Putting Africa Back into the Politics of British Decolonisation

Anthony Low Commonwealth Lecture 2019

This annual public lecture – in honour and memory of Professor Anthony Low AO, ANU Vice-Chancellor (1975-82) distinguished scholar and university administrator in Africa, Australia and the United Kingdom – will focus on Professor Low’s acute observation that African decolonisation owed as much (if not more) to local African agency as to the high global winds of change in the aftermath of World War II. Drawing from not merely recently released British State Papers, but the ‘lived experience’ of colonial Central Africa, this lecture will explore certain ‘dissonances’ between African social dynamics and global narratives of the demission of European power in the African colonial empires.

Speaker: Emeritus Professor Deryck M Schreuder was born and educated in Africa before taking up a Rhodes Scholarship to New College, Oxford. He has twice been an Australian Vice-Chancellor (University of Western Sydney and The University of Western Australia).

Date & time
Tuesday 03 September 2019, 5.30pm–7pm

Venue
APCD Lecture Theatre, Ground floor, Hedley Bull Building #130, corner of Garran Road and Liversidge Street, ANU

More information and registration

 

Fighting Ebola: Achieving positive social & health outcomes in emergencies

The ANU College of Science presents an evening panel discussion on lessons learned from Ebola and other humanitarian settings to achieve positive and social health outcomes.

Dates & times: Wed 4 Sep 2019, 5.30–7pm

Speakers: Dr Kamalini Lokuge, ANU; Prof. Jennifer Leaning, Harvard University; Pete Buth, Médecins Sans Frontiéres

Venue: Molonglo Theatre, Crawford School, ANU

About this Event:

‘During the Ebola outbreak in West Africa in 2014, engaging with local communities to understand their culture and needs, while implementing evidence-based programs in partnerships with local health staff, was critical to effective control.

Much has been written by the global public health community since then about the lessons learnt from this outbreak, but we are now again confronted with a seemingly intractable Ebola outbreak in the Democratic Republic of Congo. How much have we really learnt?

Join us for an evening of insightful discussions and Q and A with experts in global health security and humanitarian action. Hear their insights from working alongside local communities and practitioners in outbreaks such as Ebola, and achieving positive social and health changes in a range of other humanitarian settings.’

Further information and registration.

The Good Migrant: Gender, Race, and Naturalisation in Early Twentieth-Century South Africa and Australia

Speaker: Rachael Bright, Keele University
Wed 14 Aug, 4.15–5.30pm, McDonald Room, Menzies Library, ANU

What does a good migrant look like? How do migration officials identify ‘good’ migrants and how do potential migrants navigate this process? This paper will explore the development of early twentieth century migration laws and bureaucracies in South Africa and Australia in order to address these questions. It will particularly focus on Jewish and female migrants, drawing on a range of official migratory documentation and private diaries of those who sought to regulate and control the migratory process: as migrants, interested charities, and bureaucrats.

Rachel Bright is Senior Lecturer in Global and Imperial History at Keele University, UK. She specialises in migration and identity in the British settler colonies, especially South Africa and Australia. Her PhD from King’s College, London was followed by a post-doctoral fellowship at the University of East Anglia, and lecturing at the London School of Economics and Goldsmith’s College, London. Rachel is currently a Visiting Fellow at ANU researching female naturalisation in the early twentieth century, with funding from Keele University’s Institute of Social Inclusion and an Australian Bicentennial Research Fellowship from the Menzies Centre of Australian Studies, King’s College London.

Further details.