Keynote Presenters
Photo by A Bruzzone
Professor Tim Flannery BA, MSc, PhD
Tim Flannery is one of Australia’s leading thinkers and writers.
A scientist, explorer, and conservationist, he has published more than 130 peer-reviewed papers and many books, including the landmark works The Future Eaters and The Weather Makers.
Currently Professor in the Faculty of Science at Macquarie University, he is Chair of the Australian Government’s Coasts and Climate Change Group, represents Australasia on the National Geographic Society Research Grant Committee and is a director of the Australian Wildlife Conservancy. From 2006 to 2009 he was Chair of the Copenhagen Climate Council. In 2007 he was named Australian of the Year.
Dr Carmen Lawrence
After training as a research psychologist at the University of Western Australia and lecturing in a number of Australian universities, Dr Lawrence entered politics in 1986, serving at both State and Federal levels for 21 years. She was at various times W.A Minister for Education and Aboriginal affairs and was the first woman Premier and Treasurer of a State government. She shifted to Federal politics in 1994 when she was elected as the Member for Fremantle and was appointed Minister for Health and Human Services and Minister assisting the Prime Minister on the Status of Women. She has held various portfolios in Opposition, including Indigenous Affairs, Environment, Industry and Innovation and was elected national President of the Labor Party in 2004. She retired from politics in 2007. She is now a Professorial Fellow at the University of Western Australia and Director of the Centre for the Study of Social Change in the School of Psychology. The Centre will conduct research into the forces driving significant social change in key areas of contemporary challenge as well as exploring our reactions to that change. The centre will also seek to expose for public discussion the processes most likely to achieve social change where that is a desired objective.
Clive Hamilton
Clive Hamilton is Charles Sturt Professor of Public Ethics at the Centre for
Applied Philosophy and Public Ethics based at the Australian National
University. Until early 2008 he was the Executive Director of The Australia
Institute, Australia's leading progressive think tank, which he founded in
1993.
Clive has held a number of visiting academic positions, including at the
University of Cambridge and Yale University. He is a Fellow of the Royal
Society of the Arts and in June 2009 was made a Member of the Order of
Australia.
Clive is the author of a number of best-selling books, including Growth
Fetish, Affluenza (with Richard Denniss), and Silencing Dissent (with Sarah
Maddison). His most recent book is Requiem for a Species: Why we resist the
truth about climate change (Allen & Unwin).
Ursula Rakova
Ursula Rakova was born on the Han atoll – part of the Carteret Island PNG [4°45'S, 155°24'E]. Ursula has been involved in the PNG environmental movement since the Nineties, when she coordinated the milestone case of the Warangoi landowners. This case is famous for being the first instance when PNG traditional landowners succeeded in suing illegal loggers and gaining compensation for a stolen resource.
1999-2001 Ursula managed the Environment Law Centre (ELC), a fully fledged NGO providing legal aid for landowner groups affected by illegal logging and mining activities assisting them to seek redress for damage and stealing of their resources. ELC is involved in policy reform, raising awareness nationally and internationally on these issues.of public interest.
2001-2004 Ursula was the first Program Manager for Oxfam New Zealand’s Bougainville Program promoting community development after the civil war through establishing income generation projects. From 2004 to 2006, Ursula led the localisation process for the OxfamNZ program which resulted in the registration of Osi Tanata (Custodian of the Land) - a local NGO that provides community development training.
In 2005 Ursula set up an alternative education system to meet the needs of the many young Bougainvilleans who were leaving school without any real capacity to use English and this system continues today in two schools. In 2008 Ursula received the Pride of PNG –an award for extraordinary contribution to the development of PNG, in recognition of her contribution to PNG society and to the environment in particular.
Recently Ursula founded a company called Bougainville Cocoa Net Ltd. This was established not only to export cocoa from Bougainville farmers but also to link them to world markets through a program designed to add value through organic and fair trade certification. This is providing a competetive basis leading to long term sustainability for the Bougainville cocoa farmers.
As Executive Director of the Carterets Integrated Relocation Program, Ursula will speak about her environmental campaigning on behalf of the communities of the Carteret Island. Carteret Islanders are amongst the world’s first environmental refugees They are victims of storm surges as the rising ocean destroys their vegetable gardens, contaminates fresh water and washes away the islands.
Professor David Lindenmayer FAA
David Lindenmayer is a Professor of forest wildlife management and nature conservation in the Fenner School of Environment and Society ANU.
Professor David Lindenmayer has made a major and sustained long-term contribution to the conservation of Australia's biodiversity and the ecologically sustainable management of Australia's natural environment. In this International Year of Biodiversity, Professor Lindenmayer was the winner of the Eureka Environmental Research Award which recognised his investigations into carbon storage in old-growth forests. He has established large-scale research programs on biodiversity conservation and natural resource management in south-eastern Australia spanning forests, plantations, woodlands, and agricultural areas. Through scientific publications, popular books and work with numerous volunteers from many organizations, David's work has influenced government, non-government, conservation and industry organisations, as well as the general public.
Richard Baker
Prior to coming to ANU Richard was the inaugural head of the People and Environment Gallery at the National Museum of Australia. In 1996 in his 2nd year at ANU he was award the ANU Vice Chancellor’s Award for teaching Excellence. In 2002 he became the first person at ANU to win this award twice. In 2003 he was the Team leader of the winning course in Australian Awards for University Teaching - institutional category “Large, first year classes” category. In 2006 he was awarded a Carrick Award for Australian University Teaching and in 2007 he was awarded Carrick Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning.
Richard Baker is a local national awardee in environmental education engaged in global EfSD discussions. Richard is a geographer with a passion for teaching and learning. He completed his PhD at the University of Adelaide on Indigenous understandings of their history and landscapes. He is currently the Deputy Dean of Science at the Australian National University with responsibilities in this position for enhancing teaching and learning across science at ANU.
This keynote address will be based on the following topic: The complex environmental problems facing our planet are not going to be solved by narrow discipline based perspectives.
The questions to be addressed: “How do we get students to reach beyond the comfort zones of their disciplines and engage in the deep learning that can happen when engaging with new ideas from unfamiliar areas?”
Through examples from 4 courses I coordinate at Australian National University, the issues explored will include:
- To what degree is interdisciplinary teaching and learning possible without being built upon strong disciplinary backgrounds?
- How can we best prepare students to have applied skills that give them the tools, confidence and ability to be effective agents of change in their chosen careers?
John Smyth
John Smyth is Research Professor of Education and research leader for the cross-disciplinary cross university research theme Addressing Disadvantage and Inequality in Education and Health in the School of Education, University of Ballarat, Australia. He is a Senior Fulbright Research Scholar and a recipient of the Palmer O Johnson Award from the American Educational Research Association (AERA) in 1993 for his outstanding research. In 2010 he received the prestigious “Relating Research to Practice” (Interpretive Scholarship) award from the AERA.
He holds degrees from six universities (Melbourne, Monash, Queensland, LaTrobe, and New England) as well as a PhD from University of Alberta. He is well known throughout the world as the author of many articles and chapters and has written 20 books.
He is emeritus professor at Flinders University of South Australia and prior to returning to Australia in 2006 held the Roy F & Joanne Cole Mitte endowed chair in School Improvement at Texas State University-San Marcos. Prior to his US position he held the Foundation Chair of Teacher Education and was Director of the Flinders Institute for the Study of Teaching at Flinders University of South Australia.
He has an extensive academic and scholarly career spanning Papua New Guinea, Canada, USA, the UK and New Zealand and one of the highlights of his career was as founding member of Deakin University where he held positions from 1979 to 1993.
He has also held many prestigious visiting positions, and in 2008 was the Simon Visiting Professor at the University of Manchester. His research interests are in social justice, sociology of education, and critical policy analysis of education.
Where John’s interests intersect with this conference are around notions of grassroots organizing for social change and what this means in terms of sustainable, vibrant and socially critical communities.