaj, Chair of Italian Philology, University of Enna “Kore”, Sicily.
    • Happily Single? It May Depend on Where You Live: how families shape single women’s well-being in three East Asian cities
      A public lecture by Lynne Nakano, Professor, Japanese Studies, The Chinese University of Hong Kong and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Loneliness: the silent global epidemic in an ageing world
      A public lecture by Jane Barratt, Secretary General of the International Federation on Ageing (IFA).
    • Permittitur tamen
      It’s Ok to Grow Artichokes There
      The ‘Civitas Pia’ of Pope Pius IV (1561-1565)
      A public lecture by Roger Vella Bonavita, Honorary Senior Research Fellow, The University of Western Australia.
    • Living Flesh: splendour, sex and sickness on the surface of the skin
      A public lecture by Lisa Beaven, Lecturer in Art History, La Trobe University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • The Novel and History in Australia: An uneasy friendship?
      A public lecture by Dr Jo Jones, Lecturer in Literary and Cultural Studies, Curtin University.
    • History and Urban Agriculture: learning from our productive past
      A public lecture by Andrea Gaynor, Associate Professor of History at The University of Western Australia.
    • The Explorer’s Self-discovery: Matthew Flinders’ Correspondence with Mauritian friends during, and after, his imprisonment on Isle de France (1803-1814)
      A public lecture by Professor Serge Rivière, 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • How to Make a Revolutionary Object: the drawings of Gustavs Klucis
      A public lecture by Professor Maria Gough, Joseph Pulitzer, Jr. Professor of Modern Art, Harvard University.
    • So Duchamp
      A free public symposium presented in conjunction with the exhibition HERE&NOW18: Besides, it is always the others who die, which will be on display at the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery from 1 September - 8 December 2018.
    • Three Kinds of Clay, Three Kinds of Antiquity?
      The 2018 Tom Stannage Memorial Lecture by Ann McGrath AM, the Kathleen Fitzpatrick ARC Laureate Fellow and Distinguished Professor, School of History, Australian National University.
    • The Nameless Artist in the Theatre of Memory: the challenges of writing on the artworking of Charlotte Salomon (1917-1943)
      A public lecture by Griselda Pollock, Professor of Social and Critical Histories of Art and Director of the Centre for Cultural Analysis, Theory and History (CentreCATH), University of Leeds.
    • Beautiful Florentines: perfumes, powders and paint in the Renaissance
      A public lecture by Professor Evelyn Welch, Provost (Arts & Sciences), King’s College London.
    • Triumphant Entries during the Italian Wars 1494-1559: celebrating alliances and displaying cultural prowess in the face of unsteady peace
      Elizabeth Reid, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, UWA.
    • Love in Times of War: war wives and widows in Shakespeare
      Bob White, Professor of English and Cultural Studies, UWA.
    • Youth in Wartime: medievalist fictions for Victorian children
      Andrew Lynch, Professor of English and Cultural Studies, UWA.
    • Savonarola and Botticelli: the visionary prophet and the penitent painter
      Arvi Wattel, School of Design, The University of Western Australia.
    • Women, Art and Violence in Seventeenth-Century Italian Art
      Dr Susanne Meurer, School of Design, The University of Western Australia.
    • Allegories for Meditation and Self-Reflection in the Elite Renaissance Home
      Dr Elizabeth Reid, Researcher in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions.

    Indigenous

    Law

    Sciences

    • Growing up Star Trek. How do we make sense of it all?
      A public lecture by Bernie Kraatz, Vice-Principal Research, University of Toronto Scarborough, and 2018 UWA Robert and Maude Gledden Visiting Fellow.
    • Fish Must Breathe!
      A public lecture by Professor Daniel Pauly, Institute for the Oceans and Fisheries, University of British Columbia and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Finding our Place in the Universe
      The 2018 George Seddon Memorial Lecture by David Blair, Emeritus Professor, ARC Centre of Excellence for Gravitational Wave Discovery.
    • Sleep, Body Clocks and Health: biology to new therapeutics
      A public lecture by Russell Foster, Professor of Circadian Neuroscience, Senior Fellow Brasenose College, University of Oxford and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • The Promise of Quantum Computing (and how we’re going to get there!)
      A public lecture by Jeremy O’Brien, Co-founder and CEO, PsiQuantum and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • The Mobile Museum: botanical exchanges between the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, and Australia
      A public lecture by Mark Nesbitt, Curator and Senior Research Leader in economic botany at Kew Gardens.
    • Blue Energy: South West WA’s future as a marine renewables hub
      A public lecture by Professor Christophe Gaudin, Head of Oceans Graduate School and Director Wave Energy Research Centre.
    • Antarctica Homeward Bound Voyage 2018
      A public lecture by Veronique Florec, Research Associate, Centre for Environmental Economics and Policy, The University of Western Australia.
    • The Seeing without Light: how people with disability are embracing emerging technologies
      A public lecture by Dr Scott Hollier, Digital access specialist, lecturer and author.
    • A day in the life of Sinead – how technology makes all the difference
       A public lecture by Sinead Quinn, Occupational Therapist / Assistive Technology Consultant
    • Unravelling the Early History of the Earth
      A public lecture by Professor Jeffrey Vervoort, Professor of Isotope Geochemistry, Washington State University and 2018 UWA Robert and Maude Gledden Senior Visiting Fellow.
    • Exercise and the heart: can you overdose?
      Professor Keith George, Associate Dean for Research, Scholarship and Knowledge Transfer (Faculty of Science) and past Head of the Research Institute for Sport and Exercise Sciences at Liverpool John Moores University.
    • Screening Athletes to Avoid Sudden Cardiac Death
      A public lecture by Dr David Oxborough, registered Clinical Cardiac Physiologist specialising in echocardiography.
    • Cardiovascular Disease in Women: the Benefits of Exercise
      Professor Maria Hopman, Professor of Physiology at Radboud University Medical Center, Nijmegen (the Netherlands).
    • Exercise for the Management of the Menopause
      A public lecture by Professor Helen Jones, Cardiovascular Exercise Physiologist at Liverpool John Moores University.
    • Science Communication: my journey from 3-minute thesis to Cambridge and the Naked Scientists
      A public lecture by Michael Wheeler.
    • The Secret of Cultured Pearls Revealed - from the Water to your Necklace
      A public lecture by Dr Marie-Lise Schläppy, Research Associate at The University of Western Australia and the Australian Institute of Marine Science.
    • The Inevitable Patterns of Rivers, Landscapes, and People
      A public lecture by Dr Kyungrock Paik, Associate Professor School of Civil, Environmental, and Architectural Engineering, Korea University and 2016 UWA Gledden Short Stay Fellow
    • What is a Photon?
      A public lecture by Markus Aspelmeyer, Professor of Physics, University of Vienna.

    Social Sciences

    • How Remembering Causes Forgetting
      A public lecture by Amy H. Criss, Head of Discipline, Psychology, Syracuse University and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Personality, Values, Culture, Evolution – why are we similar and yet so different?
      A public lecture by Ronald Fischer, Professor in Psychology and Co-Director, Center for Applied Cross-Cultural Research, Victoria University of Wellington and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Knowing Autism
      A public lecture by Liz Pellicano, Professor of Educational Studies, Macquarie University.
    • Emerging technologies: towards responsible, ethical futures
      A public lecture by Professor Sarah Pink, RMIT and 2018 Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Ageing and Care in Mediterranean Countries: the case of Italy
      A public lecture by Giuliana Costa, Associate Professor of Sociology, Politecnico di Milano and Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Duties to One’s Own Population and Combatants in War: is there an “Internal” Humanitarian Law?
      A public lecture by Frédéric Mégret, Associate Professor of Law and Dawson Scholar, Faculty of Law, McGill University and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Babylon, the Bible and the Australian Aborigines: missionary networks and theories of racial origin in the nineteenth century
      A public lecture by Hilary Carey, Professor of Imperial & Religious History, University of Bristol; Conjoint Professor of History, University of Newcastle, NSW and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • The Idea of Peace Parks in Africa
      A public lecture by Professor Maano Ramutsindela, Department of Environmental and Geographical Science, University of Cape Town and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • A Tale of Two Diseases: regulating immune responses in the retina
      The 2018 Ian Constable Lecture by Professor Andrew Dick, Director of the UCL Institute of Ophthalmology.
    • Young people’s mental health - the what, why and how of supporting young people with mental health problems
      The 2018 Robin Winkler Memorial Lecture by Debra Rickwood, Professor of Psychology at the University of Canberra.
    • Is Democracy Dying? Thoughts on the Present Crisis of Representative Democracy and the Importance of Hope in Dark Times
      The UWA School of Social Sciences Annual Social Sciences Week Public Lecture by John Keane, Professor of Politics, University of Sydney.
    • Belonging and Displacement: experiences of people seeking asylum in Australia
      A public panel presented by the Limina 13th Annual Conference and the UWA Institute of Advanced Studies.
    • Towards Zero Hunger (SDG2) in Africa
      A public lecture by Frans Swanepoel, Research Professor, Centre for Advancement of Scholarship, University of Pretoria, South Africa and 2018 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
  • Lectures held in 2017

    Arts

    • Fifty Years of Writing Australian History from the Periphery
      Speaker: Professor Henry Reynolds, University of Tasmania
    • An Evening of Death
      Speakers: Dr Brooke Davis, Dr Fiona Jenkins and Dr Jennifer Rodger
    • Mozart and the Fortepiano A Recital with Professor Malcolm Bilson, UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow and Frederick J. Whiton
       Professor Emeritus of Music at Cornell University.
    • Challenging justice – changing lives
      A public lecture by Estelle Blackburn OAM.
    • Ice-Age Visions: A window into the original conservators of WA heritage
      A public lecture by Professor Jo McDonald, Director of the Centre for Rock Art Research + Management (CRAR+M) at The University of Western Australia.
    • Shock Room: We do as we’re told. Or do we?
      A film screening followed by Q+A panel session with Director Professor Kathryn Millard, Professor Carmen Lawrence and Dr Nin Kirkham, UWA.
    • The Destruction of Memory
      A film screening followed by a panel discussion with Professor Andrea Witcomb, Deakin University; Professor Ben Smith, UWA; Dr John Taylor, UWA; Rebecca Repper, Oxford University and UWA.
    • Legal responses to domestic and family violence: Gendered aspirations and racialised realities
      A public lecture by Dr Heather Nancarrow CEO, Australia’s National Research Organisation for Women’s Safety Limited (ANROWS).
    • Migrating ‘Ndrangheta: cultural bias and cultural differences in the policing of the Calabrian mafia between Italy and Australia
      A public Lecture by Dr Anna Sergi, Lecturer in Criminology, Department of Sociology, University of Essex.
    • In Absentia: the politics of cameraless photography
      A public lecture by Professor Geoffrey Batchen, School of Art History, Classics and Religious Studies, Victoria University of Wellington and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • History Post-Brexit: thinking through Britain, Europe and Empire
      A public lecture by Tony Ballantyne, Co-Director of the Centre for Research on Colonial Culture, University of Otago
    • Sense and Sensibility and Jane Austen’s lexicon of emotions
      A public lecture by Robert White, English and Cultural Studies, The University of Western Australia.
    • Italy’s Fragile Unity. The North & the South: Yesterday, Today & Tomorrow
      A public lecture by John Davis, the Emiliana Pasca Noether Professor of Modern Italian History, University of Connecticut and 2017 UWA Fred Alexander Fellow.
    • One Hundred Prisoners and a Lightbulb
      A public lecture by Hans van Ditmarsch, Senior Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France.
    • ‘Hardly any women at all’? Literary landscapes at the time of Jane Austen
      A public lecture by Dr Katrina O’Loughlin, The University of Western Australia

    Engineering and Mathematics

    • One Hundred Prisoners and a Lightbulb
      Speaker: Hans van Ditmarsch, Senior Researcher, Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, France and IAS Visiting Fellow
    • Coping with Grief and Loss: ancient and modern perspectives
      A public lecture by Professor Han Baltussen, the Walter Watson Hughes Professor of Classics, University of Adelaide and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.

    Health Sciences

    • How to Age well: creating age-friendly environments to support healthy ageing
      Speaker: Jane Barratt, Secretary General of the International Federation on Ageing
    • Aspirin: how long can this old dog surprise us with new tricks?
      Speaker: John Eikelboom, Department of Medicine, McMaster University, Ontario
    • The Human Brain Surviving Without Oxygen
      A public lecture by Philip Ainslie, Professor & Canada Research Chair in Cerebrovascular Physiology and Co-Director, Centre for Heart, Lung & Vascular Health, The University of British Columbia.
    • Acoustic Reflections: advanced medical ultrasound imaging and parallels in the mining and construction industries
      A public lecture by Professor Jeffrey Bamber, Head, Ultrasound and Optical Imaging Physics, The Institute of Cancer Research London and Institute of Advanced Studies Gledden Short Stay Visiting Fellow.

    Science

    • Offshore Safety in the Wake of the Macondo Disaster: business as usual or sea change?
      Speaker: Jacqueline L. Weaver, the A.A. White Professor of Law, University of Houston Law Center and Terence Daintith, Professorial Fellow, University of London’s Institute of Advanced Legal Studies
    • Fisheries and Global Warming: impacts on marine ecosystems
      Speaker: Professor Daniel Pauly, fisheries expert and marine conservationist.
    • Mining-Induced Seismicity: the importance of tiny (and not so tiny) earthquakes
      Speaker: Margaret Boettcher, Associate Professor of Geophysics, University of New Hampshire.
    • Not Just Hot Water: the science, stories and importance of Perth’s ground water resources - 2017 George Seddon Memorial Lecture
      Speaker: Dr Megan Clark AC.
    • Numerical Modelling and Imaging in Geophysics at Different Scales: applications to the Pyrenees chain and the subsurface/laboratory scale
      Speaker: Roland Martin, National Centre for Scientific Research, Université Paul Sabatier
    • A Cosmic Shooting Gallery - 2017 ATSE Lecture
      Speaker: Phil Bland, Department of Applied Geology, Curtin University.
    • The Use of Charismatic Carnivores to Promote Aquatic Conservation: river and spotted-necked otters as case studies
      Speaker: Thomas Serfass, Professor of Wildlife Ecology, Frostburg State University.
    • Genome Research Produces New Anti-Malarial Drug Targets: The 2017 Ian Constable Lecture
      Speaker: Simon Foote, Director of The John Curtin School of Medical Research at The Australian National University.
    • Gravitational Waves, Merging Black Holes and Merging Binary Neutron Stars
      A public lecture by Professor George Smoot, Nobel Laureate and Professor of Physics, University of California, Berkeley and 2017 UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Neutron Stars, Gravitational Waves and the Origin of Gold
      A public lecture by Professor Tsvi Piran, Schwarzmann University Chair, Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University.
    • Visas, Visits and Refusals: working in the borderzones of resilience, distress and wellbeing
      A public talk by Professor Alison Phipps, the UNESCO Chair in Refugee Integration through Languages and the Arts at the University of Glasgow.
    • How FinTech is Changing the Face of Business and Finance
      A public lecture by Professor David Yermack, Chairman, Finance Department, Stern School of Business, New York University and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Coral Reefs in a Changing World
      A public lecture by Professor Malcolm McCulloch, UWA Oceans Institute, ARC Laureate Fellow and Deputy Director of the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies.
    • Dating Homo naledi: the story of the surprisingly young age for a new species of hominin that lived in Africa alongside early Homo sapiens
      A public lecture by Dr Hannah Hilbert-Wolf, Postdoctoral Research Fellow, James Cook University.
    • Delve into your Experience of Time
      A public lecture by Alex Holcombe, Co-director of the Centre for Time, University of Sydney and Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • How Can an Archaeologist Contribute to Biodiversity Conservation?
      A public lecture by Professor R. Lee Lyman, Department of Anthropology, University of Missouri, Columbia and UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow.
    • Darcy Lecture Series in Groundwater Science - The Critical Role of Trees in Critical Zone Science: an exploration of water fluxes in the Earth’s permeable skin
      A public lecture by Professor Kamini Singha, Department of Geology and Geological Engineering and the Associate Director of the Hydrologic Science and Engineering Program, Colorado School of Mines.
    • Resource Extraction versus Environmental Protection: oil sands and caribou in Canada
      A public lecture by Professor Vic Adamowicz, Vice Dean, Faculty of Agricultural, Life and Environmental Sciences, and Professor, Department of Resource Economics and Environmental Sociology, University of Alberta.

    Social Sciences

    UWA Research Tasting Night – An Intellectual Tapas

  • Jane Austen Series

    On the two-hundredth anniversary of her death, this UWA Institute of Advanced Studies -  Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Lecture Series presented new perspectives on the life and work of Jane Austen. Drawing upon the latest literary and historical research, UWA researchers tackled key themes in Austen's work and the wider social and cultural contexts in which she created her now world-famous novels.

  • Martin Luther series

    On the 500th anniversary of the beginning of the Protestant Reformation, this UWA Institute of Advanced Studies – Centre for Medieval and Early Modern Studies Lecture Series reconsidered the legacy of Martin Luther, who in 1517 published Ninety-Five Theses criticising the Church’s sale of indulgences. From diverse historical perspectives, UWA researchers tackled key issues regarding Luther’s life, his thought, and his significance for the momentous changes that Europe underwent during his lifetime.

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