Uniview

Vol. 35 No. 2, Spring 2015

A bloomin’ good idea! “ The Delano Scholarship has helped me flourish in my music studies.” JULIA NICHOLLS

Be part of our future For generations, UWA’s musical stars have created magical moments here on campus and across the globe. Bequests from people like the late Vic Delano, a professional musician, have provided young musicians like Julia, Christopher and William with the mentorship of some of the world’s finest performers and relieved the financial burden associated with studying music at university. Through Vic’s generosity, we can share special times with rising stars like Julia and her fellow musicians for many years to come. If you would like to help our talented musicians create magical moments for future generations, consider a gift in your will today.

To find out more, contact: Liz Terracini, Development Manager, Bequests on +61 8 6488 8537 or [email protected] CRICOS Provider Code 00126G UNIPRINT 127326 CRICOS Provider VOL.35 NO. 2, SPRING 2015 ALUMNI MAGAZINE FOR THE UNIVERSITY OF WESTERN AUSTRALIA CONTENTS In Focus: campus news and views 2 From the Vice-Chancellery 8 Vocal studies hit the high notes 9 The Forrest Scholars – unlocking the doors of knowledge 12 Graduate profile: AMA WA President Dr Michael Gannon 14 Launching UWA IQ 17 What makes a good idea grow? 18 Searching for the ‘gold standard’ of healing 22 From idea to “serious innovation” 24 The CEED career launch pad 26 Rammed Earth 28 “Making things happen” for PIAF 30 Archaeology in a war zone 32 “ The Delano Scholarship Foreign Minister Julie Bishop hopes New Colombo Volunteers central to UWA’s success 34 Plan students gain insights and understanding of has helped me flourish Grad News 36 the region during study and internships. She is seen Grad Briefs 40 here with UWA Colombo Plan students Rebecca 2 Lawrence and James Panarettos – see In Focus. in my music studies.” UWA’s ‘book bag’ 42 photo: subiaco post JULIA NICHOLLS Witnesses to the Holocaust 43 Oz lit goes to Harvard 44

cover image: Notre Dame University’s Ella Ganfield and UWA’s Dan Robertson are enthusiastic participants in a student-led innovation initiative at UWA’s St Catherine’s College– see What makes a good idea grow? photo: matthew galligan

Uniview is produced twice a year in May and November.

David Harrison, Director, Government and Corporate Communications Editor: Trea Wiltshire ([email protected]) Grad Briefs: Terry Larder ([email protected]) Design: Janine Blackstock, UniPrint (uniprint.uwa.edu.au) Advertising: Trea Wiltshire +61 8 6488 1914 Editorial: Government and Corporate Communications, The University of Western Australia, 35 Stirling Highway, Crawley, WA 6009 Telephone: +61 8 6488 1914, Fax: +61 8 6488 1192 Address Changes: Terry Larder +61 8 6488 2447, Be part of our future Fax: +61 8 6488 7996, Email: [email protected] For generations, UWA’s musical stars have created magical moments here on campus and across the globe. Material from Uniview may be reproduced accompanied by an appropriate credit. Bequests from people like the late Vic Delano, a professional musician, have provided young musicians Uniview can be viewed online: like Julia, Christopher and William with the mentorship of some of the world’s finest performers and uwa.edu.au/university/publications/uniview School of music students are being guided relieved the financial burden associated with studying music at university. UWA website: uwa.edu.au towards future careers by some of Australia’s top Through Vic’s generosity, we can share special times with rising stars like Julia and her fellow musicians The University of Western Australia – UWA performing musicians – see Vocal studies hit the high notes photo: matthew galligan, from the 9 for many years to come. UWAnews school of music brochure the way If you would like to help our talented musicians create magical moments for future generations, consider a gift in your will today.

To find out more, contact: Liz Terracini, Development Manager, Bequests on +61 8 6488 8537 or [email protected] Uniview The University of Western Australia | 1 CRICOS Provider Code 00126G UNIPRINT 127326 CRICOS Provider IN FOCUS | Spring 2015 Spring 2015 | IN FOCUS

“Find your rightful place – your parents may have a simpler way of putting it: get a job – and help shape a brave new world.”

Right: Professor Doctor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono with Vice- Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson and Chancellor Dr Michael Chaney

Below: It’s the people-to- people contact that counts, says former Indonesian President Professor Doctor Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono, seen here with Perth USAsia CEO Gordon Flake

SBY’s advice: “Shape a brave new world” When Professor Doctor Susilo in Asia, he said, and to address Bambang Yudhoyono visited the geopolitical challenges of a UWA in September, he met dynamic region. politicians and business The University is delighted leaders, academics and to have a leader of such stature students – and he had sound joining UWA and Chancellor advice for the latter: “Strive Michael Chaney commended to be a person of your time the former President’s and, if possible, take a hand achievements during two in that time. Find your rightful terms of office “marked by place – your parents may have democratic reforms, political a simpler way of putting it: get stability, high economic growth a job – and help shape a brave and resilience”. new world.” On receiving an honorary The highly-regarded former degree in a Winthrop Hall filled President of Indonesia – who with the colours of academic has become a Senior Fellow regalia, Professor Yudhoyono at the UWA-based Perth urged graduating students to use their education to battle USAsia Centre – appreciated poverty and ignorance. that our University has wide See video of the event at: academic links with his nation’s https://goo.gl/JKX42n universities and government Already strengthening the agencies. To further strengthen UWA-Indonesia relationships these vital people-to-people are three of the four UWA relationships, Professor undergraduates awarded New Yudhyono urged students to Colombo Plan Scholarships learn Bahasa and experience to live, study and work across Indonesia’s rich culture. the Indo-Pacific region. “Our Indonesia needed friendly students will return with new Above: Foreign Minister Julie Bishop with UWA’s New Colombo Plan partners like Australia to insights and understanding scholarship winners Theodore Stapleton (China) and Rebecca Lawrence, support infrastructure of the region,” says Foreign James Panarettos and Anton Lucanus (Indonesia). photo: subiaco post development and innovation Minister Julie Bishop.

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From UWA to Silicon Valley Award winning graduate Morag Scrimgeour has moved from WA to Silicon Valley, home of the world’s leading tech firms. Morag recently won an Astronomical Society of Australia award for her UWA research that is already having an impact in the field of astrophysics. Her PhD was supervised by a high-profile team including Professor Lister Staveley-Smith in the UWA node of the International Centre for Radio Astronomy Research (ICRAR). The outstanding graduate says the excitement generated by the Square Kilometre Array led her to UWA and ICRAR — and to collaboration with Australia’s leading astronomers, including Nobel Laureate Professor Brian Schmidt who Above: Philanthropist Dr Nicola Forrest Hall – a home for the nominated her for a scholarship. Forrest with the plan for Forrest Hall world’s best and brightest minds Now working as a data by Kerry Hill Architect scientist in Silicon Valley, she An exciting new addition to Forrest Scholars will be housed is using the maths, computing the city’s landscape will help in self-contained apartments and other scientific skills she attract exceptional students in the $15 million four-storey studied at UWA to gain insights from across the world. Forrest development. from big data, an area that, she Hall will realise the vision of “The new development has says “offers many exciting career philanthropists Andrew and been designed to attract and Nicola Forrest who made paths in the tech world”. inspire top scholars in their Australia’s largest philanthropic academic pursuits while creating donation by establishing the Forrest Research Foundation. a space that enhances their The Foundation establishes learning experience,” said Dr generous scholarships and Nicola Forrest at the launch of fellowships (see The Forrest the impressive design by Kerry Scholars – unlocking the doors Hill Architects (founded by of knowledge) and successful graduate Kerry Hill).

Graduate wins Perkins Scholarship Two related UWA Law graduates winning the same prestigious UWA graduate Morag Scrimgeour scholarship to Oxford University is a remarkable achievement. New marine research “I’ve always dreamed centre takes shape of going to Oxford and I’m UWA’s campus is constantly incredibly grateful to the School changing. The latest addition of Indigenous Studies for their is the Indian Ocean Marine support,” said graduate Aurora Research Centre nearing Milroy as she prepared to take up completion on the western flank. her Chevening/Charlie Perkins The Centre will be home to Scholarship – and be reunited 330 research partners covering with her cousin and fellow A descendant of the Palyku Perkins Scholarship winners Aurora Milroy and Jared Field with specialties from oceanography graduate/scholarship winner people, Aurora gained first Jessyca Hutchens. Class Honours in her Arts/Law British High Commissioner Ms Menna to marine engineering from Rawlings in Canberra UWA, the Australian Institute of “When I came to UWA it was degree. At Oxford she is studying Marine Science, the CSIRO and easy to settle in because my mum a Master of Public Law with that makes positive changes the WA Department of Fisheries. has worked here for ages,” said its strong focus on developing to Aboriginal and social The six-storey centre designed the graduate, ”and having Jessyca analytical and critical skills. policy in Australia,” said the by Ferguson Architects (founded at Oxford means travelling to a “I’m passionate about graduate. The UK Government’s by graduate Gus Ferguson) was new university won’t be scary!” Indigenous and environmental Chevening Scholarship Scheme made possible by a $34 million (Aurora’s mother, Professor Jill policy and want to study how partners with the Charlie Federal Government grant and Milroy, is Dean of the School of they intersect with economic Perkins Scholarship to provide partner contributions. Indigenous Studies). policy. I aim to work in an area funding of $75,000 a year.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 3 IN FOCUS | Spring 2015 Spring 2015 | IN FOCUS

Honouring our Laureate Bringing intellect – and diversity – to the Bench Justice Michelle Gordon has become the 52nd Justice of Australia’s High Court — the fifth woman to be appointed to this high office. The UWA Law The UWA Shop graduate was warmly welcomed, with observers noting her Along with UWA’s brand refresh, formidable intellectual capacity. the University’s merchandise Justice Gordon, one of three has a new look and a new women currently serving on the range – and it’s appealing both High Court, to students and graduates is widely who like to maintain their recognised association with the campus. by colleagues The UWA Shop is now open on the Bench for business, visit shopuwa. and at the com.au for t-shirts, hoodies, Bar for her water bottles, hats and much achievements more. Plus, Uniview readers since taking Top: Professor Barry also get a 10% discount silk in 2003 and becoming a Marshall, the most popular on all purchases before Federal Court judge in April 2007. Nobel Laureate with Taylors 31 December, just use promo Justice Gordon joins fellow College students code UNIVIEW10 when graduate Robert French, who was completing your order. Just in appointed Chief Justice of the Left: AusIndustry time for the festive season! High Court in 2008. Commercialisation Director Peter Clarke with Start Something prize winners Finding just the right word Jonathan Lilley, Jo Hawkins and Ghulam Hassan Staff in the School of Physics from some strategic coaching where Jay Jay Jegasethan is workshops organised by Mr It is 10 years since Barry Training continue to translate School Manager, and the Perth Jegasethan and Scrabble WA. Marshall and Robin Warren research into economic and Modern schoolmates of his sons “We wanted to be sure we shared a Nobel Prize for social benefits for Australia Radheya and Rahul, know that had a strong core of players,” their ulcer research that has and the Laureate’s high profile taking members of this family on said Jay Jay who has forged significantly reduced the has generated an international at Scrabble is a big challenge. strong ties with Perth Modern incidence of gastric cancer. network of academic and Mr Jegasethan and Radheya as Guest Speaker at the “Professor Barry Marshall commercial collaborations, have played in national school’s Sphinx Society. He has brought extraordinary especially in China and the championships, while Rahul also runs a School of Physics honour to UWA and to Western Asia-Pacific region. competed in last year’s world Australia with his unflinching A further international fillip youth championships. Both Science Journalism Work dedication to research,” said was the Nobel Foundation boys and three schoolmates Experience Program that sees Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson news that the UWA researcher were selected for the WA team students from several schools at a ceremony to rename UWA’s attracts more visits to the that competed in the World interviewing UWA researchers science library as the Barry J Nobel Prize website than any Youth Scrabble Championships and postgraduate students Marshall Library. other living Laureate – and at UWA – and they benefited about their work. The rebadged library is not overall, in terms of Google only a valuable resource, it will analytics, the graduate is also offer students opportunities flanked by Martin Luther King to meet with the Nobel and Albert Einstein! Laureates. See video of the “I’ve always liked to try event: https://goo.gl/t2sdwi something out of the box,” says Today Professor Marshall’s the researcher who, as a young team at the Marshall Centre graduate, tested his research for Infectious Diseases and on himself.

Taking innovation to a new level Barry Marshall has inspired them — see What makes a many to “try something out good idea grow? of the box” — and it’s that Already making good brand of thinking we highlight ideas grow are Jo Hawkins, in this issue of UNIVIEW. Jonathan Lilly and Ghulam With innovation and agility Hassan who won prizes in the becoming the buzz words in inaugural Start Something Canberra’s corridors of power, program with three very different it is timely to remind readers innovations. You can read of innovations happening on more about Start Something Above: The WA team with UWA’s Jay Jay Jegasethan (L – R) campus right now — and the in our Guest Column by Tim Liana Aho, Aditya Bose-Mandal, Rahul Jegatheva, Pieta Sparrow, UWA initiatives that facilitate Shannahan. Radheya Jegatheva

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New chair tackles treatment gap

With growing concern about Professor Zepf’s research youth suicide rates and a lack interests include mood, eating of clinicians in rural WA, the and bipolar disorders, ADHD, establishment of a Chair in Child and impulsive, aggressive and and Adolescent Psychiatry at self-harming behaviours. He UWA meets a pressing need – has a particular interest in and Professor Florian Zepf from the non-pharmacological Germany brings impressive treatment of ADHD – another international credentials to hot topic in Australia. UWA. His appointment is seen “The area of child and as a response to calls for more adolescent mental health appropriately-training clinicians offers very interesting career and more targeted research. and research opportunities “Our focus is on how to best because apart from psychiatric equip students planning to knowledge, it touches on practise as GPs, but also to paediatrics, internal medicine, encourage more to follow this pharmacology and neurology specialty,” explains Professor that need to be integrated from Zepf who is also Clinical Director a developmental viewpoint. Above: Graduate Professor Nick Anstey with Sir Gustav Nossal / Head of Department of the “Students considering photo australian academy of science State Governments Specialised career options should know Child and Adolescent Mental there is a great demand for Graduate’s global research acknowledged Health Services. professionals and skills in this area – in Germany this is one UWA graduate Nick Anstey, one UWA medical students for of medicine’s most sought of Australia’s leading infectious more than 20 years,“ recalls the after specialties.” diseases specialists, has been graduate. “In 1988 just before UWA’s new chair in Child battling the challenge of malaria I left for postgraduate tropical and Adolescent Psychiatry for 25 years – and his global medicine training in London is affiliated to the Schools of work has been acknowledged (on a UWA Sobotka Postgraduate Psychiatry and Paediatrics by the Australian Academy Scholarship) and malaria and Child Health. of Science’s inaugural Gustav research in West Africa, he made Nossal Medal for Global Health. the time to meet with me. Then Based at Darwin’s Menzies (aged 85) he shared his insights School of Health Research and from a long clinical career in East Royal Darwin Hospital, tropical Africa and gave me an inscribed medicine research has taken copy of his excellent book Professor Anstey to Gambia, Human Parasitology.” Left: Professor Florian Zepf Tanzania, Indonesia and While Malaria takes a toll on Malaysia, and on receiving some 200 million children and the award the graduate paid adults each year and remains tribute to Dr Alan Charters a significant cause of death Simply the best! (1903 – 1996) who, he says, worldwide, Professor Anstey says steered him towards a career in better ways of preventing and The extraordinary hub of talent tropical medicine. treating the disease are having a in UWA’s School of Music is “Dr Charters was an inspiring positive impact. receiving accolades from across teacher of parasitology to the nation. Artist-in-Residence and Lecturer Ashley Smith’s clarinet performance with the WA Symphony Orchestra has won Performance of the Year at Sydney’s 2015 Art Music Awards. And the WA lecturer/performer has been hailed a ‘rising star’ by the world’s leading clarinet manufacturer, Buffet-Crampon. The win is doubly satisfying because the work performed, Concerto for Clarinet and Orchestra, was composed by UWA graduate Lachlan Skipworth. It was the School’s second success at the awards with Composition Lecturer James Ledger winning Best New Work for his Violin Concerto last year. In this issue, we profile another top performer whose presence on campus benefits School of Music Above: Soprano Sara Macliver with vocal students (L – R) Brooke McKnight, students: soprano Sara Macliver – Delia Price and Gabby Scheggia. photo: matthew galligan see Vocal studies hit the high note.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 5 IN FOCUS | Spring 2015 Spring 2015 | IN FOCUS

Global student, global citizen

Students are at the heart of “It was fantastic being everything we do at UWA, involved in a real-life project including making sure the in one of physics’ most pivotal student experience is a global fields,” said Bradley. “Scientists one, with multiple opportunities want to harness fusion power for exchanges (with some 22 for clean energy but we’ll only countries), international field control the fusion process if we trips, overseas study electives know how to control plasma. and summer camps. “Our small international Physics student Bradley group had a week to design Saunders appreciated this and assemble a probe that as one of seven students measured temperature, density attending the Future Physicists and fluctuation levels — and International Summer Camp we did it!” hosted by China’s University of The UWA group representing Science and Technology (USTC). Australia joined students While iPhones carry images of from leading universities the Great Wall, what impressed including London’s Imperial Bradley was working on the College, Oxford, and Yale. The world’s longest linear plasma trip was the result of strong generator, the KMAX, capable of collaborative research links Above: Physics students Jonathan Israel, producing and measuring key between USTC and UWA. Mitchell Chiew, and Bradley Saunders properties of plasma.

UWA’s 100th Rhodes Scholar Scholarship winner working with communities

Rhodes Scholar Amy Steinepreis Below: UWA’s Rhodes Scholars Zoe Bush may be has joined an impressive cohort Amy Steinepreis (2015) and soft-spoken but she is of UWA graduates awarded the Bob Hawke (1952) a feisty activist whose world’s oldest postgraduate commitment to social scholarship, and she sat next justice pre-dates to one of its most distinguished leadership roles in – former Prime Minister Bob huge untapped potential UWA’s Feminist Action Hawke – at the scholars dinner for cultural and creative Network and her on and earlier this year. exchanges and I’d like off campus activism. The winner of this “Bob Hawke advised us to to contribute to cultural be open-minded about our year’s Ciara Glennon diplomacy through global future careers and to retain Scholarship has been organisations like UNESCO the flexibility to grow as we volunteering for good or the Federal Department of learn and to discover ourselves causes since she was through study,” she recalled Foreign Affairs and Trade.” a teenager and co- The graduate completed a before leaving Perth. “He founded The Bridges Zoe Bush with Chief Justice Wayne Martin Bachelor of Arts with First Class Above: received a standing ovation Foundation, a support (a UWA graduate) at the presentation of the and turned the night into the Honours in English, French and group for young Ciara Glennon Scholarship best send-off imaginable for Italian, followed by a Master people suffering from the new Rhodes Scholars.” in International Journalism eating disorders. She worked UWA’s 100th Rhodes Scholar at UWA. At Oxford she is in conjunction with Princess hopes to build cultural and undertaking a Master in Modern Margaret Hospital to establish Western Australia, Zoe was linguistic bridges that generate Languages during her first WA’s first halfway house for awarded the Linda Cotton national and international year at Merton College before people with eating disorders Memorial Scholarship last conversations: “I believe there’s progressing to DPhil studies. and their families. year. She used the scholarship Zoe is completing her to carry out research for the Honours thesis as part of Yawuru people (native title research led by the Law School’s holders of Broome) into the use Professor Harry Blagg on a of social investment bonds in Cooperative Research Centre- the post-native title landscape funded project Developing to achieve change in criminal Diversionary Pathways for law. This work contributed to a Indigenous Youth with Foetal significant corporate investment Alcohol Spectrum Disorders. in Yawuru’s initiatives. She is also working as a The final-year Law/Arts Research Assistant with student was presented with Professor Harry Blagg on her Ciara Glennon Scholarship research exploring Indigenous by Western Australia’s Chief women-led initiatives to tackle Justice Wayne Martin who has family violence in communities been vocal in his call for action in the State’s north-west. on alternative pathways for A volunteer in community Indigenous offenders who suffer legal education for the from foetal alcohol spectrum Employment Law Centre of disorders (FASD).

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Gallery’s lively program Nuffield Scholar Reece Curwen photo: farm weekly There’s still time to catch the Lawrence Wilson Art Gallery’s final exhibitions for this year and to participate in what promises to be a lively program of talks and panel discussions. The Warmun Then and Now exhibition features artwork by renowned Indigenous artists; Object Lessons III: Pattern Recognition completes the three- part exhibition of works from the Cruthers Collection of Women’s Art; while DeMonstrable revisits the controversial Earmouse image, a much-debated symbol of science’s capacity to shape and alter living bodies. All three exhibitions run until December 5. Full details at: lwgallery.uwa. Nuffield win “a brilliant journey” edu.au With Agricultural Science at interest for the graduate who to study practices across UWA ranked 24th in the world, manages canola, barley and the world. “Spending 16 weeks it was no surprise that double wheat crops while also running away from the farm seemed degree (Agriculture/Economics) 10,000 Merino ewes. daunting,” he recalls, but graduate Reece Curwen was “The corporate model is the opportunity to “gather the only Australian this year increasingly relevant in WA invaluable knowledge and to win a prestigious $30,000 agriculture and I wanted to be exposed to global Nuffield Scholarhip. study system procedures and agriculture” was irresistible. Reece had returned to the practices that family farms His Nuffield study will be family farm in the shadow of the could adopt. There aren’t many presented at next year’s Stirling Ranges, but his quest kids that get the opportunity Nuffield Australia National for knowledge about global to go back to the family farm Conference and his tour trends in farm management these days because numbers was sponsored by the systems and maximising are decreasing as farm sizes Grains Research and productivity continues. increase. Finding answers and Development Corporation. While WA’s highly productive being able to change how we “Words can’t really express export industry may be do things could benefit the how brilliant the Nuffield dominated by large-scale whole industry.” journey has been for me, and producers, the family farm Because of the demands of I thank Nuffield Australia and remains a significant contributor. farming, Reece initially debated the GRDC for this potentially Ensuring it remains profitable whether to apply for the annual game-changing opportunity,” and sustainable is an abiding scholarship that allows farmers says Reece.

EMI welcomes Media’s go-to scientist science leader Malaysian Airlines flight One of MH370’s disappearance last Australia’s year remains one of aviation’s leading biggest mysteries, but charting scientists, the possible passage of graduate Dr wreckage was never a mystery Megan Clark for Professor of Oceanography has been Charitha Pattiaratchi. appointed to Chair the The oceanographer rapidly Board of UWA’s Energy became the go-to scientist and Minerals Institute (EMI). following the discovery of wreckage on Reunion Island Welcoming the appointment, Top: Patricia Piccinini, Protein lattice, – within days he had done 70 Subset – Red Portrait, 1997, colour Vice-Chancellor Professor Professor Charitha Pattiaratchi interviews with international photograph Paul Johnson said it was a photo: west australian newspapers media, explaining the Indian Middle: Betty Carrington, Nyidbarriya, huge boost to the Institute’s Ocean currents. capability and status as Australia’s Purnululu, Berndt Museum Collection. Professor Pattiaratchi’s Intellectual and cultural copyright leading collaborative research computer modelling had Professor Pattiaratchi’s the Artist facilitator given. Dr Clark began charted the probability that expertise was also in demand Above: Elizabeth Gower, Choices, her career as a mine geologist, parts would wash up in waters after the 2004 Indian Ocean 1986, acrylic on paper, CCWA 868 rose to take the helm of the off East Africa. His predictions tsunami when he chaired a © Courtesy the artist and Sutton CSIRO, and currently serves were made 12 month before the working group on tsunami Gallery, Melbourne and Milani on the board of several first piece of wreckage washed modelling as part of the Indian Gallery, Brisbane leading mining companies. ashore on Reunion Island. Ocean Tsunami Warning System.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 7 From the | VICE–CHANCELLERY

Re-imagining student life

We are living through the most rapid technological the material is available online and can be accessed at times and scientific transformation ever experienced by and places convenient to the students. Yet every evening the campus is alive with games of soccer, netball, frisbee and so human kind. The way we live our lives, socialize, on. We now have more students engaged in social sports, and work and learn are all being transformed at an more gym members, than ever before. unprecedented pace by technology which is itself Even as lecture rooms become emptier, collective study evolving faster than ever. With these changes come spaces in the University’s libraries become ever busier, and to respond to this demand we plan to significantly expand new possibilities and opportunities for UWA, as one and upgrade student facilities in the Reid library over the next of Australia’s and the world’s leading universities, eighteen months. We are also working with the Guild to ensure to ensure that our students are equipped to prosper that on-campus catering facilities are enhanced to meet and succeed in the technological environment of student expectations – coffee and Wi-Fi are now the essential prerequisites for effective group work. the twenty-first century. We are also transforming the way we structure and deliver Today’s students are certainly different now to those from our teaching. Digital resources are being incorporated into twenty or even ten years ago. They have grown up in a all our degree programs to support and expand the learning digital age, with computers in the classroom since they opportunities for students; practical laboratory experience is were in primary school, with smartphones giving them being supplemented with simulation laboratories; high-speed immediate access to information and networks wherever broadband connections allow real-time video links between they are in the world. They have expectation and behaviors our students and tutorial partners from universities in Asia, that are very different to those of their parents’ or their America and Europe. teachers’ generation, and this poses both a challenge and an The inclusion of digital content and activity into teaching is opportunity to universities like UWA. seen to be progressing too fast by some, too slowly by others, We have a beautiful campus – much loved by generations but ultimately it will be students who will set the pace. If we of our graduates – superb libraries, countless lecture theatres, fail to meet the expectations of today’s digital learners, they teaching laboratories and classrooms. Yet today’s students will look elsewhere for educational sustenance. Our challenge are as likely to watch lectures online as in person, as likely to is to find the optimal mixture of the digital and the physical, meet their tutorial partners in a virtual chatroom as a physical the simulated and the practical, so that our students graduate classroom, as likely to submit their assessed work to an with the array of intellectual, technical and personal attributes electronic postbox as a faculty office. and capabilities that will equip them to be successful twenty- This does not mean that today’s students have distanced first century citizens. themselves from campus life. Lecture attendance at UWA, in common with all major universities in Australia and globally, Professor Paul Johnson is much lower today than in the past because so much of Vice-Chancellor

8 | Uniview Spring 2015 Vocal studies hit the high notes

Critics are enraptured with the And now it is her turn to nurture and ABC Classics and has gone on “silvery beauty of her effortless UWA’s vocal talent. to record more than 35 CDs with the “We’re fortunate at UWA to have national broadcaster. She has also voice” and School of Music vocal many teachers who are performers at performed extensively with Australia’s students benefit from the technical the top of their fields – opera singer major orchestrasand been guest guidance and experience of Andrew Foote is head of voice, Graeme artist with international orchestras soprano Sara Macliver. Gilling performs on piano, Ashley Smith A career high point for the on clarinet, Paul Wright and Shaun graduate was the 2013 Australian Lee-Chen on violin, and the head of tour when Musica Viva brought Arriving at UWA to study piano in the school Dr Alan Lourens, performs London’s Academy of Ancient Music 1980s, Sara Macliver already knew that and conducts internationally. Being to Australia to mark four decades of she really wanted to sing. Lucky for us, practitioners definitely adds another performance across the globe. The a School of Music production called for dimension to our teaching,” she says. critics applauded her technical skill auditions she tried for a small solo role. “What I love about teaching is in bringing the songs of Handel and “My mum tells me I sang the moment watching students grow as artists. Purcell to life. I discovered my voice and well before Under the leadership of Andrew Foote “It was one of those moments I could speak, so I was delighted when, vocal studies at UWA are reaching new that, as a performer, you don’t on hearing me sing, it was suggested heights so it is exciting for me to be part forget – where you feel completely in I swop from piano to voice studies,” of that. While many of our top vocal control, as if you could do absolutely recalls Ms Macliver. “It was lucky for me students aspire to perform, it’s also anything,– and you have the audience because I was quietly ambitious about wonderful to see others keen to focus in the palm of your hand!” she recalls. getting on stage, being noticed and on teaching – because we need more “My voice is suited to this style of getting good advice…” brilliant teachers.” music. It’s not a big voice, but is very pure and I have the ability to sing with a very straight tone – and, as you get older, your voice matures and has a richer, warmer tone than in your 20s.” And the bad moments? “Certainly, there are moments of sheer terror! I faced many demons with performance anxiety and had to work hard on that. I remember standing in the wings, asking: ‘Why am I doing this to myself?’ But as soon as I walked out on stage I knew why. This is my calling – and the highs are always enough to draw me back!” “What I love about teaching Today Ms Macliver (who is married is watching students grow to Richard Bevan, Managing Director of as artists.” Cassini Resources) juggles performing and teaching commitments with raising three children. Awarded an Honorary Doctors She received all three from legendary The WA Opera Company saw from UWA, the graduate currently UWA teacher, the late Molly McGurk, Ms Macliver’s potential early on and works with five voice students at UWA who had performed with the Sydney snapped her up as a Young Artist. as well as private students. Symphony Orchestra as both pianist and Since then she has made many of the Her next performance will be vocalist. The winner of ABC Concerto company’s operatic roles her own – from Handel’s Messiah with the Collegium and Vocalist awards, she was to have a Suzannah in the Marriage of Figaro to Symphonic Chorus in December profound influence on Sara Macliver’s life Nanetta in Falstaff. – and 2016 is already looking busy and work. Today Sara Macliver is a favourite with appearances with WASO, the “Molly taught me so much more than with orchestras across Australia and Australia Ensemble, Melbourne just good technique – how to interpret enjoys a special relationship with the Chamber Orchestra and the Auckland songs, how to colour words, how to shape Australian Brandenburg Orchestra. Her Philharmonia already scheduled. n phrases and tell a story,” says Ms Macliver. first recording was with that orchestra

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 9 ACADEMIC PROFILE | Stephen Smith

Foreign Affairs Minister Kevin Rudd and Defence Minister Stephen Smith sign a Joint Statement of Defence Cooperation and Strategic Policy Partnership at Australia-UK Ministerial consultations in Sydney in 2011 photo: department of defence

From parliamentarian to professor

As Australia’s Foreign Minister and Minister for Defence, former parliamentarian Stephen Smith played a significant role on the world stage. Today as UWA’s Professor of International Law, this wealth of experience benefits UWA Law students.

During his final years in parliament, Condoleezza Rice, who visited UWA “While there’s no shortage of Stephen Smith followed fellow graduate before leaving office. international conflicts right now, I’ve Kim Beazley into the Federal Cabinet Today it is clear that Professor Smith always believed that the best antidote for post of Minister for Defence. And when is pleased to be back on campus. He political and geographic tensions is that Kim Beazley retired to become a UWA helped chart the course of the Law most nations are seeking prosperity for Professor, it was Foreign Minister School’s new Masters in International their people, and prosperity and growth Stephen Smith who asked him to Law (offered for the first time this year) are dependent on stability and peace. become Australia’s Ambassador to the and he now serves on the Perth USAsia “UWA aims to be among the world’s United States, “an offer that so surprised Centre Board. top 50 universities by 2050 and offering him, he dropped his cup of tea”, recalls “All of this follows on quite naturally innovative courses – like the Masters in Stephen Smith. from the work I was doing as Foreign International Law – will help build bigger Both shared a quiet authority and and Defence Minister,” he says. “And I’m and better bridges with law schools leadership style that won support pleased that the Perth USAsia Centre throughout our region.” across the political spectrum. And, since is at UWA because it’s great for the When he arrived at UWA in the 1970s, retiring, both have rejected the notion University and its students. Stephen Smith knew that he wanted to of adding their political recollections to “This is one of the great campuses become involved in public life but that the plethora of memoirs produced by in Australia – I visited most when I was he needed some life experience before retiring colleagues. Shadow Minister for Education – and entering politics. He completed Law, Should he change his mind, there the Centre is a conduit for a deepening and then his Arts degree when articled to would be no shortage of drama in the understanding of US and Asian foreign Lavan and Walsh, now Lavan Legal (today narrative. The Member for Perth was at policy, history, politics, commerce he’s now an advisory board member). the epicentre of momentous events as and trade. We’re living in fast-moving, A Masters in International Law at the adviser to Prime Minister Paul Keating uncertain times and the Centre can do London School of Economics followed, when Federal Labor embarked on important work about how Australia along with being admitted to the Middle major economic reforms. Following engages with our part of the world, the Temple as a barrister. Keating’s demise, Stephen Smith threw Indo-Pacific. Today the professor recalls a far his support behind Beazley’s bids for “I believe the biggest challenge more overtly political UWA campus in Opposition Leader. During the Rudd/ for Australia and the world will be the the 1970s, when student activism and the Gillard era, he served as Foreign Affairs, re-emergence of China as an economic political passions of the Whitlam era made Trade and Defence Minister, and – when and strategic super power, the rise newspaper headlines. Rudd returned to office – he did not of India as a great power and of “If someone controversial came on contest the 2013 election. “It was time,” Indonesia as a global influence. The campus there was a demo,” he muses, he says. exponential growth of Asia’s middle “so Kim Beazley and I found it interesting As Foreign Minister, the genial class is still under appreciated, yet when David Irvine, then head of ASIO, parliamentarian famously made it offers huge potential for positive addressed the Perth USAsia Centre there friends with many world leaders, engagement, for trade in goods and was not a demonstrator in sight! David including former US Secretary of State services – and for education. was flanked by Kim and Sue Boyd – and

10 | Uniview Spring 2015 Stephen Smith | ACADEMIC PROFILE

Perth USAsia Centre’s Gordon Flake, Professor Stephen Smith, Ambassador Kim Beazley and Ambassador to Japan Bruce Miller at UWA at a Perth USAsia Centre event on the Australia/Japan/US trilateral relationship

“This is one of the great campuses in Australia – I visited most when I was Shadow Minister for Education – and the Perth USAsia Centre is a conduit for a deepening understanding of US and Asian foreign policy, history, politics, commerce and trade. We’re living in fast-moving, uncertain times and the Centre can do important work about how Australia engages with our part of the world….”

we all agreed that back in the 70s, and social media, the rigour of travelling Sue Boyd would have been leading the to and from Canberra – and, very often, demo!” (David Irvine is a graduate; Sue taking a pay cut on the way! Boyd was the first female Guild President; “That’s something that worries me – both were previously career diplomats.) for the sake of our State and our nation.” When he called ‘time’ on his political Professor Smith lectures across career, Stephen Smith did so with a a range of units and supervises sobering thought: “Politics today is a very postgraduate students. His appointment Stephen Smith during his time as Australia’s Defence Minister disembarks from a coalition tough business and it’s getting harder has been welcomed by Dean of the UH-60 Blackhawk helicopter at Patrol Base to encourage a wide range of people to Law Professor Erika Techera who says Razaq to meet with Australian soldiers serving in Afghanistan photo: department of defence think about making that contribution to his insights and experiences of the society,” he observes. “Whatever healthy practical application of law and policy scepticism Australians once had for their are invaluable. leaders, in the past there was always a “Particularly in the area of public regard – even a begrudging regard – for international law, Stephen brings a unique the contribution politicians made in perspective from which our students public life. can learn,” she says. “Our international “Today, if you approach outstanding law team also benefits as we continue local citizens few appear willing to to internationalise, extending our contemplate standing for office given the partnerships, programs and research scrutiny they and their families would projects across the South East Asian face, the pressure of the 24/7 news cycle region and beyond.” n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 11 Development and Alumni Relations

The Forrest Scholars – unlocking the doors of knowledge

Timothy Hammer, Dulce Vargas Landin, United States Mexico Tim Hammer believes that “It is a prestigious place Western Australia is the best to pursue a scientific place in the world to learn career,” Forrest Scholar, more about the evolution Dulce Vargas Landin of the world’s arid biota. responded when asked Tim is one of the newly about coming to Perth announced Forrest scholars from Mexico to study. starting his studies in Western Australia and “There is a universe Dulce will be supervised by the 2014 winner he is already making exciting discoveries in his out there to of the Prime Minister’s prize for life science, focus area, Ptilotus (mulla mulla), a globally understand, Dr Ryan Lister. She will focus on research that has remarkable plant genus able to hyper-accumulate and, by supporting the potential for breakthrough understanding phosphorus for survival in low-nutrient soils. these scholars, of neuro-epigenomic processes, and the future Tim’s work has significant potential practical we are unlocking development of therapies for conditions such as benefits in landscape restoration, ecological tremendous doors schizophrenia, bipolar and autism. remediation and agriculture and he is keen to of knowledge.” Currently completing an internship in Nice, make a contribution to his field at UWA. Dulce is passionate about her field and how her “I would like to make a mark in botany dr andrew forrest work will benefit humanity. She loves travelling in Australia. If I can do that I think I will have citwa because it offers an opportunity to learn more accomplished a lot,” said the American plant about people and how individuals are shaped biologist, who has relocated from Virginia where by their culture. he established Old Dominion University’s student “It’s an honour to be a Forrest Scholar and to chapter of the Botanical Society of America and know I will be supported, not just economically first student-led native plant garden to support but by the team at the Forrest Foundation. It’s the student-led studies of migrating butterflies. best option for my career,” said Dulce.

Artist’s impression Kerry Hill Architects

Forrest Hall Construction of the purpose-built centre for innovation, Forrest Hall, is expected to start mid-2016 for completion by semester one 2018. Designed by internationally renowned Kerry Hill Architects, Forrest Hall is earmarked to be built in a beautiful location overlooking the Swan River, at the corner of Mounts Bay Road and Hackett Drive. The four-storey development will consist of around 33 self-catered one and two bedroom apartments, an outdoor terrace with river views, a multi-purpose room for seminars and functions, and undercroft car parking facilities.

12 | Uniview Spring 2015 Development and Alumni Relations

Best in the world – innovators, role models Trung Viet Nguyen, Even early in their careers, the Forrest Scholars are among the best Vietnam in the world in their fields. They were attracted to study in Perth Like so many, Trung Viet with global leaders, but they are themselves role models. They Nguyen’s family has been are innovators, “set to chart a new course”, in the words of their touched by cancer. benefactor, Dr Andrew Forrest, CitWA. “I have seen a lot of people “This is truly a momentous day,” said Dr Forrest at an event to affected by the disease, welcome the scholars to Western Australia. “There is a universe that’s why I want to make a out there to understand, and, by supporting these scholars, we difference,” said Trung, who are unlocking tremendous doors of knowledge. I’ll be proud it all studied his masters in applied started here in WA universities.” science and studied his masters in applied It is anticipated that the Forrest Scholars will make science and science at The University of Sydney. breakthroughs in their broad ranging fields and it is that diversity Trung is excited to be joining Professor Ryan that has Dr Nicola Forrest excited. Lister’s team too, in their groundbreaking genome ”Having people from around the world is something that we research at UWA. He hopes, through his studies, aspire to attract,” she said. to develop innovative new molecular tools and “With our five pioneers here, we have launched a wonderful, drugs that can help people with cancer. academically, intellectually driven future for the universities of Trung has also been making a difference Western Australia, to leverage the enormous intellectual capital in the lives of young people in his home town, we have in this State. Nicola and I are deeply grateful for this as co-founder of Sharing is Caring, a Sydney- opportunity to set the ball rolling,” said Dr Andrew Forrest. based organisation that encourages Vietnamese students and workers to provide scholarships for disadvantaged children in the Binh Chanh district of Ho Chi Minh City.

Grace Goh, Singapore Sophie Monnier, France Nearly 1.5 million Australians, “I wanted to work in one of 16.5 per cent of the working the best environments in population, are employed in geophysics. That’s why shift work, which is associated I came here,” said exploration with adverse health, safety geophysicist Sophie Monnier. and performance outcomes. Sophie, who came third UWA graduate and Forrest in France in her university Scholar, Grace Goh, hopes her exams, studied a broad range of research will lead to a better scientific disciplines at one of the country’s most understanding of the mechanisms that regulate prestigious institutions, the École Polytechnique, Apply for a metabolism and circadian rhythms. Grace is keen before specialising in geophysics at the Institute Forrest to help develop new public health strategies for for Earth Sciences in Paris. Scholarship the treatment and/or prevention She will be investigating innovative seismic Forrest scholarship of circadian disruption (for example, shift work or acquisition techniques to process seismic data applications are jet lag) on metabolic function. and image the subsurface at shallow and deep reviewed twice a year. Originally from Singapore, Grace is excited crustal levels. To find out more about to be continuing her research at UWA. Like the “I hope, through my research, to be the scholarships and other Forrest Scholars, Grace said it is a “definite productive, better understand data acquisition the next funding bonus” to be living in Perth. and processing techniques and deepen my round, visit understanding of the earth. I also want to take forrestresearch.org.au time to learn more about this part of the world.”

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 13 GRADUATE PROFILE | Dr Michael Gannon

UWA graduate Michael Gannon photo: australian medical association wa

He’s one of the youngest doctors When Michael Gannon strolls past the Today he sees that time at King to take the helm of the Australian Reflection Pond to enjoy a coffee at Edward Memorial Hospital as an ideal the Hackett Café, it’s clear he has good training ground, despite the long hours Medical Association’s WA Branch, memories of his time at UWA. The AMA then built into the system. and Dr Michael Gannon, WA’s young President can’t remember “At that time it was routine to live in a passionate advocate for a time when he didn’t want to become Agnes Walsh House along with a dozen colleagues and students, a doctor and early asthma attacks and other undergrads. Being resident was a a bout of surgery on his first birthday recognition of the unpredictable nature is seldom out of the news. certainly made him familiar with Princess of labour – very much a 24/7 business – Margaret Hospital. As a child, visits to but also it was an opportunity to learn the local surgery were frequent – and by osmosis. We certainly had a lot of fun provided an early role model in GP and and there was great camaraderie, but graduate Ian Matthews. importantly, the experience of being Michael Gannon’s path to obstetrics involved with women in labour was so was defined after delivering his first baby. personal and emotionally powerful that “I can still remember those powerful we’d return to the common room and emotions – it was the most amazing thing talk about it endlessly,” he says. I did as a medical student,” he says. “As “Today it would be impossible to CONTACT: undergraduate medical students we had duplicate that experience because of Dr Michael Gannon very generous teachers at King Edward the sheer number of students passing Email: [email protected] and those first few deliveries were such through the system – here in Perth Telephone: +61 8 9273 3007 an exciting and positive experience they there’s huge competition for deliveries. shaped my career.” I’ve often reflected on how lucky we were

14 | Uniview Spring 2015 Dr Michael Gannon | GRADUATE PROFILE

“My work has become the crucible of my life and that’s lovely.”

when I was training and how much we grateful for the support I had from family, there is no easy fix. One thing we know learned by coming back to that common colleagues and the AMA – that was one of doesn’t work is ‘bondage’ – a mandated room to discuss what we’d seen. the reasons I’ve invested so much of my period of regional placement. The last “The positive thing is that the bad free time in the AMA. I genuinely believe thing regional WA needs is to send doctors old days of 80 hour working weeks it’s an organisation that speaks up for bush who don’t want to be there.” have been consigned to history but members and patients. The UWA graduate sees the AMA’s the difficulty today in training doctors “Advocating on behalf of doctors advocacy role as vital, be it highlighting in surgery and obstetrics is not so and students is the core business of the dangers of violence to emergency much about the appropriate industrial the AMA. We are also a strong voice department hospital staff or changes requirements for safe working hours but for public health in areas as diverse in the way public health promotion is rather the tightness of the health budget, as tobacco, alcohol, road trauma funded. But does he himself take the the lack of funding for training places, and vaccination. We also have strong AMA’s advice about seeking a good work/ and the increasing number of students.” membership among students and life balance? The AMA President is forthright in doctors in training because young “My work/life balance is terrible, his advocacy on behalf of students and doctors today face a great deal more and yes, it’s difficult to juggle all the doctors and is rarely out of the news – uncertainty about career options. In the commitments,” he concedes ruefully, whether reacting to the announcement last dozen years we’ve seen a tripling “however, I feel truly privileged to be of a new medical school or commenting of the number of medical students but the kind of doctor I am. Obstetrics and on the stresses on medical students no matching government investment in gynaecology enable me to use all my skills and doctors. funding hospital and GP training places. and training – and I’m fortunate to have “Doctors in training and doctors “This State certainly lacks doctors the support of my family.” Michael met his in practice see the human condition in regional WA and the AMA is very wife while studying Medicine at UWA. They at its best and worst,” he says. “Issues supportive of UWA initiatives that have two children. like miscarriage, infertility, stillborn encourage students from rural and Does politics beckon? babies – all are part of my day-to-day regional areas to study medicine and “As a sixth generation West Australian, life. And while I think we’re getting better return to regional communities – but I feel a debt to the community that trained at recognising that some are better even the Rural Clinical School itself is me, but while I have a lot of respect for equipped than others in coping, there is significantly oversubscribed each year. politicians, there are lots of different ways more that we must do. “However, it remains a challenge to serve the community,” says Dr Gannon. “The AMA supports health advisory to get doctors to work in remote areas “I love what I do. Bringing a baby into services that enable doctors to seek for a variety of reasons, including the the world remains very special to me. I’ve confidential advice if they’re struggling. pressures it puts on their families, been lucky enough to deliver the babies of It also offers support to doctors facing the difficulty of securing replacement my school teachers, my colleagues, sons difficult professional situations. doctors during holidays or illness, and and daughters of colleagues, and even the “My own experience of having to give reduced opportunities for continued grandchildren of those who taught me at evidence against a colleague during a medical education. medical school. Investing in the health of coroners’ inquiry into a baby’s death was “These problems aren’t unique to girls and women is an investment in the very difficult, but, on reflection, it gave me Australia – they exist around the world, health of two and three generations at a a greater understanding of the complex but most particularly in big countries time. So my work has become the crucible implications of a case like this. I was like Canada and the United States. And of my life and that’s lovely.” n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 15 Welcome to UniBank

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more creative and inventive culture and the multiculturalism ‘Necessity is the mother of invention’, is something of a migrant population. we know, but probably less well known is the quote With this has come a range of collaborative work spaces, innovation hubs, accelerators and incubators with committed from Saint Francis of Assisi: Start by doing what’s and clever operators and participants. necessary; then do what’s possible; and suddenly you As well, companies searching for a competitive edge are doing the impossible. are creating their own innovation recipe, to inspire workers and collaborators. Significantly this observation that the “pursuit of impossible” is both achievable and grounded in the driver of necessity is a timely reflection on UWA’s current brand campaign. Our city has been revitalized by small bars and At UWA we are fostering a renewed emphasis on other new gathering places, a more creative and innovation, entrepreneurship and industry engagement under inventive culture and the multiculturalism of a the banner of the UWA Innovation Quarter, or UWA IQ. migrant population. The compelling need to foster innovation is multi- faceted and starts with the fulfillment of the University’s role recognized in our founding legislation, namely the intrinsic So where does UWA fit into this scene? Home Loans application of knowledge and education for the betterment Already we have a range of programs and people that of the people. have made a significant contribution in this way, but as an UWA has also reemphasized its role in engaging institution there is a need to do more. with community and industry in the work we are doing – At the heart of the program is the concept of engagement. p.a. p.a. and to reference this work against the needs of the The UWA IQ program is currently fostering five prototype 4.19% 5.13% community and industry. projects, working with existing groups and expanding and At a more prosaic but important level, the current global diversifying the things we do in this area. 1 2 2 year fixed home loan rate 2 year fixed comparison rate and national policy framework for universities is increasing its Student innovation is being advanced via the launch emphasis on measuring impact, engagement and outputs. of BloomLab (see page 20) and that excitement is being This last point drives not only the future success of UWA in extended through a series of pop up events in the faculties. the competitive grants arena in an environment of declining Start Something is a program to encourage the public funding support but supports the development of application of social and technical innovations in a new and renewed partnerships and revenue sources with ‘commercialisation’ phase. 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UniBank is a division of Teachers Mutual Bank Limited ABN 30 087 650 459 AFSL/Australian Credit Licence 238981 | 1510 Uniview The University of Western Australia | 17 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue What makes issue issue a good idea GROW?

“We’re making necks in Australia look a bit more exciting!”

...says Dan Robertson of his startup Freelance Bow Ties seen here with Ella Ganfield who started Helping Hands, a dedicated nanny service – and they’re just two of the many fledgling ventures being encouraged to fly through BloomLab, a student-led initiative at St Catherine’s College. photo: matthew galligan

18 | Uniview Spring 2015 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

“We’re living in a world transformed by science,” said Australia’s Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull as he called on the nation to work more innovatively in translating good ideas into outcomes.Inn Universitiesovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION will play a key role and new UWA initiatives ensure that theissue building issue issue issue blocks of innovation are on campus – along with the buzz! Trea Wiltshire reports

Western Australia couples its natural One of Australia’s most celebrated “While the policy architecture assets – oceanic and mineral wealth and scientists, UWA’s Professor Fiona Wood, that facilitates innovation bio-diverse landscapes – with creative sees the scientific community’s quest for thinkers who want Australia’s largest answers – coupled with ‘bright minds’ at exists… we need to make state to become its most inventive. universities – as the key to innovation. sure that the seeds of With the backing of Federal and She works across UWA disciplines, with innovation take root right State governments and local universities, students and high calibre scientists, across the university, the past decade has witnessed a in pursuit of better outcomes for the surge in infrastructure designed to world’s burns victims. from students through put knowledge at the forefront of “With research you’re always to the highest echelons Western Australia’s economy. matching problems with solutions. of our research leaders.” Today our State is home to the I face clinical problems on a daily world’s most ambitious radio astronomy basis and I see fantastic science here vice-chancellor project and the southern hemisphere’s at UWA. I feel privileged to be able to paul johnson most powerful supercomputer. It boasts bring together coal face clinicians with remote-controlled mine sites and the bright minds here at UWA,” says the world’s first floating LNG facility. Professor Wood who heads the Fiona Health infrastructure has been boosted Wood Foundation (see Searching for the by new hospitals and cutting-edge ‘gold standard’ of healing). research laboratories. A highly adaptive In pursuit of those better patient research sees UWA Life and Agricultural agricultural sector exports clean, green outcomes, Fiona Wood wants to see Sciences ranked 24th in the world. products to the world while developing the bar raised and students across Adding to the innovation buzz high yield staples for our regional Australia appreciating that “they can are brilliant young researchers such neighbours. And, wrapping around a change people’s lives in an innovative as Professor Ryan Lister whose 10,000-kilometres-coastline, are some of way”. And already raising the bar are multi-award winning work on human the Earth’s most bountiful fisheries and UWA’s multiple research hubs that bring epigenome mapping was rated by TIME marine ecosystems. accolades to our scientists: the engineers magazine as the second most important Could the coral reefs that lure whose offshore foundation systems scientific discovery of 2009; and tourists also harbour medical cures and and pipeline designs have made UWA’s physicists Mike Tobar and Eugene Ivanov novel biotech materials? Can scientists Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems whose high-precisions sapphire clocks engineer crops that keep a hungry world a world leader; the astrophysicists and oscillators (in demand for radar a step ahead of changing climates? building the world’s most ambitious and defence systems) have won UWA’s And will researchers unravel the radio telescopes, the SKA; the medical Frequency and Quantum Metrology mysteries that still surround too many researchers producing new treatments; research group international stature and devastating diseases? and the agricultural scientists whose industry collaborations.

“I feel privileged to be able to bring together ‘coal face’ clinicians with the bright minds here at UWA who can provide solutions.” professior fiona wood with burns victim charlie blogna

photo: chevron australia

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 19 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue issue issue

Marine creatures like the Abraiopsis squid and deep sea cephalod use bioluminescence that is proving interesting to scientists across several disciplines. photo: professor shaun collin, uwa oceans institute

says A/Professor Pfleger of the Within this research group, ARC Future Illuminating new technology published in Fellow Dr John McFerran is working on the Nature Methods. southern hemisphere’s first optical atomic insights A/Professor Kevin Pfleger arrived lattice clock comprising 500 optical at UWA over a decade ago with components, 60 electronic units and an MA from Cambridge and a PhD multiple computers. from Edinburgh. Today he is head “Atomic clocks are the most accurate In the ocean’s dark depths, of Molecular Endocrinology and devices created by humankind — and marine creatures mix their Pharmacology at the UWA Centre with precision and accuracy come new body chemicals to produce for Medical Research and the Harry discoveries,” predicts the physicist. bioluminescence that can be used Perkins Institute. A winner of the With teachers and researchers of Eureka Prize for Emerging Leaders this calibre our bright young minds have to signal a potential mate, provide in Science, he most recently won inspirational role models and mentors camouflage or act as a warning – the Vice- Chancellor’s Mid-Career as they pursue their goal to ‘change and they are providing insights for Research Award. the world’. And, critically, our students UWA scientists searching for new “Innovation is the key to this also benefit from industry partnerships country’s future success”, he says. that see them working on real life projects drug therapies. “Australians are world leaders at through Centre for Cooperative Education Of particular interest to Associate medical research, particularly and Enterprise Development (CEED) Professor Kevin Pfleger is a shrimp at Universities and the medical placements (see The CEED career that ejects a brilliant ‘stay-away’ research institutes. It is incumbent launch pad) and on UWA’s Australian burst of blue. For this talented upon all researchers to translate Research Council Linkage Grants with young researcher, a derivative of those research findings to the leading researchers. the bioluminescence has become a benefit of the community – that Current Linkage projects range from ‘game-changer’ for monitoring the way drive to make a difference is what mine restoration to developing an efficient hormones and pharmaceuticals bind to gets me up in the morning”. anchoring system for the world’s first human cell receptors. The researcher is Chief Scientific wave energy converters off Garden Island As the receptors being studied Advisor to Dimerix Bioscience (see From idea to serious innovation). are the targets of about a third Limited, the UWA spin-out Recent on-campus initiatives are of the pharmaceuticals on the commercialising technologies also boosting opportunities for Australian market – including invented in his laboratory and innovation, with the launch of the drugs for Parkinson’s, high blood directed towards drug discovery in UWA Innovation Quarter (UWA IQ) pressure, cancer, kidney disease and relation to conditions such as kidney that brings together researchers and reproductive disorders – this discovery disease. He lectures and supervises professionals specialising in startup has stirred worldwide interest. students, is President of the UWA support and commercialisation. “Our world-first approach enables Researchers’ Association and “Innovation, entrepreneurship and this binding to be observed in real time recently won the National Health industry engagement are things UWA does under physiological conditions in a way and Medical Research Council’s and does well, but we can do better, so that has not been possible before,” Research Excellence Award. n we’re finding the gaps, mapping a way

20 | Uniview Spring 2015 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue issue issue

Above: “Atomic clocks are the most accurate At the launch of BloomLab: (L– R) Magnus Hambleton (Director of Bloom), Mark Shelton devices created by humankind — and with (Founder and Director of Bloom), Fiona Crowe (Head of St Catherine’s College), the Hon Bill precision and accuracy come new discoveries,” Marmion MLA (Minister for Finance, Mines and Petroleum) and Professor Lyn Beazley AO says ARC Future Fellow Dr John McFerran

forward and facilitating the translation “I see innovation in our students every day of research into outcomes,” says UWA IQ and it is exciting and energising.” project manager Rob Shannon. UWA’s Tim Shanahan writes about this head of st catherine’s college fiona crowe important initiative in our Guest Column. Meanwhile a student-led initiative BloomLab is up and running at St Catherine’s College, with support from college head Fiona Crowe. “We wanted a place where – improving the health of those born “I see innovation in our students young people could come to create into the 21st century and delivering every day and it is exciting and start-ups, to network and to create a new drugs to combat diseases; making energising,” says Ms Crowe. “The more entrepreneurial culture,” says mine sites and offshore platforms safer; BloomLab at St Cat’s meets the need BloomLab’s director. increasing the yields of farmers; and for a dynamic co-working space for A further initiative has come from the providing the technological advances students and recent graduates from all Centre for Social Impact (UWA Business that will allow us to explore the our universities. We’re thrilled at the level School) which hosted the first UWA universe’s farthest reaches,” he says. of interaction, productivity and the sheer Social Marketplace and Impact Investing “But we’re ambitious. We’re number of young people working from Pitch Event, partnering with Mustard determined to do more. While the policy the BloomLab. Being an enabler of this Seed, a global network that invests in architecture that facilitates innovation process has been incredibly rewarding.” and incubates early-stage companies exists through our Office of Research Her enthusiasm is matched by with the potential to generate positive Enterprise, our Pathfinder Fund that BloomLab’s director Mark Shelton. social and environmental outcomes. supports developing technologies – and At the August launch, the St Cat’s resident “It was the first ever event in Perth our expertise in intellectual property said the initiative aimed to encourage involving social purpose businesses – in a fast-changing world we need to students to start their own ventures and operating for profit while striving to make sure that the seeds of innovation learn through failure – and with Silicon make positive social change,” said the take root right across the university, Valley spruiking the value of early failures centre’s director Paul Flateau. from students through to the highest he’s right on message! Chief Scientist Professor Ian Chubb echelons of our research leaders.” However, early success could be contends that Australia punches well For more information on on the horizon for several ventures above its weight in terms of research. UWA innovations that have been including, Automata which recently won UWA Vice-Chancellor Paul Johnson successfully commercialised or are first prize at the Unearthed Hackathon. agrees, and points to UWA’s great track under development with partners This innovative approach to identifying record in translational research. around the world, visit rdi.uwa.edu.au/ mineral sands exploration opportunities “We know that innovative research innovations-in-action n has seen those involved talking to Iluka that began in UWA laboratories is making Resources to develop their ideas. a difference to lives across the world

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 21 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue issue issue

Kookaburras goal keeper Tristan Clemons photo: dan carson, dc images Professor Fiona Wood soon after the Bali bombing photo: the west australian Searching for the ‘gold standard’ of healing

Professor Fiona Wood continues to push for better patient outcomes – and she is excited by research by a graduate who juggles frontier science with elite sports.

When Fiona Wood arrived at UWA in 1991, the phenomenal “With a burn injury we need the forming scar to guide global success of her spray-on skin invention was still a decade the regenerating cells, but we’d also like a biological payload away – as was the devastating Bali bombing that thrust the released at the right time. A nano-particle cell scaffold and Yorkshire-born burns expert into the international spotlight. the possibility of using dressings for drug delivery will mean a “When I became Director of the Burns Unit in the year better healing process and the drug being in the right place at I arrived at UWA, a solid foundation had already been the right time.” established by colleagues whose work at Royal Perth and That’s one of the elements of research by UWA’s NHMRC Princess Margaret Hospitals was very progressive. Research Fellow Tristan Clemons who is better known for his “What Bali did was to open the window on our world defence tactics for the Kookaburras national hockey team. internationally so people began to take notice – and that’s Skin is a complex matrix of collagen, elastin and much only gathered momentum as we’ve made new advances,” says more, so horrific burns or scalding makes it difficult to Professor Wood, the 2005 Australian of the Year. replicate, and helping it heal without life-long scarring remains “Now we’re very much in the big league and collaborating a global challenge. internationally in terms of research. Significant elements of Those twin goals are the mission UWA graduate Dr Clemons this research involve the bright minds here at UWA, and it is has taken on and he’s optimistic: “It’s very achievable because ground-breaking work.” Fiona operates at the cutting edge of burn trauma treatment, so Those ‘bright minds’ are currently exploring several critical there is a wealth of knowledge we can leverage off.” burns areas including unravelling the genetic make-up of Dr Clemons, a 2014 Tall Poppy Award winner who holds people who scar badly; the long term impact of bacteria on a four-year NHMRC Peter Doherty Fellowship, already has an burns; how the nervous system is impacted by burns; and drug impressive track record in nanotechnology research. His PhD delivery to the wound using nano-particles. in the School of Chemistry and Biochemistry explored the use Recently, energy giant Chevron Australia, a significant of nano-particle drug delivery vehicles for heart disease and supporter of the Fiona Wood Foundation’s research, provided cancer treatments – and he is grateful for the guidance of ARC funding for three pioneering medical research projects relating Research Fellow Professor Iyer Swaminathan who continues to to the need to rapidly respond to and treat a burn. “We always be his mentor. say that every intervention from the point of a burn injury “Today if you have burns to more than 70 per cent of your will influence the scar worn for life and we know that treating body, thanks to Fiona’s work in critical care you can survive a burn rapidly can cut the need for skin grafts by half,” says but your quality of life, your mobility and function, will most Professor Wood. likely be impacted by the scarring,” explains Dr Clemons.

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“I’ve always packed a lot into a day “Why I recommend – I think that’s why I work well with Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issueFiona who is a greatissue role model.”issue BreastScreenissue WA to dr tristan clemons my patients” Dr Steve Wilson (MBBS 1983) “What Bali did was to open the window Bassendean GP on our world internationally so people began to take notice.” professor fiona wood • It is a free service for my patients. • Two “Scar tissue is dense and fibrous, so we’re looking at ways of modifying it to make it more like healthy skin. A burn radiologists removes the extracellular matrix, so we’re trying to replicate it review with a synthetic nano-particle scaffold that will allow the cells each screen to ‘talk to one another’ as they regenerate.” independently. The graduate began studying at UWA when his talent on the hockey field had already been recognised. • It is convenient “I’ve been really lucky to have great support from the with nine University and the Kookaburras – and, with the Rio Olympics on metropolitan clinics, the horizon, next year is going to be important: I’m determined one in Bunbury and four to make the Olympic squad and I have a wedding to arrange! “I’ve always packed a lot into a day – I think that’s why mobile screening units touring I work well with Fiona who is a great role model. It’s been WA. fantastic that those around me have my best interests at • BreastScreen WA is equipped with the heart, and, as I juggle science and sport, I appreciate that latest digital technology. success in both demands committed teamwork, discipline and great leadership. I’m lucky to have benefitted from both.” It has been shown when a woman’s GP Dr Clemons is passionate about spreading the word about science careers. Talking to school students during recommends regular breast screening it is his time as a Nanotechnology Ambassador was a rewarding one of the main reasons women book their experience for the graduate – and his hockey proved to be mammogram appointment. a plus: “It was a massive icebreaker that challenged the ‘scientist in a lab coat’ stereotype.” Please join me in recommending regular Dr Clemons is also an Ambassador for the ICEA breast screens to all asymptomatic women Foundation that spreads the reconciliation message and he aged 50-74 years old. recently ran the City to Surf in his Kookaburra’s goalkeeping gear on its behalf. It could save their life. Dr Clemons’ supervisor, ARC Australian Research Fellow Dr Iyer Swaminathan, researches nano-particle fabrication For more information, to download the electronic and synthesis and carbon nanotube architecture and their referral form or to order your BreastScreen WA referral applications to health and energy. n pad please visit www.breastscreen.health.wa.gov.au

CONTACT: Dr Tristan Clemons School of Chemistry and Biochemistry Women may book online Telephone: +61 8 6488 4422 www.breastscreen.health.wa.gov.au Email: [email protected] or phone 13 20 50

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 23 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue issue issue From idea to “serious innovation”

Almost a decade ago it was “an idea in need of $100 million and some serious innovation”. Now UWA researchers are involved with Carnegie Wave Energy’s world-first technology that promises clean energy powered by the Indian Ocean waves we love to surf.

While borrowing the name of an ancient Greek sea goddess, the world-first CETO wave-energy technology being developed by Carnegie Wave Energy off Garden Island promises significant 21st century benefits – clean energy and freshwater. And with this University’s long track record of providing innovative geotechnical solutions for this State’s most challenging energy projects, it was no surprise that the Perth-based company invited UWA’s Centre for Offshore Foundation Systems (COFS) to participate in an ARC Linkage Project. Earlier this year Carnegie’s ground-breaking grid-connected wave energy converter system Chief investigators of the was switched on and began providing power Carnegie/UWA ARC and desalinated water to Australia’s largest naval reverse osmosis desalination plant, thus reducing Linkage project (l – r): Scott Draper, Christophe base, HMAS Stirling. At the time, CEO Michael the greenhouse gas-emitting electrically-driven Gaudin, Scott Draper, Ottaviano observed: “Nine years ago we were pumps. Alternatively the movement of the buoys and Conleth O’Loughlin an idea in need of about $100 million and some can drive pumps and generators offshore, within with PhD student Minh Tri Duong in front of the COFS serious innovation, and that’s what we’ve been the buoy itself, with power delivered back to centrifuge (the only one in able to deliver … WA’s wave resource is the best shore through subsea cables. Australia) in the world, and theoretically the resource that Professor Christophe Gaudin of COFS says the hits our coastline every day could power the development of ocean wave energy is presently State ten times over… so the opportunity is huge hampered by expensive, traditional anchoring and Australia should be a world leader in this systems. As part of Carnegie’s ARC Linkage particular technology.” Grant, the Centre’s researchers aim to design an Clearly both government agencies and economic anchoring system for the company’s shareholders saw the technology’s potential taut-moored waver energy converters. and came to the party, providing the company “The main economic hurdle the company with $100 million through Federal and State has is to produce power at a competitive price Government grants and investment dollars. because at present foundation costs account The CETO system is different from other for up to 20 per cent of overall costs,” explains wave energy devices. Fully submerged buoys Professor Gaudin. drive seabed pumps that deliver high pressure “The system’s 20-metre buoys move up and fluid to onshore turbines via a subsea pipe. The down with the swell of the waves and are fixed high-pressure water can also be used to supply a to foundations on the seabed that keep them at

24 | Uniview Spring 2015 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

Bouyant Actuator • Provides the unit buoyancy Electrical Hydraulic Elements Elements a given depth below the surface. The deep pile • Houses the Power Take Off (PTO) componentry • Movement captures the energy of the waves foundations are similar to those for oil and gas Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION platforms and are costly. issue issue issue issue “We’re investigating unique anchoring concepts and novel strategies to reduce the maximum load of the wave energy converter Power Take Off (PTO) • Consists of the Pump, Pod, and Hoses/Fluid Connection. on the foundations and will be taking a • The CETO Pump is the hydraulic cylinder that multi-disciplinary approach – considering pumps fluid to and from the Pod. • The CETO Pod is the system that will convert hydrodynamic and geotechnical aspects. the hydraulic energy from the Pump into electricity. • The Hoses connect the Pump to the Pod “As a world leader in oil and gas geotechnical in order to transfer the fluid. engineering, we’re now building significant capabilities to assist the wave energy industry in delivering economically viable energy. This Tether • Connects the Pump to the Foundation Connector. includes the commissioning in 2016 of COFS new • Consists of a synthetic, marine-grade rope with centrifuge facility and the recent employment of a terminations at either end. research associate and two new PhD students, so that offshore renewable energy and wave energy Quick Connect Fittings in particular becomes an important element of • Adapted from existing offshore oil and gas fittings. • Designed to lock into place, reducing the use of divers. COFS research portfolio.” • Significantly speeds up installation. For PhD student Minh Tri Duong working with Carnegie is exciting because he believes that Subsea Electrical System developing affordable renewable energy is one of The subsea electrical system consists the world’s big challenges. of multiple components: • Export cable, transmits electricity back to “I’ve always wanted to pursue a career in Onshore Power House. • Junction box. geotechnical engineering and COFS has provided • Umbilical. me with an amazing opportunity,” he says. “Not only am I being trained in one of the world’s top research centre but now I’m connecting with this innovative company – it’s an exciting time for me.” UWA has further links with Carnegie through Onshore Power House & Control System two graduates: the company’s Non-Executive Director Mike Fitzpatrick (a UWA Rhodes Scholar with a high profile career in investment banking, CETO 6 – The Next Generation who is also Chairman of the Australian Football League) and its Chief Operating Officer Greg Allen “It’s about being at the forefront of a sustainable who graduated from RMIT before moving west to technology, about being on the cutting edge…” work in the energy industry. Mr Allen has more than 15 years of experience uwa graduate greg allen, chief operating working across a range of technology and officer, carnegie wave energy engineering industries. “Moving into operational management roles that blend engineering and business skills led “The value of partnering with UWA will be me to an MBA at UWA,” says the graduate. “When exploring available options. The foundation is you’re problem solving and dealing with clients a significant component of the CETO system, you call on technical and commercial skills. The and the opportunity is to decouple the linear MBA brought me sound business and people relationship between loads and output, so management skills, and having that theory gives increases in power won’t see proportional you the confidence to apply what you’ve studied increases in loads and costs.” more rigorously.” Whereas Carnegie’s CETO 5 system is already The graduate clearly relishes working with producing power, its new generation CETO 6 the development of a world-first technology at system aims to increase capacity while moving UWA graduate Greg Allen, Carnegie: “It’s about being at the forefront of a from three to 11 kilometres offshore. Chief Operating Officer, sustainable technology; about having the chance “With a proportional increase in the size of Carnegie Wave Energy to make a difference and being proud to tell waves – and hence the loads and the size of the your kids what you’re doing. And it’s also about mooring system – COFS can also help us to find being on the cutting edge, which is always more suitable mooring systems for the new seabed soil exciting,” he says. conditions we will encounter,” says Mr Allen. n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 25 Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOVATION issue issue

This ‘win-win’ philosophy underpins the Cooperative Innovation Innovation INNOVATION INNOTheVATION CEED career Education for Enterprise Development (CEED) concept that was issue issue issue issue first rolled out with federal funding after a pilot at RMIT in the 1980s. Today several universities across Australia have created launch pad variations of the original, with UWA’s CEED being a successful self-sustaining model that has stood the test of time. It sees a For students working strategically to shape their CEED client paying a fixed fee to have a student embedded in career prospects, the opportunity to get hands-on their organisation, working on an Honours, Masters or Higher Degree by Research thesis in an area of real need that it has experience in ‘real world’ projects – with a mining identified. It’s a model that appears to be going from strength company, architectural firm, legal office or a to strength – with student demand currently outpacing the government agency – is invaluable. supply of placements. So the hunt is on for more clients! “Getting a CEED placement is a competitive process UWA appreciates that providing students with the chance to with sometimes as many as 30 hopeful students vying for a work ‘at the coal face’, doing research requested by a company, single placement,” says CEED Director Jeremy Leggoe, a PhD allows them to gain insights into a future work environment – graduate, whose mechanical and chemical engineering career and they can tap into a network of industry professionals. took him to the Los Alamos National Laboratory and Texas Tech While education-wise the benefits are obvious – students University before returning to campus. are mentored by academic supervisors and industry “The appeal of CEED projects is that they are, in effect, professionals – further benefits accrue as links between the a rapidly responsive method for training students in specific University and its industry partner are strengthened. And, given issues and technologies so they’re better prepared to launch UWA’s status in global and national university ranking, engaging their careers. It is one of the most agile methods for providing with an institution that boasts acknowledged thought leaders specialist recruits – and in fact some of our students do in a variety of fields is welcomed by our partners. eventually receive job offers from the client,” explains Dr Leggoe.

UWA student Matt Avent measures the critical velocities of the transport of sand in a natural gas pipeline during a CEED project with Woodside. The graduate is now working with Chevron.

“We emphasise that it’s not about marks, it’s what you deliver – and that’s how it will be for rest of your career. This can be a jump in thinking for some. However, it’s interesting to see how students grow in multiple ways when engaged in a project. It also demonstrates to us that marks are not always the best indicator of who will succeed to a workplace.” dr jeremy leggoe

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“The fact that a CEED Scholar will be immersed in a professional environment through summer, that they may be Inn“Myova positivetion CEEDInnova tion INNOVATION INNOVATION called on to deliver presentations to board rooms or present issueexperience definitelyissue issue issue their research in seminars – and that they’re developing vital interpersonal skills – all ensure that graduates with CEED gave me the self- experience tend to be sought after.” confidence to pursue While to date, students in the Faculty of Engineering, opportunities.” Computing and Mathematics have comprised the majority of CEED Scholars, current projects engage students and uwa law/science academics in disciplines including architecture, business and graduate katie psychology. As one of the pilot projects for the Innovation winterbournegy Quarter initiative, the immediate goal for the CEED program is to expand the number of CEED opportunities available in disciplines across the UWA campus. For students involved, fronting up to a very different work environment could be daunting without the induction program that includes exercises in public speaking and in developing a project schedule. “Eighty per cent may be an A for a project on campus, but if you present a CEED project in which 20 per cent is wrong, it won’t work,” says Mr Leggoe. “We emphasise that it’s not CONTACT: about marks, it’s what you deliver – and that’s how it will be Dr Jeremy Leggoe for rest of your career. This can be a jump in thinking for some. Director, Cooperative Education However, it’s interesting to see how students grow in multiple for Enterprise Development ways when engaged in a project. It also demonstrates to us Telephone: 61 8 6488 7315 that marks are not always the best indicator of who will succeed Email: [email protected] in a workplace.” Mr Leggoe says that academic supervisors are mindful that projects defined by an industry client must meet the needs of the student. “Success is defined by getting the right student/ client fit, monitoring the project’s progress, and making sure Not just a copy shop both parties achieve a desired outcome: educational gains for upstairs in the Guild Village! the student and business results for the client. And the exit surveys we do are generally very positive.” UniPrint is your graphic design Law/Science graduate Katie Winterbourne, now a partner studio and printer on campus. in global law firm Ashurst, is one such CEED ambassador who believes the CEED acronym is apt – “because it really does UniPrint has the creative Business cards, books, represent a seed that can grow into a rewarding career”. talent, print experience and brochures, t-shirts, posters, Ms Winterbourne completed a final year placement with facilities to produce all your banners, signage, stationery, the Water and Rivers Commission in 1995 at a time of proposed UWA branded, and non- invitations, programs, short changes to WA’s water allocation legislation. university communication and large print runs... “I hoped working on a real resources issue would set me and promotional material. You name it, UniPrint do it! apart from other graduates,” recalls Katie. “I was part of a Request a quote at uniprint.uwa.edu.au/job-request team conducting interviews with stakeholders and preparing a report on modernising water legislation to meet Western Australian needs. “I learnt a lot from interacting with stakeholders from different professional backgrounds, each offering different perspectives. t was an opportunity to develop skills I hadn’t realised during my studies, which have served me well since then.” The graduate’s interest in water law and the regulation of resources led to relocation to Melbourne to work with a team of lawyers advising water managers in the Victorian water industry. She subsequently wrote a Masters thesis on water trading and today continues to focus on natural resources law. “My positive CEED experience definitely gave me the self- confidence to pursue these opportunities,” she says. n UNIPRINT 124130

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 27 Rammed Earth

The earth beneath our feet is arguably the world’s most sustainable building material – and it has stood the test of time in landmark buildings such as Spain’s Alhambra. UWA is exploring the benefits of rammed earth construction and participating in an ARC Linkage project with industry and government.

It costs nothing, is readily available and durable, and those living in homes made from rammed earth laud its thermal qualities and distinctive beauty – yet it is still regarded as an ‘alternative’ material. Some see it as ‘a poor man’s material’; others speculate it must be pricey because it is featured in glossy design magazines. There are more than a few myths surrounding rammed earth! To sort fact from fiction, UWA recently hosted a conference that brought together engineers, specialist contractors, architects and soil scientists with a shared passion for the beauty and benefits of rammed earth. It was co-chaired by Associate Professor Daniela Ciancio and Assistant Professor Chris Beckett of the School of Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering. A compacted, formed and dried mix of soil and water, rammed earth has wide appeal – for remote housing, and for architects drawn to its distinctive earthy qualities. As a construction material it endures – think of Spain’s Alhambra, an 11th century palace and fortress complex that Moorish poets saw as “a pearl set in emeralds”, and China’s Top: UWA engineer Dr Daniela Ciancio Great Wall, built 2,500 years ago to repel the Middle Kingdom’s Above: The rammed earth St Thomas More Cathedral in northern invaders. Margaret River photo courtesy ramtec With this State regarded as the cradle of rammed earth in Australia, and with UWA engineers researching its thermal qualities, the University was the obvious location for the First “The future of rammed earth will significantly be determined International Conference on Rammed Earth Construction. by people at this conference who will now have greater Keynote speakers from the UK and China were joined confidence in using it,” he told delegates. “For more than by UWA engineering graduate Stephen Dobson who established 30 years, many individuals have rammed away, often alone, Australia’s first rammed earth company Ramtec, in 1979. but now we have an emerging synergy. We are all moving Mr Dobson, who has built more than 750 rammed earth onwards and upwards.” structures in Australia, is an industry partner in an ARC Linkage So enthusiastic were participants from 11 countries research project with UWA, Durham University in the UK, that several offered to host the next conference. Conference Scott Smalley partnership and the WA Department of Housing. co-chair Dr Daniela Ciancio says its success had much to do “Australia now leads the modern world in quality and with the fact that delegates were able to exchange knowledge volume of modern rammed earth, so you’ll find it from and experience. the deserts to the snowfields,” says Mr Dobson. “Applying Dr Ciancio explains there are two basic types of the material: modern engineering to structural design, thermal modelling unstabilised rammed earth, a clay-rich soil and water mix with and construction methodology – and marrying this with no additional additives that is embraced by ‘green’ architects architecture’s ability to capture the essence of the material – and builders; and a cement-stabilised mix that accounts for has ensured that an ancient building method is being revived. 98 per cent of rammed earth buildings in Australia. And it’s the cheapest way to deliver high thermal mass walls “Proponents believe that stabilised rammed earth increases that absorb coolness at night in summer and carry this coolness the building’s strength but it also increases its carbon footprint,” through the heat of the following day.” she says. “Further strengthening can also be achieved with steel Mr Dobson counts among rammed earth’s environmental bars, a method widely adopted in earthquake-prone California credentials its good acoustic properties, high thermal mass and in Canada with its climatic extremes requiring double and hygroscopic properties. skinned insulated rammed earth walls.”

28 | Uniview Spring 2015 Spain’s Moorish 11th Century Alhambra photo: istockphoto.com

Dr Ciancio says by the end of the conference, a list of Aboriginal communities. Her group’s Kalgoorlie ‘laboratory’ issues had already been compiled for the next meeting, comprises two rammed earth houses – with embedded including addressing the lack of a national building code for sensors collecting information – built with funding from engineers and builders – something her research group at the Australian Research Council and the WA Department UWA is working on. of Housing. “We’re working on a draft code supported by practitioners With sustainability becoming central to decision-making and academics to submit to Standards Australia. We’re also about housing, this engineer is confident that UWA’s research addressing the need for software that takes into account will help to advance the adoption of a construction material the material’s unique properties when calculating green star with much to offer. n ratings,” says Dr Ciancio. Mr Dobson, who heads the Earth Building Association of Australia, says with no big lobby group for this niche industry such issues remain hurdles. “The Federal Government needs CONTACT: to update the building code and change a thermal rating Dr Daniela Ciancio system set up to suit sealed light-weight insulated boxes not Associate Professor Lecturer high thermal mass materials. This has already been partly Civil, Environmental and Mining Engineering done in Europe,” he says. Telephone +61 8 6488 3892 Dr Ciancio, who established a rammed earth research Email [email protected] group at UWA in 2008, spoke about the University’s current ARC Linkage project that aims to improve housing in remote

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 29 ‘Making things happen’ for PIAF 2016

When you talk to Wendy Martin, vignettes of her career – from television arts broadcasting to performance on an Olympic scale – underscore a sense that each job appears to have brought her one step closer to the Perth International Arts Festival. Her father and grandfather would applaud her taking the helm of a midsummer festival that took root at UWA and has flowered into one of Australia’s most ambitious cultural events.

The second Australian appointed as PIAF’s artistic director, Wendy Martin has showbiz in her DNA. Her grandfather, born in Perth in 1898, was the Tivoli theatre circuit’s impresario, and her father (who stage managed the touring Folies Bergère as a teenager) took over, before training as an accountant and becoming the Sydney Opera House’s longest-serving general manager. Wendy was working in New York when Sydney won the Olympics bid. “I had to be there,” she remembers – and she landed the job organising the outdoor entertainment program. But it was the Opera House that beckoned, and after the Olympics, she found herself walking across its forecourt with an application to head the theatre and dance program. “It was a beautiful spring morning and I remember thinking: Would it be possible to come to this place and make things happen?” Culturally speaking, she’s been ‘making things happen’ ever since. Her first job at the opera house was organising a string of Indigenous cultural events, including the inaugural Message Sticks festivals. Initially staged in a variety of venues (“we wanted communities to have ownership”) many later migrated to the Opera House. “The Deadly Awards began in Redfern, moved to the Opera Theatre, and finally to the Concert Hall – bringing with them performers and audiences who’d never thought of being there – it was amazing!” Then came London and the themed festivals she produced for the Southbank Centre, a ‘People’s Palace’ of culture on the Thames that draws millions to theatres, recitals, and galleries. She clearly loves engaging with communities in the widest possible way, and this is a key driver – along with a passion for dance in its most contemporary and adventurous forms. These twin passions are likely to become Wendy Martin’s signature for the 2016 festival. She has signed up brilliant performers from Europe, Brazil (Lia Rodrigues), India (Adita Mangaldas Dance Company), France and Japan (Aurelien Bory and Kaori Ito) and forms of dance never before seen in Perth. “Belgium choreographer Sidi Larbi Chekaoui’s Apocrifu for example explores ideas from the world’s great philosophical

PIAF’s Artistic Director Wendy and religious texts with three different dance styles, setting Martin photo: frances andrijich them side by side, just as people from different cultures find

30 | Uniview Spring 2015 ‘Making things happen’ for “Apocrifu explores ideas from the world’s great philosophical and religious texts with three different PIAF 2016 dance styles…”

Sidi Larbi Chekaoui’s Apocrifu photo: herman sorgeloos

themselves living side by side,” she explains. “I am hoping they draw audiences from across Perth’s different communities.” Another signature program is an interactive installation, The energy and invention A Mile in my Shoes, a unique audio portrait of a community were amazing ... one could hear the sounds that will feature the narratives of ordinary people in our of America itself. multicultural community whose life journey may be a world THE TELEGRAPH (UK) away from ours. A Sikh taxi driver she met on a trip from the airport, a FIFO engineer, an abattoir worker are just some of the locals likely to be involved. “It’s about taking a brilliant idea that worked in the UK and making it work for us – and painting a portrait of Perth that lets us see and understand each other. It’s my job and responsibility to communicate with the various communities

in this city and it’s my hope that events like this will speak to Stewart Image: Frank the community – because it’s their festival.” The community as a whole can expect a truly spectacular USA opening event. Having worked with some of Australia’s leading Jazz at Lincoln Center Orchestra with Wynton Marsalis artists from singer Archie Roach to composer Elena Kats- West Australian Symphony Orchestra Chernin, Ms Martin has an amazing network of talent to call on, WYNTON MARSALIS’ including Nigel Jamieson who orchestrated part of the Sydney SWING SYMPHONY Olympics opening ceremony – and who will add the visual Thur 3 and Fri 4 Mar 7.30pm ‘wow’ factor to an evening that begins with the traditional Perth Concert Hall | Tickets $25–145 Bookings 08 6488 55555 | perthfestival.com.au Welcome to Country. Supported by International Excellence Partner Chevron Australia Of course these are just a handful of what is on offer at our award-winning festival. The 2016 program was launched at the beginning of November and you can check out full details and booking arrangements at: perthfestival.com.au n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 31 Professor David Kennedy in the foreground with Research Archaeology Assistant Mat Dalton (now at Cambridge doing a PhD) in a war zone

While Jordan’s UNESCO World Heritage the nation described as part of the ‘cradle of site of Petra, carved out of rose-coloured civilisation’ still welcomes archaeologists such as Professor Kennedy (UWA Classics and Ancient rock, still survives, UWA archaeologist History) who record and unravel the mysteries still David Kennedy fears for a region that has clinging to giant stone circles and wheel-shaped seen too many archaeological treasures structures dating from prehistory. destroyed by Islamic State. Last month, Professor Kennedy was lured by a region settled by Semitic peoples in antiquity, conquered the UWA archaeologist returned (as he does by Babylonians and Persians, Alexander the each year) to fly over Jordan, documenting Great’s Macedonians and Rome’s legions and by its mysterious ancient stone structures, the armies of Islam, the Mongols, Crusaders and at the invitation of the kingdom. Ottoman Turks. The Ottoman Empire crumbled after World War I, thanks to Hashemite rebels led When viewing the archaeological remnants of by the great grandfather of Jordan’s current king, long-gone empires from the air, Professor David the Great Arab Revolt and the derring-do of the Kennedy is always struck by the relative calm legendary T E Lawrence, who fell in love with the of the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan, given its desert and its fiercely independent tribes. geopolitical location. All this is irresistible to the British-born Bordered by Saudi Arabia, Iraq, Syria, Israel researcher whose father flew over these deserts and Palestine, Jordan is registering the shock before World War II. RAF pilots pioneered flights waves of millions of refugees on the move, yet over Jordan in the 1920s without navigation aids

32 | Uniview Spring 2015 “As soon as you get up a few hundred feet, it all comes into focus. You can suddenly see the shape of what you’ve been looking at...”

— and were the first to identify the intriguing circles of stone that Professor Kennedy studies in one region. LEARN MORE Despite regional tensions, Jordan’s Prince Feisal (King You can learn more by visiting the Aerial Abdullah’s brother) again approved flights across the kingdom Photographic Archive for Archaeology in last month. Also supporting his collaborative research is the the Middle East: www.apaame.org and US Packard Humanities Institute that has provided annual Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East grants (this year AUD $346,000) since 2008 and now a generous and North Africa eamena.arch.ox.ac.uk donation of $105,000 from Baron Lorne Thyssen-Bornemisza. The aerial photography program along with satellite imagery from Google Earth is leading to many new discoveries. “As soon as you get up a few hundred feet, it all comes into focus. You can suddenly see the shape of what you’ve been looking at,” he told Google’s Search Stories series in a YouTube video. At UWA, Kennedy and his research assistants – most UNIQUELY notably Rebecca Banks (now employed on EAMENA at Oxford) – had recorded thousands of archaeological structures in LOCAL HISTORY Jordan and the broader Middle East. Shapes range from giant When WWII ended circles of stone that may be 400 metres across to wheel- the men who fought shaped structures with radiating spokes, kites and pendants. and died were not The EAMENA team is working to record a heritage long forgotten – but for endangered by development and now in the firing line of civil Australia’s war widows the fi ght for recognition and foreign wars and the victim of looters. had just begun. Professor Kennedy is a Fellow of the Society of Antiquaries, the Australian Academy of the Humanities and the Royal Geographic Society. He has twice been elected to Membership of The Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, twice held a Seeger Fellowship at Princeton University and been a Visiting Fellow at Oxford’s Brasenose College. He is co-author/editor of 12 books including Ancient Jordan from the Air and of the Apple iBooks online publication (with R. Banks and P. ALSO Houghton) Kites in ‘Arabia’. AVAILABLE The Oxford-educated academic specialises in the Near East and aerial archaeology. He established the Aerial Photographic Archive for Archaeology in the Middle East (APAAME) in 1978, has jointly directed the Aerial Archaeology in Jordan (AAJ) project since 1997 and is now a co-director (with Oxford colleagues Bob Bewley and Andrew Wilson) of the www.coop.com.au urgently needed Endangered Archaeology in the Middle East (08) 6144 5700 and North Africa (EAMENA) project. n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 33 Development and Alumni Relations

Volunteers central #UWAVolunteer to UWA’s success

Volunteers have been central to UWA’s success since the University was founded.

Today, on campus alone, there are almost 120 groups proactively engaging with students and the community. Volunteers across the globe, from Brazil to New York to Singapore and Sydney, are also contributing to UWA’s vision for the future. Many alumni are enriching the UWA student experience, offering students support and extraordinary learning opportunities, welcoming young people from abroad into their homes and by creating a beautiful environment on campus in Perth and Albany. A conservative estimate of the value of UWA’s volunteers’ efforts is more than $15.5 million annually.

An event 100 years in the making Martin Lindsay and Sheary Tan, the mentor and the mentee Countless UWA volunteers like On 19 August, the University’s volunteer Information Centre’s Jean Cecil, 92, Martin Lindsay are having an impact groups gathered for UWA’s first volunteer celebrated their birthdays at the event. in their communities and on the appreciation event, hosted by UWA The crowd sang ‘Happy Birthday’. lives of others. graduates, Mix 94.5’s Eli Barlow and “I volunteer to play a vital role in “He is my hero,” said student Courtney Ryan. helping people, but to be honest I feel Sheary Tan of Career Mentor Link Despite torrential rain, 450 volunteers that volunteering contributes to my life mentor, Martin. made it to University Hall to receive the most. Assisting pleasant members “Sometimes it’s the smallest a heartfelt thank you from UWA’s of the UWA community – many of them things that I don’t think matter Vice-Chancellor Professor Paul Johnson , new students arriving for the first time that are important to someone Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Community and – gives me great joy,” said UWA’s oldest like Sheary, who doesn’t have the Engagement) Professor Kent Anderson, volunteer, Jean Cecil, about her 18 years industry experience or knowledge and many faculty executive and staff. as a volunteer. that I have,” responded Martin, “This recognition has been 100 years Guests proudly wore the special Manager of Laboratory Services in the making,” said Professor Anderson UWA volunteer pins they received at CSBP. as he thanked volunteers for their as a memento of the University’s “It’s been a wonderful valuable contributions to the University. appreciation and enjoyed a little experience, just to see the looks on Two of UWA’s volunteers, Friends pampering with roving massages, music their faces, to get that appreciation of Grounds’ president, Lady Jean and refreshments. Many also left their is wonderful,” said Martin, who Brodie-Hall, 90, and the Visitor mark, a fingerprint, on a canvas created encourages everyone to volunteer. for the event.

First time in 100 YEARS 600 92Age of our oldest volunteer, Jean Cecil, volunteers registered+ for the UWA’s volunteer groups at the Visitor Information event – students, graduates and individuals have Centre. Jean has been and staff, including several all come together. volunteering for 18 years. from UWA’s Albany campus.

34 | Uniview Spring 2015 Development and Alumni Relations #UWAVolunteer

Perth’s first The value of volunteering, FM radio station Julie Grbavac In 1977, Perth’s first FM Looking for a new direction in her radio station, 6UWA, started life, graduate Julie Grbavac started broadcasting from UWA, volunteering at UWA in early 2015. Julie supported by a team of is now a proud UWA alumni ambassador dedicated volunteers. and is keen to stay involved in the life of Although the University her university. is no longer the home of “It has given me a new sense of the station, now RTRFM 92.1, purpose. Creating a connection with new Students and volunteering its flagship event, In the people and making a positive difference Many UWA students engage Pines, is held annually at to their lives is very rewarding. We’re in volunteering and service the Somerville Auditorium. trying to create a better future together,” learning, and the result is lasting said Julie, who has already been involved change in the way those students with graduations and Career Mentor Link. and graduates engage with communities. UWA is one of only a handful of universities to have a university- wide service learning policy and transcript recognition of student volunteering. The service learning program is growing rapidly. Uni Camp for Kids Students at UWA are involved Uni Camp for Kids is in many areas of social change. Perth’s oldest children’s The Enactus team, as part of an charity, established in international, student-run non-profit, 1936. It continues to be has a portfolio of award-winning coordinated by student community projects, and has volunteers, providing camps represented Australia at Enactus’s and picnics for children World Cup on several occasions. with emotional, social, Opportunities for volunteering and/or financial difficulties. As volunteers, UWA students and service learning provide UWA work to counter social injustice, students a transformative and fight homelessness, improve diverse educational experience in which community engagement Indigenous health and provide is integral. In this way, students real and practical solutions to become breakthrough thinkers the world’s problems. and community leaders focused on people-centred solutions to community challenges. UWA volunteers – see the An excellent community difference you can make! immersion program means Whether you would like to volunteer 43,000 km students will continue to work just once or on a regular basis, with communities as graduates. there are many volunteering 10,350 km Indeed, UWA’s Rural Clinical School opportunities to suit you. (RCSWA) has helped address the severe and ongoing medical Visit alumni.uwa.edu.au/ workforce shortages in rural get-involved to find out more. Last year, Aspire UWA Australia, increasing the number student volunteers flew of students who return to rural To our volunteers – a profound 43,000 km through 18 airports communities as medical doctors thank you for all that you do. and drove an additional (one in six UWA students who View our thank you video 10,350 km across our State, graduate from the RCSWA take up alumni.uwa.edu.au/ to mentor and inspire regional rural medical practice). volunteerthankyou students to come to university.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 35 GRAD NEWS | Convocation of UWA Graduates

statutory responsibilities. One initiative currently being pursued by Convocation Council is to investigate the cost savings that could be available through the introduction of electronic voting. When I was elected as Warden in March 2013, I stated that From the Warden I would like to reduce the cost of conducting Convocation of Convocation elections. We have achieved some reductions in cost ($30,000 – $40,000) by out-sourcing the conduct of these elections to the WA Electoral Commission. Fulfilling the potential of Convocation However, it still costs approximately $177,000 to conduct these Over the past year, members of Convocation Council have elections each year, primarily due to the detailed arrangements given a great deal of consideration to how Convocation prescribed in the Statutes, which require the elections to be can most effectively fulfil its purpose to “add value to the undertaken using paper based voting forms which must be mailed relationship between members of Convocation and the to every member of Convocation. University of Western Australia.” Having had the good fortune to be born in a democracy like These deliberations commenced with a Strategic Australia, I am a passionate and resolute advocate for democratic Planning Forum in February in which we mapped out a vision elections. However, I also believe that a democratic election for Convocation in 2020. One outcome of this Forum was the should be able to be conducted for far less than $177,000. formation of a Strategic Plan Working Group which has been Electronic voting would enable us to fulfill our legal monitoring the development of our strategic initiatives. responsibilities in a democratic manner at a cost far less than Recently Council accepted recommendations made by we are currently paying. Electronic voting is routinely used for a this Working Group to forge a closer alignment between the number of staff-elected positions within the University and the committee structure set by Convocation Council and the new software used to maintain the graduates’ database for five key roles assigned to Convocation in the UWA Act and UWA will shortly be able to provide this capability for members Statutes. These can be summarised as follows: of Convocation. During the past two months, we have held discussions with Representative Role the responsible personnel within the University to explore how a • To represent the interests and opinions of members change to electronic voting can best be achieved. through effective communication and to present such views Part of the changes required will necessitate a redraft of UWA to the University and the community of Western Australia; Statutes 9 and 12 to enable electronic voting to legally be used rather than the cumbersome paper-based arrangements currently Governance Role specified. This will require the agreement of the UWA Senate, • To encourage members of Convocation to participate in as it is the only body permitted under the UWA Act to initiate the governance of the University through the election of amendments to the Statutes. Convocation members to the Senate and the review of As a result we are currently preparing a submission for amendments to University statutes; consideration by the Senate for the necessary amendments to these Statutes, so that we can have the capability to use Contribution Role electronic voting if we decide to proceed with this initiative. • To encourage members to support and contribute To get us to this point, there has been some excellent work to the intellectual and cultural prosperity of the carried out by the Statutes Committee. Hopefully, their work will University community; enable the changes proposed to the Statutes to become a reality during 2016 and therefore for Convocation to evaluate the benefits Engagement Role of introducing electronic voting for future elections during the • To promote professional and social links between members following year. As part of these arrangements, we are currently of Convocation by creating and supporting opportunities considering options for those who wish to continue to receive a for graduate interaction; and paper ballot form. However, in the meantime please let us know if you change Promotion Role your email address so that we can continue to keep you in touch • To promote the ideals and purpose of the University with your University and offer you the opportunity to vote in and Convocation to graduates and undergraduates, future Convocation elections. Just send a quick email to other members of the University and the community of [email protected] and we will update your details. Western Australia. As we will continue with the paper-based voting system for the 2016 elections for Convocation Council, I wish to encourage As a result of this realignment, we believe that there will be a everyone who feels they can make a contribution, to stand for far more direct relationship between our Strategic Plan and election by nominating for a position on Convocation Council. the governance structure established to implement these roles The advertisement on page 39 provides all the details. and functions. We would welcome your active participation on Convocation Council. n Electronic Voting? Another way in which we are attempting to fulfil our charter Adjunct Professor Warren Kerr am to “add value” is to be more cost-effective in fulfilling our Warden of Convocation

36 | Uniview Spring 2015 Convocation of UWA Graduates | GRAD NEWS Sky is the limit for UWA Convocation travel winners

Convocation Post Graduate Thomas Iosifidis Research Travel Felix Mackenzie-Rae 2015 Award winners: Rachel Jones Caroline Alexander Craig McCormack Stephen Andrews Sophie Sneddon Christopher Brennan-Jones Nural Izza Taib Shane Chambers Gracie Verde Selva Natalia Forrest Michelle Walker David Gozzard Gundula Winter Carly Herbison Noorazrul Azmie Bin Yahya Albina Ilyasova Polina Zhbanova

The impact of postgraduate research travel awards in opening up the future for students both internationally and nationally cannot be underestimated, according to Adjunct Professor Warren Kerr am.

Professor Kerr, Warden of UWA Convocation, was speaking at the 2015 University of Western Australia Convocation Joint Winners of Bryant Stokes Matilda Award Postgraduate Research Travel Awards ceremony recently . for Cultural Excellence: “The sky is the limit, as demonstrated by the experience Christopher Burch of Ms Sarah Bruzzese, a 2014 recipient whose experience in Bronwyn Milkins travelling to the USA to Johns Hopkins to more deeply analyse her data about stars has opened up huge career opportunities Professor Kerr said these 20 travel awards were for her in astrophysics,” he said. supported by donations from past graduates. In addition, “One cannot fail to be impressed with the intellectual the Bryant Stokes Matilda Award for Cultural Excellence is talent and commitment of the many students undertaking sponsored by another former graduate Clinical Professor high level research across all sectors of the community within Bryant Stokes am rfd ksj jp. The awards are a competitive Western Australia. All of this is for the benefit of society as a scheme open to all Postgraduate Research Students at UWA whole. These young men and women are truly inspiring.” who have submitted a research plan. They provide funds for All UWA graduates are members of Convocation, travel aimed at enhancing the student’s research. n which each year offers 20 Postgraduate Research Travel Awards to UWA postgraduate students to further their studies By James Paparo through travel.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 37 GRAD NEWS | Convocation of UWA Graduates

The Art of Conversation in Universities

One measure of our capacity for civil and civilised verbal exchange is the art of conversation writes former UWA Chancellor Clinical Professor Alex Cohen ao

Conversation is an art. As an exercise of human skill it draws Certainly, within some arcane enclaves such as the upon experience, creativity, sensitivity and empathy, all of honeycomb of Hackett Hall or those that strive within the which facilitate the sweet satisfaction which only two minds in glass menagerie of the Business School, there may be couples sustainable harmony can evoke. Even several minds, attuned who engage in true conversational discourse and relaxed in similar fashion, may access this music of the spheres, but exchange. However, the stimulus and encouragement for the likelihood is less because collectivism frequently induces such luxury is frequently marred by the surroundings, the competitiveness which is anathema to good conversation. setting and the seriousness of the undertakings involved. One would expect that within Universities, bursting with Such encounters are often conducted in staccato word-grabs numeracy and literacy, disturbed by challenging creativity or garbed in the rough cloth of professionalism and totally requited by such energy from others, the elements for good inimical to true conversation. conversation would abound. But that this is frequently not so It was not always thus. That veteran conversationalist can be demonstrated by questioning of any of one’s colleagues E/Prof John Jory, himself steeped in the circumlocutions of or peers as to when they last sat, slouched, sauntered or even classics, cricket and ancient history, clearly recalls his first day engaged in mutually satisfying silence as a measure of the of employment at this University when he sought solace and special privilege and great reward conferred by the luxury of fellow feeling in the building that served as the first University leisurely intellectual exchange, uniquely offered within the club. The edifice remains in place reflecting on its own past groves of academe. hospitality and its ownership by the late Dr Love. There he Of course, this is a generalisation. Gaze about the café area found himself seated next to an elderly gentleman whose of the University Club on any morning around ten and you amiability and approachability secured a most pleasant will see singles in self-indulgent solitude, couples in earnest interlude It was only later that he learnt that this was the Vice- converse, groups in jocular interchange or note-booked, Chancellor – Mr Stanley Prescott, later to be regally dubbed. brief-cased little knots leaning inward to the uncluttered In the early sixties University House opened its doors. manifest leader who is conducting and facilitating the Ideally placed, virtually on the banks of Matilda Bay, it became interlude. However, none of these is engaged in that form of quite rapidly a home from home for a motley crew of mainly conversation which can only surface when the reason for the male malcontents and roisterers of whom, eventually, only meeting is the unashamed, unhurried, unstructured and freely a small proportion were academics. Their simple needs floating exploration and gentle exercise of inquiry, comment for cakes and ale were met by the barman-manager Dave and response. Saunders whose earthy blandishments were supplemented

38 | Uniview Spring 2015 Convocation of UWA Graduates | GRAD NEWS

by a kitchen, cafeteria and, even for the élite, a dining room. short dissertation to be followed by round-the-table comment The administration of all this was for a considerable time could barely qualify as a conversazione. in the refined hands of that patrician publican, scion of an Finally things fell apart. The centre could not hold. Mere aristocratic English background and former British guardsman, anarchy was loosed upon the campus and the old lady was Charles, whose chequered career both ante and post consigned to becoming a mass of debris which paid its due, appointment to this position is still remembered with tolerant tribute and tithes to the massive sandstone pleasure–palace bonhomie by all who learned of and witnessed it. opposite as a recompense for some of the sporting ground For a long period the affairs and cares of the House were which that mammoth had consumed. It is said that several nurtured by the jovial presidency of the benign Mel Sargent malcontents were found among the rubble, still clasping sturdy whose loyalty probably gave it a life span which it might not have beer glasses, their formerly bloodshot eyes closed forever. otherwise enjoyed. The last to care for the old dear, as she sat and Yet there had been a gentler side which must be mouldered beneath the Norfolk Pines, was the redoubtable Cathy remembered. Vice-Chancellors continued to use the dining Tang who created an image of warmth, friendliness and intimate room, communing with staff and listening patiently to efficiency the passing of which many of the older members of the grumbling points of view. A magnificent, massive jarrah table present palace bemoan to this very day. designed by the talented late David Foulkes-Taylor graced this The whole of the premises leaked in many ways. From dining hall and now rests on the floor of the rival institution, the roofs of course, but in terms of the exchange of sullen still revealing its sloping, solid under-belly and sturdy foot complaints, secrets, nuances and ruefulness expressed by railing which comforted dignitaries consigned to long hours of the line of leaning loungers on the bar, and occasionally from University-style harangue. Weddings, wakes and Convocation individuals in more exposed places, there was water, water meetings infused its walls with life and the sounds of the everywhere. Small enclaves outside the central font of food Hokey-Pokey enlivened the shuffling meanderings of the Conga. and ale did indeed engage in exchanges of sorts. However, Unfortunately the University is not a Tower of Babel. Yes, it is a these rarely reached the relaxed realms of constructiveness place of many tongues; however, most of these speak only among and reflection before they became more raucous, less rational themselves. The fact is that communication between disciplines and increasingly devoid of what might be construed as an of a natural and easy kind is more rare than commonplace. This is unlubricated, intellectual exercise worthy of the forum. much to the detriment of mutual understanding and intellectual The Twenty Club, a somewhat self- consciously, self- growth. The lion should lie down with the lamb. The scientist with promoting self-selected cadre of intellectuals seeded with the humanist. The young with the old. younger, equally respectable firebrands, met regularly in the There is so much enlightenment and enrichment lying Townshend Room cloaking their deliberations in Chatham untapped and unsought on this beautiful campus that books House rules. However, an evening which commenced with a and journals are only supplementary to its available gifts. n

CONVOCATION Annual Elections 8 March 2016 Nominations are being called for election to the honorary positions of

Warden (1) – term to expire March 2016 Deputy Warden (1) – term to expire March 2016 Members of the Council of Convocation (7) – term to expire March 2019 Member of the Council of Convocation (1) – Casual Vacancy – term to expire March 2018

Nomination forms for all positions are now available All graduates of UWA are automatically members of from Western Australian Electoral Commission (WAEC) Convocation and are entitled to vote and/or nominate by contacting the Returning Officer, WAEC at Level 2, for positions in these elections. 111 St Georges Terrace, Perth, email: [email protected]. au, phone: +61 8 9214 0400 or fax: +61 8 9226 0577; or by contacting Juanita Perez, Convocation Officer on +61 8 6488 1336 or email on [email protected] and include your postal address. For further information on the elections and the role of Convocation go to convocation.uwa.edu.au. Candidates may include with their nomination form a statement of biographical information not exceeding Nominations received after 12.00 noon Monday, 250 words in length, and a recent passport size photograph. 14 December 2015 will be invalid.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 39 Stay in touch or GRAD BRIEFS | Spring 2015 update your details at: [email protected]

1960s 1980s Grad IAN COPLAND (BA(Hons) 1965; MA 1968) retired SUSAN LEE (NÉE JONES)(MA 1981) writes six years ago, but continues to engage with that after 27 years as an employee of the former colleagues in the History Department Australian Bureau of Statistics, she is self- at Monash University through an informal employed as a social research consultant. Briefs research group, which discusses drafts Susan has expertise in survey development of papers, book chapters and publishing and analysis and can be contacted at proposals. His latest textbook on the history [email protected]. We’d love to know where you are, of modern India is tailored to the new national curriculum and was distributed to schools last STEVEN RUSHFORTH (BPE 1983; DipEd 1984) what you’re doing and planning, June. He writes that contrary to the popular worked for 25 years in education including so please send us your news. wisdom that retired people should downsize, nine years as a secondary school principal. Ian and his partner, Matthew, a professor of Law He left the public sector and for eight years at Monash, have moved to a larger property at has been general manager of a small private 1950s Ocean Grove in Victoria. Ian can be contacted company involved in land development and at [email protected]. a retirement village. He can be contacted at ERNEST JOHN TAYLOR [email protected]. (BA 1955) wrote music and JOHN CHRISTMASS (BA 1967) writes that he relinquished his 50 year involvement with LI LI ALLSOP (BMus 1985; MSc 2008) married some of the lyrics for the the Anzac Day Service as musical director in fellow graduate CARMELO GRASSO (BJuris University revues of 1952/53 2012 and with the ‘Best of British’ concerts 1979; LLB 1990) on the 26th June this year. held in Winthrop Hall to (21 years) and Vienna Pops Concerts (25 years) Former classmates can contact her at: raise funds for the School of to concentrate on writing his memoir. We can [email protected]. Medicine. In 1955 he left for the UK and a career hear you sing was launched last July at the as a theatre pianist. He composed music and Armadale Library. If you would like a copy please ALEXANDRA (SANDRA) UITDENBOGERD lyrics for ice shows at Wembley Stadium and contact John at [email protected]. (BSc 1986) is a senior lecturer at RMIT in his first West End production was a successful Melbourne and recently received a seed grant revue, 6 of One in 1964. He wrote music and 1970s for research into vocabulary acquisition. lyrics for Charlie Girl, produced in Australia Sandra released her third album, On the Rocks in 1971 with Dame Anna Neagle and John ESME PARK (née Sutherland)(BA 1970) and self-published episode one of her comic Farnham, and for I’ve Gotta Horse, starring continues to write autobiographical novels, for learning French. Further information on pop star Billy Fury. Many productions at the with her latest work, Romancing the Wheatbelt, this is available at: gnomevillecomics.com. London Palladium followed and in 1968 he being a sequel to Growing up in Merredin. HARPREET SINGH (MB BS 1989) previously collaborated with Noel Coward on a musical Esme can be contacted at hepark@ oeanbroadband.net. worked in Broome. He has returned to Perth version of Brief Encounter, called Mr & Mrs Vocal and is in general practice at the Melville Coach. He also played for Virginia McKenna in WINFRED PEPPINCK (BA 1972) lives in Sydney Health Watch Clinic. The King and I the Palladium production of with and retired in May last year. He worked for 10 Yul Brynner (1977). John retired to California years as an Advisor to the Prime Minister of 1990s in 1982 and is currently planning to return to Bahrain and 30 years as a diplomat and advisor Perth and settle in Toodyay. to three Presidents of the Senate in the 1990s, PATRICIA COFFEY (MIR 1991) retired from while on secondment from the Department of teaching at Curtin University in 1993. She Foreign Affairs and Trade. writes that unfortunately she has been in a wheel-chair for the past three years, however, she still enjoys reading and researching. STAY IN TOUCH! MILTON BOLZENDAHL (MBA 1977) writes that his latest book, Zeroes, is a story about Former classmates can contact her at Mail to: the public debt crisis in the United States, [email protected]. Terry Larder, its causes and probable results, and how 15 The University of Western Australia, trillion in debt threatens the US. Milton is a THOMAS MURRELL M474, 35 Stirling Highway, retired CPA and academic who now devoted (GradDipMgt 1996; MBA his time to literature and writing. He resides in 1997) is the immediate Crawley, WA 6009. mid-America. past President of the Email: [email protected] Business School’s Graduate Management Association

40 | Uniview Spring 2015 Stay in touch or update your details at: Spring 2015 | GRAD BRIEFS [email protected]

and horse racing and he is also a passionate Congratulations to UWA graduates supporter of the Fremantle Football Club. Paul Graduate reconnects honoured in the can be contacted at [email protected]. with the arts world Queen’s Birthday Honours List 2015 EMILY THOMAS (BMus 2005) performed at Graduate IAN this year’s Perth International Jazz Festival, LILBURNE (BA (Hons) AWARDED AN AM as a member in the Johannes Luebbers Dectet. 1984) is the chairman Mr Keith Chapman, am (LLB 1975) Former classmates can contact her of Fremantle Press, at . Emeritus Professor Dennis Haskell, am [email protected] which celebrates its (HonDLitt 2012) fortieth anniversary GEORGIA ROBINSON (BEnvDes 2012; MArch in 2016, and is Mr Laurie James, am (LLB 1964) 2014) works at a small architectural practice in President of Folk Ms Sabina Shugg, am (MBA 2009) Nedlands and she writes that she is enjoying World Inc, the producer of the annual her job. Former classmates can contact her at Mr Tony Tate, am (BSc 1967) Fairbridge Music Festival. After fifteen [email protected]. years coordinating major public events AWARDED AN OAM for UWA, Ian writes that he is reconnecting (BE 2014) works for Mrs Anita Chong, oam KAMALDEEP SINGH with the WA arts world, freelancing as an (BA 1973; DipEd 1974) the consulting engineering firm M & E arts events producer and project manager Consulting in Malaysia. He is involved in Mrs Diana de Vos-Beck, oam (BA 1991) through his company AeonSongs. His the design services area for buildings. last job for UWA was as project manager/ Ms Denise Follett, oam (BA 1971; Former classmates can contact him at artistic director of LUMINOUSnight, for BPsych 1975; DipEd 1976; MPsych 1985) [email protected]. UWA’s 2013 centenary celebrations. Dr Patricia Kotai-Ewers, oam Since then he has coordinated the 150th (BMus 2015) has (BA 1962; MPhil 1995) ALESSANDRO PITTORINO anniversary of Government House, been accepted into the Masters program at partnered with Illuminart Productions Dr Peter McKerracher, oam (BDSc 1964) the Juilliard School of Music in Manhattan, to produce the building projections for New York. He is the first Australian organist Dr John Yiannakis, oam Albany’s ANZAC commemorations last ever to be accepted at this prestigious school (BA 1979; PhD 1994) year, and organised two WA tours of where he will be under the tuition of Grammy singer-songwriter (and UWA alumnus) Apologies and congratulations to Award winning organist, Paul Jacobs. The Fred Smith. Most recently, he coordinated Mr John Hopkins, oam (LLB 1973) Organ Society of Western Australia hosted a the Australians & War program for UWA’s whose name was missing in the 2015 fund-raising concert last August at the Perth ANZAC centenary commemorations. Prior Australia Day Honours List published in Concert Hall to assist him in his studies. The to joining UWA, Ian had an extensive career the Autumn issue of Uniview. programme notes stated that Alessandro is in the arts, most notably as the founding smashing stereotypes of the organ with his director of the Artrage Festival (now unique, flamboyant style and fashion bringing representing UWA MBA alumni. Tom has been reconfigured as FringeWorld). a Director of Investor Central, a Singapore- a new energy to the instrument. based financial news service since 2002. He (BSc 2015) since graduating was recently appointed to the board of the ANDERS TERRY has been working in Perth as a hotdog chef Perth-based African-focussed junior explorer Back on air for a small business called Wassup Dog, in Walkabout Resources Ltd. He is recognised as Fremantle. He also plans to continue his studies an authority on investor and financial relations KARALEE and has been accepted into the IDEA League’s and has been the managing director of his own KATSAMBANIS joint Masters degree in applied geophysics, company, 8M Media and Communications for (NÉE TILVERN) which started in last August at TU Delft in the the past 18 years. (BA1993, DipEd 1994) Netherlands. Former classmates can contact writes that she began ADRIANA TETLEY (BA 1997; DipEd 1998) is a him at [email protected]. her media career in retired teacher/librarian and is enjoying her Perth before moving retirement in Albany. Former classmates can PIAF reaches out to local talent to Melbourne and contact her at [email protected]. Sydney. She is now delighted to be back on In this issue we chat to Artistic Director the airwaves in Perth where it all began. 2000s Wendy Martin about the 2016 program. A national columnist for Fairfax Media’s Ms Martin is particularly excited WA Today, she has been a weekly news/ NATASHA HUNTER (née about a new initiative PIAF Connect, current affairs commentator on 6PR for Dean)(MPsych 2000) married a Lotterywest-supported program the past couple of years. The experienced Jared Hunter in Cape Cod, that enhances the opportunity for WA journalist and media trainer heads up the Massachusetts, in September artists to conceive, develop and present WA Division of Corporate Media Services 2014. She met her Canadian new work. This enables the Festival based in Perth, providing comprehensive husband, while working to achieve a distinctive voice on the consulting advice to many organizations. in Calgary as a Clinical Psychologist. They international stage and will leverage Her ability and experience have been are now back in Australia and working in investment in the creation of new work. gathered from on air TV presenting and Melbourne. Following an intimate wedding reporting roles across Australia with in Cape Cod, the couple hosted wedding As part of PIAF Connect, the Jazz at Channel 7, Channel 9, SBS TV World News celebrations in Banff and Melbourne, with Lincoln Center Orchestra will conduct Australia and Sky News. Her expertise has many UWA alumni in attendance. a masterclass with the West Australian been utilised in corporate videos, media Youth Jazz Orchestra while Glasgow- training courses and special events as an PAUL MASTEN (LLB 2001) based artist Claire Cunningham will MC. Karalee is married to WA State Liberal practised in commercial complement her shows Guide Gods Member of Parliament, Peter Katsambanis and property law before his and Give Me A Reason To Live with a MLC and they have three young children. current role as Chairman and masterclasses and workshops for WA CEO of boutique property and artists with disability, and non-disabled resources investment and choreographers and performers with project management firm. He lives and works an interest in disability dance. For full in Fremantle but spends his time in WA’s North details of the 2016 Perth International West. His interests are thoroughbred breeding Arts Festival visit perthfestival.com.au.

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 41 Stay in touch or GRAD BRIEFS | Spring 2015 update your details at: Spring 2015 | GRAD BRIEFS [email protected]

“Some people read for instruction, which is praiseworthy, and some for pleasure, which is innocent …” begins Somerset Maugham’s UWA’s The Book Bag. Recently, UWA graduates have produced both instructive and pleasurable books – and in sufficient numbers to fill the ‘book bag’ ‘book bag’ that Maugham’s narrator never travelled without. Below is a sampling of publications that may well find their way into travel bags and onto festive season shopping lists. This Little WorldThis Presbyterian Ladies’ College: Ladies’ Years 100 Presbyterian Susan Maushart

| 1915–

DOROTHY ERICKSON has exhibited her MARCELLA POLAIN’s novel The Edge of SALLY MORGAN has published works for adults fine jewellery across the world, and, with the World (Fremantle Press) is the story and children, including her acclaimed My Place. a doctorate in art history, she is eminently of an Armenian family, spanning several She has also established a national reputation qualified to chronicle the flowering of generations and five countries. It draws on as an artist and has works in many private professional and amateur crafts in WA. accounts from the graduate’s relatives who and public collections. Sister Heart (Fremantle Inspired by light & land, designers and makers survived the Armenian Genocide following Press) is about a young Aboriginal girl taken in Western Australia 1829–1969 is a lavishly World War I. Marcella completed a PhD at from Australia’s north and sent to an institution illustrated broad-brush introduction to UWA and she pays tribute to supervisor in the distant south where she slowly makes a the jewellery, ceramics and fine furniture Professor Dennis Haskell and to Susan Midalia new life for herself, and finds strength in new produced during the State’s first 140 years of for editing. UWA’s Professor Brenda Walker friends in the face of tragedy. settlement (publisher:WA Museum). writes that the author “weighs the spoken and unspoken understandings of a family JULIAN BOLLETER’s Take me to the river, the JOHN J TAYLOR studied Architecture at UWA across generations against a vast human story of Perth’s foreshore brings historical and and is now prominent in heritage architecture. catastrophe…” contemporary contexts to the reshaping of His Between Duty and Design (UWA Publishing) the city’s foreshore over 200 years. Always a covers the extraordinary life, times and SUSAN MIDALIA’s third collection of short contentious area, the author explores many architectural legacy of the architect-soldier stories for UWA Publishing, Feet to the Stars, concepts for the city’s symbolic ‘front garden’, Sir J J Talbot Hobbs, a national figure whose builds on the success of A History of the including ‘lost’ proposals. The book includes achievements, he suggests, have largely Beanbag (2007) and An Unknown Sky (2012), essays for and against Elizabeth Quay by key been forgotten. Surviving the horrors of After teaching for three decades, the author players including Richard Weller, Geoffrey Gallipoli and the Western Front, the diminutive now conducts short story-writing workshops London, Sean Morrison and Ken Adam, and architect was a towering figure in architecture. and has judged several WA literary awards. includes a Noongar perspective of foreshore Her latest book offers keenly observed details planning from Clint Bracknell, Len Collard, VICTORIA LAURIE’s love of the State’s of everyday life, expressed with tenderness Dave Palmer and Grant Revell. It includes South West is evident in her latest book for and bracing wit. maps, artworks, photographs and plans. UWA Publishing. The Southwest, Australia’s Julian Bolleter is Assistant Professor at UWA’s Biodiversity Hotspot describes the region’s DEB FITZPATRICK has produced five novels. Australian Urban Design Research Centre. flora and fauna, and calls on the expertise Her young adult fiction has been recognised of many a UWA graduate and academic – by the Children’s Book Council and her The JOHN BURBIDGE’s latest book The Boatman including Kingsley Dixon, Barbara York Main Amazing Spencer Gray is due to be published revisits six years spent as a community and Stephen Hopper. The book is extensively in the US next year. The graduate’s At My development worker in India – a time when illustrated and is available for purchase online Door (Fremantle Press) uses the true story he confronted his sexuality and lived a double or at major booksellers. Publication was of a toddler left on a doorstep as a starting life within a close-knit community. The author supported by the Charles and Joy Staples point for a work that explores the lives of less interweaves his search for selfhood with his South West region publication fund. privileged kids, those without the stable home exploration of the rich tapestry of Indian life lives enjoyed by many young West Australians. and society. His book was published in India IAN REID, an Adjunct Professor in English and and by Transit Lounge in Melbourne and is Cultural Studies, discovered the stories of MEG MCKINLAY is an Honorary Research available as a paperback and an e-book. convict Thomas ‘Satan’ Brown and Perth’s first Associate at UWA where she has taught detective Thomas ‘Runty’ Rowe while working Australian Literature, Japanese and Creative This Little World, a history of Presbyterian as a heritage consultant on South Perth’s Old Writing. She has published 12 books for Ladies College, a collaboration between Mill. The two have become fictional characters children and her work has been shortlisted for UWA’s Centre for Western Australian History in his latest book The Mind’s Own Place (UWA the Premier’s Book Award and other awards. (CWAH), the College and UWA Publishing, Publishing). Set in colonial Perth in the 19th Her novel Surface Tension won the Children’s was project managed by CWAH and written century, critics have applauded this “detective Young Adult category of the 2012 Davitt Award by DR SUSAN MAUSHART. The publication, fiction and social commentary rolled into for crime writing. Teaching notes are available featuring historic photographs from the PLC one”. The author is Battye Memorial Fellow for her latest work Bella and the Wandering Archives, was launched with a pipe band for 2015. House published by Fremantle Press. procession and school birthday party.

42 | Uniview Spring 2015 Stay in touch or update your details at: Spring 2015 | GRAD BRIEFS [email protected]

Witnesses to the Holocaust

UWA graduate Alice Nelson’s first novel The Last Sky saw her hailed as the Best Young Australian novelist of 2009 by the Sydney Morning Herald and she was already working on her second when an urgent assignment arrived on her desk.

Over many years, The Holocaust Institute “Each narrative is a recounting of Western Australia has gathered stories of Perth’s Holocaust survivors but the of specific events set in passage of time was thinning the ranks specific places, told matter- of those who had endured pogroms and of-factly. The facts speak for death camps – but who went on to make themselves. The cumulative good lives in their new homeland. Some of their stories had been effect is riveting.” related by survivors during school visits to the Institute, others existed Fremantle Press, publishers of in hand-written accounts, faded Alice’s first novel, also commissioned documents and letters, and on audio a comprehensive teaching guide for tapes and transcripts gathered by students studying WWII. Author Alice Nelson with Isaac Piller at the launch Institute volunteers. of After This. In the book’s foreword award- One of the most active volunteers winning author, educator and human was Alice’s mother-in-law Jenny Shub, rights advocate, Arnold Zable (Café a graduate who received an Order Despite the pain, the survivors were Scheherazade) writes: “Each narrative of Australia for her contribution to passionate about having every memory is a recounting of specific events set Holocaust education (see Uniview, recorded – including their lives and in specific places, told matter-of-factly. Spring 2014). worlds before and after the war. The facts speak for themselves. In the family album, Alice became “They wanted to make sure today’s The cumulative effect is riveting.” familiar with sepia images of a bearded young people knew the vital importance Alice Nelson is a creative writing Polish rabbi who had assisted family of tolerance and understanding,” says tutor at UWA and is currently completing members to flee persecution – and her Alice. “Jenny, with long experience as her doctorate in the School of English own grandfather had escaped from a psychologist, was my guide right from and Cultural Studies at UWA. After Lithuania to Africa. Both Alice and Jenny the outset because; having already undertaking postgraduate studies at were aware that many survivors feared worked with many of survivors, she had the City University of New York’s writing their stories would die with them, given won their trust. program, Alice began work on her they were not preserved in written form. “We knew this was important work current novel (supervised by UWA author Last year Alice put her current because the History Teachers Association and lecturer, Professor Brenda Walker) novel on hold to focus on writing the supported the idea of schools visiting the set in New York’s growing African stories of 14 Perth survivors for Fremantle Institute to hear the talks of survivors – and refugee community. Press’s After This, Survivors of the letters from children told us how moved After This was launched at a Holocaust speak. If the hardships endured they were. While there are DVDs recording gathering of more than 400 people are often hard to read, they were also this testimony, we knew that having a book in August 2015 and is available in hard to record and for, for the survivors, would be important both as a teaching local bookstores, including the Lane to remember. tool and in reaching a wider audience.” Bookshop in Claremont. n

Uniview The University of Western Australia | 43 Stay in touch or GRAD BRIEFS | Spring 2015 update your details at: [email protected]

Oz lit goes to Harvard

Professor Philip Mead who holds a nationally endowed Chair in Australian Literature at UWA has taken up a year-long appointment at Harvard University to promote Australian literature.

Professor Philip Mead on the steps of Harvard’s Professor Philip Mead has exchanged Australian literature, as Professor Mead Widener Library. photo: harvard university his office on UWA’s campus for the observes, “has always been connected autumnal colours of Boston’s Harvard to the wider world”. through its publication of Westerly and its University. The scholar/poet is sharing When studying at the Australian Masters/PhD in Creative Writing courses. his love of our nation’s literature with National University in the 1970s – the The success rate of our graduate writers scholars and students at the prestigious decade that saw Patrick White win has been spectacularly high.” university in Boston, becoming the Australia’s first Nobel Prize for Literature As Chair in Australian Literature at first UWA professor to take up the – Philip Mead discovered there was no UWA, part of Professor Mead’s brief was Gough Whitlam and Malcolm Fraser Australian Literature unit on offer. to encourage the teaching of Australian Visiting Professorship in Australian “At that time universities across literature in secondary schools. “Though Studies. The chair, a gift from the Australia were pretty much the preserve it is there in the national curriculum, its Australian Government to mark the of rather conservative, UK-trained, teaching is not as strong as it should be, US’s bicentenary, has been held by Professors of English,” recalls the scholar/ and it is being adopted at different rates distinguished scholars working in poet who went on to work with colleagues and in different ways across Australia,” disciplines from anthropology, to history. to raise the profile of Australian literature, he says. Its inclusion in the WA Beyond our shores, Australian nationally and globally – and his quest curriculum means he and his UWA literature is now regularly analysed was advanced by the significant numbers colleagues have been working to develop and debated at conferences, seminars, of Australian writers finding a following resources and knowledge for teachers. and literary readings in Australian across the world. Professor Mead has also completed Studies Centres in China, Japan, London, WA authors are well represented in a MOOC (Massive Open Online Course) Copenhagen and the US – and at the their ranks because, as Professor Mead for the Coursera platform. Entitled: impressive Menzies Centre for Australian observes, “Of all the states, Western Australian literature: a rough guide, it is Studies at King’s College, London. Australia has the most highly developed the first MOOC in Australian literature. Professor Mead’s work at Harvard sense of itself and its own regional The UWA academic is a Fellow of the (for the 15/16 academic year) will focus literature”. UWA graduate Kim Scott Australian Academy of the Humanities on the two-way traffic of writers and the (author of the acclaimed That Deadman and co-editor (with John Tranter) of literary ties that bind Australia and the Dance) is one of several writers whose work The Penguin Book of Modern Australian US. Leading authors like Peter Carey, has won awards and global recognition. Poetry. His Networked Language, Anna Funda and Geraldine Brooks are “Writers like Kim express the nature of Culture & History in Australian Poetry now based in US, while the work of The West in literary terms,” adds Professor (2010) has made a substantial Christina Stead, Frank Moorhouse and Mead, “and UWA has an extraordinary contribution to understanding the David Malouf illustrate the fact that record in nurturing creative writing talent, processes and achievements of poetry. n

When the world has Study a Masters of Social Research Methods at UWA. Social research skills are highly sought aft er in a wide variety of sectors to questions, pursue identify social, organisational and government needs. You might be surprised to know that your university studies or work experience lend themselves to a the answers. Masters of Social Research Methods and can open up avenues for improving society, developing the well-being of communities and working towards solving the world’s problems. Gain invaluable research skills in Semester 1, 2016 at UWA. Visit arts.uwa.edu.au/postgrad or call 6488 2091 to  nd out more.

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