Tuesday 14 June 12:15pm – 1:15pm
A tour of the Harry Brookes Allen Museum of Anatomy and Pathology and the Medical History Museum

Wednesday 15 June 12:15pm – 1:15pm
Discovering your family identity: Family history and The University of Melbourne archives

A tour of the special collections / maps and digitisation

Thursday 16 June 12:15pm – 1:15pm
Unearthing the past: How to use The University of Melbourne

Friday 17 June 12:15pm – 1:15pm
A tour of the Grainger Museum

Saturday 18 June 12:15pm – 1:15pm
Landscapes from the library print collection

We hope this new additions to our program excite you as much as they excite us!

We visited Peter at work in his studio in North Melbourne. Peter will feature at Festival session, Australian Identity and Australian Humour at 3.30pm on Friday 17 June.

L-R: Joe Pug, Patrick McCaughey, Noni Hazlehurst and Glyn Davis

The program discussed questions such as ‘Where do ideas come from?’, ‘Do we need to define the Australian identity?’, and ‘What is it about our past that shapes Australian identity?’.

The Festival of Ideas’ theme for 2011 was discussed at length, so if you’re interested in more insight, visit the 774 ABC Melbourne website and listen to the full segment!

Let us know what you think.

This year’s program includes a brilliant line up of local, national and international panelists and speakers. Each session is free to attend and will be recorded so available to download as video or audio from this website.  We hope this will facilitate further resources for teachers, students, as well as those not able to join us personally on University’s Parkville campus during our Melbourne winter.

The website and this blog will be a work in progress – in the build up to the Festival we hope to use this blog to give you information about new events that join the Festival program, new partners and other special opportunities.

We welcome your feedback and comments and urge you to spread the news with colleagues and friends about our upcoming Festival of Ideas. We look forward to seeing you in June or having your participation via this blog.

Cheerio
Jacyl Shaw
Deputy Director
Festival of Ideas

Like the inaugural Festival in 2009, dedicated to the theme of climate change, the 2011 Festival offers an enticing opportunity for engagement between the University of Melbourne and the wider democracy with which it interacts. Every day in our community, academics play an important role stimulating, responding to and informing public debate, on many matters of topical interest. The Festival of Ideas is designed to capture and express the unique ability of the higher education sector to contribute to our national and global conversations.

The 2011 Festival of Ideas is devoted to the theme “The Pursuit of Identity: Landscape, History and Genetics.” The Festival will explore cutting-edge debates and the current state of knowledge across the sciences, humanities and social sciences. It will examine the science of the genetic revolution, and the legal, ethical and technological challenges it brings. It will delve into the social sciences to illuminate notions of Australian and other national identities, their history and how these might affect the state of global conflict today. The Festival will also inspire discussion through artistic explorations of Australian identity, the landscape and cultural representations of the past. Across all these fields of contemporary knowledge, important conversations are taking place today, affecting our society into the future. The Festival of Idea thus has an important place in a larger world.

We are extraordinarily fortunate that for the second time, the Festival of Ideas will be guided by an outstanding Director in the well-known author and art critic Patrick McCaughey, former Director of the National Gallery of Victoria and of the Yale Center for British Art. Patrick and the Festival team have assembled a powerful international guest list to deliver keynote speeches, including science author Matthew Ridley, historians Linda Colley and Sir David Cannadine, novelist Thomas Kenneally, academic and former Foreign Affairs Minister Gareth Evans and art historian Timothy J Clark. Leading Melbourne and Australian academics and intellectuals will engage with the themes of these keynotes, over six exciting days.

On behalf of the University of Melbourne, it is a pleasure to welcome everyone to the 2011 Festival of Ideas.

Glyn Davis
Vice-Chancellor, The University of Melbourne

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The search for an Australian identity in thought, literature, history, art and architecture, politics, foreign policy and education has been a positive element in Australian culture. The Festival will review how much the distinctive landscapes of Australia have shaped national identity, both in its bio-diversity and the brilliant way it has been imagined and depicted by artists from the ancient art of aboriginal culture to the present day.

How much does Australia’s idiosyncratic history continue to shape Australian identity today is a large and thorny issue. What aspects of our past play a creative role in giving us a sense of identity what aspects play a negative role will be a major focus of discussion.

Australians are more globally aware than ever before, more aware of what a fraught and difficult world Australia exists in. The Festival will thus consider how national identities become a source of conflict and tension in the world. What can be done to reconcile the seemingly irreconcilable in the Middle East, on the Indian sub-continent?

Over-arching these concerns is the effect of the genetic revolution from medicine to food production and sustainable energy. For many, there is an immense and urgent curiosity about how the genetic revolution is going to change our view of the human body, of human life and our view of the natural world – our very identity. Does the genetic revolution re-direct the path of evolution? While the general public appears to endorse and be excited by the health and medical prospects opened up by the genetic revolution, there is a deep divide when it comes to the issue of genetically modified food and genetically engineered cropping or animal husbandry, despite the world’s need for a secure food supply.

To answer such questions, debate and discuss these complex issues, the Festival of Ideas will bring together an exceptional group of leading scientists, historians, writers, public affairs commentators, art historian and artists. The Festival will bring to Melbourne for the first time some of the major intellectuals of our times to give an international perspective to these topics.

Patrick McCaughey
Director, Festival of Ideas

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