Moving Ideas and Research Policies: Australian Intellectuals in the Global Context (conference)

About the conference

Photo by Jim Epler

Brain drain or mind shift? What do you think?

Many of Australia’s most inventive researchers are on the move around the globe and in the future their numbers will grow.

Is it in our national interest to try to attract them home? Or, should we think more creatively and generously about this issue?

Professor Jane Kenway (Monash) says we're missing the boat - not because many of our great researchers are on the move, but because our institutions are so unimaginative in dealing with researcher mobility. She says ‘As researchers increasingly address the big global issues of our times, researcher mobility is crucial. So too is challenging narrow versions of the national interest’. She is running a conference to see what we can learn from the experiences and ideas of some of our top mobile researchers from the social sciences and humanities.

The Moving Ideas conference brought together senior and highly influential stakeholders and commentators, including:

• some of Australia's eminent mobile intellectuals at the Professorial level: Dennis Altman, Ien Ang, Katherine Gibson, Paul James, Gavin Jones, Simon Marginson, Meaghan Morris, Susan Robertson, Terri Seddon and McKenzie Wark,
• representatives from the Australian Learned Academies,
• representatives from the ARC,
• representatives from government

The diverse benefits and difficulties of researcher mobility and how research related institutions and bodies can best support and harness the benefits were explored.  The conference papers will be published in a special issue of Around the Globe in 2008-9, and a short report will be presented to key stakeholders.

Background to the conference

This conference stems directly from a current ARC Discovery project called Moving Ideas: Mobile Policies, Researchers and Connections in the Social Sciences and Humanities - Australia in the global context (2006-2009), which is being conducted by Professor Jane Kenway and Dr Johannah Fahey in the Faculty of Education at Monash University. The study is exploring the globalisation of ideas through the movement around the globe of academics in the social sciences and humanities. Moving Ideas represents a mind-shift of sorts. It involves qualitative analysis of how these academics' global movements and new connections influence their intellectual travels, and national and transnational identifications. It engages with the ways that ideas travel, and how knowledge transforms through travel. It examines the movement of knowledge itself and its implications for academics' identities, their politics and ethics. It also explores implications for academic networks and research policies.

Australia invests a lot in training and developing researchers. Although it cannot stop them leaving, it can more creatively consider how best to benefit from the researchers who leave for good, those who return and those who move back and forth. A major outcome of this project is that it will increase Australia’s knowledge base on the benefits of researcher mobility and connectivity. These times are characterised by growing sensitivity to cultural, social and political issues in the region and globe. Internationally mobile researchers in the social sciences and humanities are centrally involved in projecting Australia’s image abroad through their research on economics, society, culture, politics and human behaviour. Crucially, such researchers are also involved in interpreting the rest of the world to Australia. Researchers’ interpretations are mediated through the cross border and cross sector connections they foster. The effects of their mobility on them, on the knowledge they produce and distribute, the connections they sustain, and the ways these connections operate in such places as Singapore, Hong Kong, USA and UK are of interest to a wide range of communities within Australia and internationally. These interests coalesce in the research policies Australia adopts. This project will provide vital up-to-date analysis of supra/international and national research policy-making around the world. It will help to keep the Australian government well informed about emerging issues and thus help to place it at the forefront of research policy inventiveness in the global context.

Invited speakers

The conference was officially opened by Ian Donaldson it featured an Opening Address by Meaghan Morris and a Plenary Address by Susan Robertson.

Ian Donaldson

Professor Ian Donaldson is President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. He has been Director of the Humanities Research Centre (HRC) at the Australian National University (ANU) since 2004. He was Professor of English at the ANU from 1969 to 1991, and also served as the first Director of the HRC from 1974 to 1990. He has been Regius Professor of Rhetoric and English Literature at the University of Edinburgh (1991-5), Grace 1 Professor of English Literature (1995-2002), Fellow of King's College (1995-), and foundation Director of the Centre for Research in the Arts, Social Sciences, and Humanities (2001-3) at the University of Cambridge. His books include studies of Jonson and Shakespeare, Renaissance comedy, modern European drama, the practice of biography, the rape of Lucretia, and early views of the Australian Aborigines. With David Bevington and Martin Butler, he is a General Editor of The Cambridge Edition of the Works of Ben Jonson, to be published by Cambridge University Press in 25 volumes in 2009. He is a Consultant Editor (literature 1500-1779) for The Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, and is completing a life of Ben Jonson, to be published by Oxford University Press in 2009.

Meaghan Morris

Professor Meaghan Morris is a figure of world stature in the field of Cultural Studies and she currently Chairs the international Association of Cultural Studies (ACS). A Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a former ARC Senior Fellow, she divides her time between the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney and Lingnan University, Hong Kong, where she has been Chair Professor of Cultural Studies since 2000, coordinating the Kwan Fong Cultural Research and Development Program there since 2003. Her books, including The Pirate's Fiancée: Feminism, Reading, Postmodernism; Too Soon Too Late: History in Popular Culture, and Identity Anecdotes: Translation and Media Culture, focus on the role of the media and popular history in forming public cultures.

Susan Robertson

Susan Robertson is a Professor of Sociology of Education in the Graduate School of Education, University of Bristol. Susan's academic career has spanned four countries - Australia, Canada, New Zealand and England. In 1999 Susan took up a post at the University of Bristol where she has worked to create the first centre of its kind in the UK - the Centre for Globalisation, Education and Societies (GES). Along with her colleague Roger Dale, she also is founding editor for the journal Globalisation, Societies and Education. There is now a core and critical mass of scholars working with her in the GES. Susan has just completed a Synthetic Review of Globalisation, Education and Development for the Department of International Development. Between 2002-2005 she was co-director of a major ESRC funded project on new technologies and learning InterActive Education: Teaching and Learning in the Information Age, with a particular interest in the wider policy issues.

Other conference speakers

Dennis Altman is Professor of Politics at La Trobe University. He first came to attention with the publication of his book Homosexual: Oppression & Liberation in 1972. This book, which has often been compared to Greer's Female Eunuch and Singer's Animal Liberation was the first serious analysis to emerge from the gay liberation movement, and was published in seven countries, with a readership which continues today. Since then Altman has written eleven books, exploring sexuality, politics and their inter-relationship in Australia, the United States and now globally. He was President of the AIDS Society of Asia and the Pacific (2001-5), and has been invited to lecture on AIDS and sexuality in countries across the world, including periods as a Visiting Professor at the University of Chicago and New York University. In 2005 he was Visiting Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, and is a member of the Governing Council of the International AIDS Society and the Board of Oxfam Australia. He was made a Member of the Order of Australia in 2008. His recent books include: 51st State? and Gore Vidal's America.

Ien Ang is the founding Director of the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. She has had the title of Distinguished Professor conferred on her by the University of Western Sydney in recognition of her outstanding research record and eminence. She is currently an ARC Professorial Fellow and is one of the leaders in cultural studies worldwide, with interdisciplinary work spanning many areas of the humanities and social sciences. Her books, including Watching Dallas; Desperately Seeking the Audience and On Not Speaking Chinese, are recognised as classics in the field and her work has been translated into many languages, including German, Korean, and Spanish.

Johannah Fahey is a Research Fellow at Monash University. She has a PhD in cultural studies from Macquarie University. She is interested in post-structuralist theories of language and textuality; post-colonial models of subjectivity, corporeality and ethnicity; mobility and psycho-affective pedagogies of globalisation; and contemporary Australian visual arts. Her latest co-authored book is Haunting the Knowledge Economy. Her earlier book is David Noonan: Before and Now. She is currently working on a new book called Globalizing the Research Imagination.

Katherine Gibson is a Professor of Economic Geography in the Research School of Pacific and Asian Studies at the Australian National University. Her research involves rethinking economic concepts in the light of feminist, poststructuralist and class process theory. She has a strong commitment to action research with communities interested in reconstituting economic practices in place. She shares a collective authorial presence as J.K. Gibson-Graham with her long-term collaborator Professor Julie Graham. Books include: The End of Capitalism (As We Knew It): A Feminist Critique of Political Economy and A Postcapitalist Politics.

Paul James is Director of the Globalism Institute (RMIT), an editor of Arena Journal, and on the Council of the Institute of Postcolonial Studies. He has received a number of awards including the Japan-Australia Foundation Fellowship, an Australian Research Council Fellowship, and the Crisp Medal by the Australasian Political Studies Association for the best book in the field of political studies. His book with Tom Nairn, Global Matrix: Nationalism, Globalism and State-Terror, has just been published by Pluto Press, and Globalism, Nationalism, Tribalism: Bringing Theory Back In was published by Sage Publications in 2006.

Gavin Jones is Professor at the Asia Research Institute, National University of Singapore. He was previously Head of the Division of Demography and Sociology, Research School of Social Sciences at the Australian National University. His research interests cover a wide field, focusing particularly on population policy, the relationships between population growth and economic development, urbanization, marriage and divorce, fertility determinants, and the demographic aspects of educational trends and labour markets. His geographic focus is on South-East and East Asia, particularly Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand.

Jane Kenway is Professor at Monash University and a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia. Among her many books are Consuming Children, and Haunting the Knowledge Economy. Offering fresh interpretations of enduring educational issues and anticipating educational trends long before others, she is widely recognised as one of the most provocative thinkers in education.

Simon Marginson is a Professor of Higher Education in the Centre for the Study of Higher Education at the University of Melbourne. He is Fellow of the Australian College of Education (FACE) and a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia. He works in two domains: higher education studies with emphasis on policy and history, and comparative and international education. Currently he is working largely on issues of globalisation and higher education, with reference to political theory and global sociology and political economy. His most recent book is the edited collection Prospects of Higher Education: Globalization, market competition, public goods and the future of the university.

Terri Seddon has a national and international reputation for her research on the social organization of education as a social institution. This work is cross-sectoral in orientation, looking beyond schools, vocational and higher education, and workplace and community learning contexts in order to understand learning, work practices and organisational and decision-making processes in diverse learning spaces. Her books include: Context and Beyond and Curriculum for the Senior Secondary Years (with Professor Christine Deer. She is currently series editor, with Professor Jenny Ozga and Professor Evie Zambeta, of the World Yearbook of Education.

McKenzie Wark is Associate Professor of Media and Cultural Studies at Eugene Lang College and of Sociology at the New School for Social Research, New York. His research interests include media theory, new media, critical theory, cinema, music, and visual art.  He has authored a number of books, including A Hacker Manifesto and Gamer Theory.

Conference program