UC EVENTS

New Books in Democracy: The Future of Self-Governing, Thriving DemocraciesThis book offers a new approach for the future of democracy by advocating to give citizens the power to deliberate and to decide how to govern themselves.Innovatively building on and integrating components of representative, deliberative and participatory theories of democracy with empirical findings, the book provides practices and procedures that support communities of all sizes to develop their own visions of democracy. It revitalizes and reinfuses the ‘democratic spirit’ going back to the roots of democracy as an endeavour by, with and for the people, and should inspire us in our search for the democracy we want to live in.In this book launch, Brigitte Geißel will talk to Hans Asenbaum about the book’s backstory, how her thinking about democratic innovations has changed over the years that led her to the book’s core arguments, and where she thinks the field is headed given the persistent challenges to democratic practices around the world.The book is available open access and may be downloaded for free here.This event is co-hosted by the Centre for Deliberative Democracy and Global Governance at the University of Canberra and the Democratic Innovations Research Unit at the Goethe University.About the speakerProf. Dr. Brigitte Geißel, Goethe University Frankfurt a.M., is Professor of Political Science/ Political Sociology and Head of the Research Unit ‘Democratic Innovations’. She has received a number of awards for her studies on democracy and democratic innovations , including a Democracy Fellowship from Harvard University‘s Ash Center for Democratic Governance and Innovation, a Senior Fellowship from the Alfried Krupp Foundation and a Marie-Curie-Fellowship from the European Commission.

Sons Of The East are bringing their sensational live show to cities all across Australia in February 2023! After releasing their brilliant debut album Palomar Parade and playing to sold out crowds in over 70 cities across Europe, UK, Canada and the US, Sons are returning home to stage their biggest Australian tour to date.“It’s impossible not to move to - and be moved by - this exuberant sound. The atmosphere created is one of unique euphoria." -1st 3rd Magazine 

From Black Lives Matter to EndSARS: Women’s Socio-Political Power and the Transnational Movement for Black Lives.This seminar is an opportunity to discuss the piece ‘From Black Lives Matter to EndSARS: Women’s Socio-Political Power and the Transnational Movement for Black Lives’ published in Perspectives on Politics with the author Dr Pamela Nwakanma. The seminar will begin with a brief summary of the article from Dr Nwakanma, followed by an open discussion with the seminar participants. The abstract of the article is pasted below.This seminar is moderated by Anne Jedzini.About the speakerAdaugo Pamela Nwakanma is a Leading Edge Fellow at the American Council for Learned Societies. Through this postdoctoral fellowship,?she serves as the research coordinator for the project on Decolonizing Democracy at People Powered. She earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Government with a secondary field in the Department of African and African American Studies at Harvard University in 2022.About the paper‘From Black Lives Matter to EndSARS: Women’s Socio-Political Power and the Transnational Movement for Black Lives’ was published in Perspectives in Politics in 2022.The relationship between Black Lives Matter (BLM) and anti-police brutality movements abroad reveals the variety of ways in which Black feminist theories of justice have taken root in public discourse. The EndSARS movement in Nigeria, Africa’s largest economy and the world’s largest Black nation, illustrates the influence of BLM transnationally and some of the continuities and discontinuities between anti-police brutality movements across contexts. I examine these two movements in tandem and develop a theory of political behaviour that builds on transnational Black and African feminist insights. More specifically, I consider how Black feminist articulations of intersectionality, personal politics, and Black liberation have informed the language and organizational praxis of two of the largest anti-police brutality movements to have taken place in the midst of a global pandemic. Here, I argue that organizers, many of whom were women, leveraged social power, in the form of embeddedness in politically active communities, to effectively organize protests and demand for justice. Through this comparative analysis, I contribute substantively to our understanding of how social power engenders political empowerment for individuals and communities in spite of patriarchal systems of exclusion. Read the full article here.

Assessing the potential of climate change assemblies to?counteract strategic actors through?“communicative flows”.Assessments of climate change citizen assemblies have devoted much attention to the quality of deliberation within assemblies and to their embeddedness in the existing system of representative-democratic institutions and the policy cycle. This has shed light on the design of climate change assemblies and on strategies for making their results matter in collectively binding decision-making. Nevertheless, a comprehensive theoretical understanding of the potential for deliberative communication between elites and citizens to underpin climate action also requires a more differentiated understanding of political communication involving climate change assemblies as well as mediated communication. Assessments of climate change assemblies need to systematically account for “communicative flows” between citizen assemblies and diverse actors and spaces in the broader democratic system, including elites, and media.This talk presents an analytical framework for studying climate change assemblies that builds on systemic deliberative theory accounting for the complexity of the 21st century media landscape as a site for deliberation and political communication (including heterogeneous spaces such as traditional mass media, blogs, different social media).We illustrate the merits of our framework for a deeper understanding of climate change assemblies’ potential to counteract the impact of vested interests and strategic actors by referring to empirical analyses of exemplary cases in Ireland, Germany and the UK.The paper presented in this talk is co-authored with Dr Dannica Fleuß of Dublin City University.About the speakerJane Suiter is Professor in the School of Communications at Dublin City University (DCU) and is director of DCU's Institute for Future Media, Democracy and Society. Her research focus is on the information environment in the public sphere and in particular on scaling up deliberation and tackling disinformation. She is a visiting professor at the University of Canberra in February 2023.

Good and ideal democracy: How to design itLast year, Prof Andre Bächtiger was awarded the prestigious European Research Council’s Advanced Grant for the project ‘Designing Democracy on “Mars” and “Earth”: Exploring Citizens’ Democratic Preferences in a Deliberative and Co-Creative Design’ (DDME).This seminar is an opportunity to learn more about the DDME project, which sets up a bottom-up, co-creative, and deliberative design to obtain a deeper understanding of citizens’ democratic preferences in two Western countries (Germany and the United States) and one non-Western country (India). Based on input (and feedback) from democratic theorists, DDME explores how citizens imagine ‘ideal’ democracy (on ‘Mars’) and mend ‘real’ democracy (i.e., how they would reform the political systems they live in (on ‘Earth’)) when they had the chance to deliberate, i.e. to ´weigh´ reasons regarding the pros and cons of the various conceptions and schemes of democracy in a dialogical setting with their fellow citizens.DDME is the first large-scale project to delegate democratic designing to citizens adopting a systematic and global approach where citizens together with democratic theorists reflect on advanced theoretical inputs (problem-based thinking and comprehensive democratic designs (such as “open democracy) rather than smaller institutional tools (such as direct-democratic instruments or minipublics) and think creatively about optimal democratic designs.This seminar is moderated by Anne Jedzini.About the speakerAndré Bächtiger is Professor of Political Theory and Empirical Democracy Research at the Department of Social Sciences at the University of Stuttgart. He is a visiting professor at the University of Canberra in February 2023.

If you are passionate about data, or even just curious about data, then this is a great event for you to attend.This Data meetup event is hosted by the University of Canberra Faculty of Science and Technology, and supported by specialist IT recruiter Interpro People. Start Time: 4:30pm for 4:45pm startFinish Time: 6:30pm

The Quality of Connections: Encouraging Deliberative Reciprocity and Inclusive Listening as Antidote to Polarized Online DebateAlthough conflict is vital for a lively public sphere, concerned voices warn about harmful levels of polarisation, especially in social media environments. This presentation discusses affective polarisation and political convergence as elements of destructive polarisation. It shifts the focus from the quality of individual contributions to the quality of communicative connections. Building on an overview of previous deliberation research it shows that although there is disagreement on forms and styles of communication in deliberation, representatives of classic and inclusive concepts agree that communication should be reciprocal. Two specific forms of reciprocal communication are theoretically discussed as antidote to destructive polarisation online: deliberative reciprocity and inclusive listening. Deliberative reciprocity is drawn from classic deliberation concepts and means an utterance that includes a reply, respect, and argumentation. Inclusive listening is drawn from critical and inclusive understandings of deliberation and means that an utterance includes communicative empathy, reflexivity, constructiveness, or a genuine question. The importance of high quality reciprocal communication for online public spheres and depolarisation is theorised.This seminar is moderated by Anne Jedzini.About the speakerKatharina Esau is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Digital Media Research Centre (DMRC) at the Queensland University of Technology, working under the Digital Publics program on Professor Axel Bruns's Australian Laureate Fellowship project "Determining the Drivers and Dynamics of Partisanship and Polarisation in Online Public Debate". She earned her PhD in Media and Communication Research from the University of Düsseldorf. 2022 she received a Best Dissertation Award from the Democracy Foundation of the University of Cologne. The presentation builds on her freshly published book “Communication Forms and Dynamic of Deliberation”.

Her critically acclaimed debut album ‘Beware of the Dogs’ was released in 2019 to international praise from leading outlets such as Rolling Stone, Pitchfork, Billboard, The New York Times and more. The record was crowned Best Independent Pop Album & Independent Album of the Year at the 2020 AIR Awards, and nominated for Breakthrough Artist at the 2019 ARIA Awards. The record propelled Donnelly to new heights including studio sessions for NPR’s Tiny Desk and KEXP as well as an extensive international touring with sell out shows across Australia, North America, Europe and Japan as well as play prestigious festivals and events such as the 2021 AFL Grand Final, Glastonbury, Roskilde, Primavera, Fuji Rock and many others. Following a slew of singles (‘Proof’ with Methyl Ethel, ‘Lungs’ & ‘Flood’), Donnelly released her highly anticipated and critically acclaimed sophomore record Flood in August 2022. Like the many Banded Stilts that spread across the cover, Stella Donnelly is wading into uncharted territory. Here, she finds herself discovering who she is as an artist amongst the flock, and how abundant one individual can be. Flood is Donnelly’s record of rediscovery of the “small self”: the product of months of risky experimentation, hard moments of introspection and a lot of moving around. Reflecting on the Banded Stilt, Donnelly ultimately appreciates how when “seen in a crowd they create an optical illusion, but on its own it’s this singular piece of art”. While each song on Flood is a singular artwork unto itself, the collective shares all of Stella Donnelly in abundance: her inner child, her nurturing self, her nightmare self; all of herself has gone into the making of this record, and although it would take an ocean to fathom everything she feels, it’s well worth diving in. Fresh off the back of a global world tour including stand out festival performances at Primavera & Splendour in the Grass as well as sold out shows across the UK, Europe, North America and Japan, Donnelly finally returns home to Australia for a national tour in support of the album.Support from emerging Western Australian artist Mia June.

Linguistic prejudice and electoral discrimination: What can political theory learn from sociolinguistics?Normative political theorists working in the field of linguistic justice generally believe that participation in democratic life in linguistically diverse societies requires a shared lingua franca (e.g. Patten 2009; Van Parijs, 2011). However, even when a shared lingua franca is present, there is likely to be a variety of ways in which people speak it, due to variations in accent, pitch, register, lexicon, etc. This is especially (though not solely) the case for those with a migrant background. In this paper, we examine the implications of intra-linguistic diversity for democracy and political representation. More specifically, by drawing on Andrew Rehfeld’s (2010) work and on relevant sociolinguistics research, we argue that widespread unconscious linguistic prejudice constitutes an informal structural constraint on some citizens’ right to run for political office. We conclude by applying our analysis to a number of examples concerning Australian politicians.This paper is co-authored with Louisa Willoughby, Monash University.About the speakerMatteo Bonotti is a Senior Lecturer in Politics and International Relations at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. His research interests include democratic theory, political liberalism and public reason, linguistic justice, free speech, food justice, and the normative dimensions of partisanship. His work has appeared in such journals as the American Political Science Review, The Journal of Politics, the British Journal of Political Science, and Political Studies. He is the author of Partisanship and Political Liberalism in Diverse Societies (Oxford University Press 2017), the co-author of Healthy Eating Politics and Political Philosophy: A Public Reason Approach (Oxford University Press 2021) and Recovering Civility during COVID-19 (Palgrave Macmillan 2021), and the co-editor of A Century of Compulsory Voting in Australia: Genesis, Impact and Future (Palgrave Macmillan 2021).

Following a huge year of touring through 2022, The Grogans are jumping straight back into another packed year – announcing their 27-date AUS/NZ tour in support of their latest album ‘Which Way Is Out’ (released October 2022).Genre-expanding outfit The Grogans are a trio of best mates from Melbourne who explore nuanced maneuver’s in surf, punk, blues, garage, psych and rockabilly. The band’s latest album ‘Which Way Is Out’ is their 3rd album (6th release since 2017) and digs deeper into the bands genre fluidity.“WHICH WAY IS OUT was based around a similar workflow we have taken on previous releases. The idea of going away to write/record has been the best way for us to completely be involved in the project. I think it allows us to step back from the other responsibilities in our life for just a minute and set our minds on one thing at a timeWe have said it before but I think it’s something we will have to say as long as we are putting out records, that being our desire to keep trying to force ourselves out of a specific ‘ one genre band’ and explore new ideas within the sound that we have developed so far.The new album contains the classic grogans formula of heavier songs, cruiser songs and acoustic tracks. This helps us make our records have a sense of movement but also continuity between LPs.Which Way Is Out is a collection of tracks we think fit on a record together, some Tracks are old and some far more recent but we managed to pull together a body of work which I think is somewhat nostalgic but also forward looking. This is based around our love for the past. cars, music and certain aesthetics but mixed with a modern day twist."The Grogans have supported the likes of Ocean Alley, Maddy Jane, Northeast Party House, Drunk Mums and The Chats and Hockey Dad across 18 dates on their 2022 Regional Tour.As well as festivals & showcases during 2022 including a Rolling Stone x Sailor Jerry Showcase, NYE on the Hill (VIC), Great Escape Festival (TAS), Drift Festival on the Mornington Peninsula & a free all-ages headline at Fed Square (Melbourne).‘Which Way Is Out’ AUS/NZ album tour starts February 2023, Find a show near you at www.thegrogansband.com.

Lots of students and young people struggle with procrastination, and this can have a significant impact on your ability to complete your studies. The Putting Off Procrastination program aims to support UC students to develop skills that enable them to address procrastination. It is suitable for any UC students or young adults that find themselves engaging in regular procrastination or struggling to complete tasks or assessment. The Surviving Stress program is based on a Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) model, which is an evidence-based approach for targeting stress management. Putting off Procrastination runs over 5 weekly sessions that are 1 hour long. Each session focuses on teaching practical skills and strategies to improve stress management. Topics include:Identifying procrastination excusesUnderstanding why I procrastinateChallenging unhelpful assumptionsLearning practical procrastination management strategiesBuilding a procrastination action plan

Struggling with stress?Lots of students and young people struggle to cope with stress – especially when there have been so many significant events that have impacted our lives in the past 2 years. The UC Psychology Clinic is offering a 5-week group program that aims to support UC students to develop coping skills that enable them to effectively manage stress. Participants will learn how to understand and identify warning signs of distress, practice practical stress-management strategies and develop stress management plans that they can utilise when facing increased stress.The Surviving Stress program is based on a Cognitive-Behavioural Therapy (CBT) model, which is an evidence-based approach for targeting stress management. 

Straight off the stage from performing at Good Things Festival across three cities over the weekend, alt-pop-rock national treasures, KISSCHASY have announced they’ll reunite for a special one-off Australian headlining tour in May 2023. The national tour begins in Brisbane, before making its way to Adelaide, Perth, Canberra, Wollongong, Sydney, Newcastle, Melbourne, and Torquay. This will be the band’s first national tour in eight years, with lead singer Darren Cordeux making a special visit back to Australia after relocating to Los Angeles in 2015. General public tickets will go on sale Tuesday 13th December, 10am local time.Forming in Mornington Peninsula in 2002, Kisschasy released three studio albums, two of which are gold certified, two gold certified singles alongside scooping up multiple ARIA Award nominations. They became festival darlings with performances at some of Australia’s biggest festivals including, Big Day Out, Splendour In The Grass, Groovin’ The Moo & Homebake, alongside countless sold-out headlining tours playing at some of Australia’s most landmark venues. Don’t miss seeing Kisschasy live, performing all their hit songs including 'Do-Do's & Whoa-Oh's’, ‘Opinions Won’t Keep You Warm at Night’ and ‘Spray on Pants’.Kisschasy Australian Tour 2023Thurs 4 May| Princess Theatre, BrisbaneFri 5 May | The Gov, Adelaide Sat 6 May | Badlands, Perth Wed 10 May | UC Hub, CanberraThu 11 May | Uni Bar, Wollongong Fri 12 May | Metro Theatre, Sydney  Sat 13 May | Cambridge Hotel, Newcastle Thu 18 May | Corner Hotel, MelbourneFri 19 May | Torquay Hotel, Torquay 

Beware Sinners, Judgement Day is upon us! Yes, Father Frenchy is back for another ridiculous comedy show & nothing is off limits. Some people believe that the world will end soon & God will judge how everyone lived. WHY WAIT FOR THAT?! Frenchy is ready to judge now, whether you’re ready or not.Stocked full of ALL NEW MATERIAL, Frenchy promises 1 thing from his shows – laughs. And seats. And shoeys. Okay, he promises a few things.Edgy, dark & absurd, Frenchy’s brand of comedy ain't for everyone but that’s how comedy is supposed to be. Frenchy’s shows are always an epic night but just be careful if you sit in the front row…Amen.