UWA recently embarked on an ambitious program to address the most important and complex problems facing humanity.
The Grand Challenges program brings together the University’s researchers, alumni and students – some of the world’s very best minds – to engage in fresh thinking that will benefit local, regional and global communities.
This year, two inaugural Grand Challenges have been chosen: a more just and equitable world post COVID-19, and climate change.
Here, Uniview meets three of our Grand Challenges champions.
At the forefront of change
Zoe Bush (LLB, BA ’16)
On 25 May 2020, lawyer Zoe Bush (LLB, BA ‘16) began her three-month fellowship at Law for Black Lives in New York, a network of lawyers and legal workers committed to transforming the law and building community power.
That same day, George Floyd died during his arrest by police in Minneapolis. The death of the 46-year-old African-American triggered Black Lives Matter protests across all 50 states in the United States – and then globally.
Straight away, Zoe’s skills were put to use. She’d arrived at Law for Black Lives after completing her Master of Laws (she won a John Monash Scholarship to study at Columbia Law School), where she’d worked on the #SayHerName campaign – highlighting police brutality against black women and girls – with leading race and gender scholar Professor Kimberlé Crenshaw.
Black Lives Matter protest in the US
As news headlines detailed increasing police brutality, Zoe was working behind the scenes to get demonstrators out of detention and bring claims of assault against police.
At the same time, she worked on campaigns to redirect money away from police departments and towards communities that had been harmed. Campaigners argued that if funding was increased for services such as education, health and housing, people would be less likely to commit crimes in the first place.
The results were unprecedented. By the end of June, Minneapolis City Council had approved a proposal to dismantle the city’s police department, and New York City Council had cut its police department budget by US$1 billion.
It was a prime example of ‘movement lawyering’ – a concept Zoe is keen to champion in Australia – in action.
“Movement lawyering is about lawyers being led by communities or movements, rather than setting the agenda themselves,” she said.
“It combines defensive work – protecting communities from harm – with offensive work, which is focused on helping communities achieve the visions they have for the world.”
“Movement lawyering is about lawyers being led by communities or movements, rather than setting the agenda themselves."
Zoe Bush
Zoe’s keen awareness of systemic racial discrimination dates back to her time at the UWA Law School, where she worked with Indigenous communities in the Kimberley. In 2016, her proposal to end the indefinite detention of First Nations people with Fetal Alcohol Spectrum
Disorders – many of whom had never been convicted of a crime – was adopted by a standing committee of the Australian Senate and Amnesty International.
Now, she’s focused on another frontier. Since last August, she has been working on Australia’s first wave of corporate climate litigation as a solicitor in the Environmental Defenders Office’s Safe Climate team, where her job description doubles as a mission: to use the law to protect and defend Australia’s wildlife, people and places.
Corporate climate change litigation is still new in Australia, but Zoe expects there will soon be big cases around misleading and deceptive conduct (companies pretending to be ‘greener’ than they really are), climate disclosure (the disclosure of climate risks to the market) and directors’ duties (in particular, the management of climate risk).
She says this new form of litigation has the potential to change entire industries and markets, and predicts fossil fuel companies will encounter similar legal challenges to those faced by tobacco companies in the 1990s.
Alongside her advocacy, Zoe teaches at the UWA Law School. She’s particularly excited about the recent Indigenisation of the Juris Doctor, which will result in every law graduate understanding how various aspects of the law affect Indigenous people.
“I hope students walk out of the Law School with an appreciation that law isn’t neutral; that it underpins colonialism in Australia and can be used as a tool for good and bad,” she said.
“Every law graduate should know they have a choice in how they are going to use the law when they go forward and practise.”
We can effect real change for women
Dr Demelza Ireland, School of Biomedical Sciences
Dr Demelza Ireland also wants her students to know they can effect real change in the world.
The senior lecturer in women’s health – who in 2019 won a prestigious Australian Award for University Teaching (Early Career) – says this year has been critical for gender equality.
As stories around consent, domestic violence and sexual assault dominated news headlines in the first half of the year, Demelza encouraged her students to lobby politicians with their own ideas and solutions.
“I really do feel like we are at a pivotal point where these conversations are now part of our everyday language,” she said.
“This is about valuing women and it’s about hearing their voices. The bigger picture here is social determinants of health – education, finances and the environments in which we live.”
Left to right: Dr Caitlin Wyrwoll and Dr Demelza Ireland.
Globally, social determinants are the primary cause of the gender gap in health outcomes. One result of this is that every day, 810 women around the world die from preventable causes related to pregnancy and childbirth.
Along with Dr Caitlin Wyrwoll, Dr Ireland has introduced an initiative that supports UWA students to assemble birthing kits, with basic supplies such as soap, for women in under-resourced countries. The clean birth kits have been proven to reduce the rates of maternal and newborn infections and death, especially when paired with skilled birth attendants.
Dr Ireland’s passion for education stems from her early days of pregnancy research, when she was surprised by how little many women knew about their own health. At King Edward Memorial Hospital she’d ask women if she could collect their placenta for research, and was often met with the response “but I want another baby”.
“I’d spend a significant amount of time talking to women about what a placenta is and how we expel it after we give birth and make a new one for the next baby,” she said.
“It astounded me that so many women who were literally hours away from having their babies didn’t know how their placenta worked.
“Women really need to be able to have the ability to make an informed decision about their healthcare and that comes from having appropriate knowledge and that knowledge comes from education.”
Migration is the defining issue of our time
Willi Busse, PhD student
Willi Busse is hoping to use his research to create positive change for migrants.
He’s investigating how leading newspapers in Japan, Australia and Germany have taken various stances on migration through their editorials over the past 30 years, with the aim of informing better policy making.
Willi Busse
With firsthand experience of migration – he grew up in Germany, lived in Japan and spent a gap year in Melbourne, before settling in Perth – he says migration debates must go beyond whether we want a “big Australia”. Instead, discussion needs to consider how migrants can participate in society, and not just strengthen the economy or increase the population.
“Migration in its many forms is the defining issue of our time, here in Australia and around the globe. It is strongly intertwined with all the major crises, such as the climate emergency, inequality and poverty,” he said.
Willi has spent time volunteering as a local history library clerk and recently completed the Global Citizenship micro-credential, through UWA and Common Purpose.
“Going beyond my research and being a migrant myself, I want to drive change and empower migrant and Indigenous communities, and promote more diversity in our society,” he said.
Learn about Grand Challenges and meet more academics, alumni and students making a difference at the UWA Grand Challenges website.