ANU Africa Network

The 2017 round of applications for the John C Caldwell African Research Fellowship in Population, Health and Development has opened.

The fellowship will support an early career researcher, including people in the final stage of a PhD, for up to three months at the Australian National University. The aim is to foster academic links between population, health and development researchers at the Australian National University and African universities and institutions.

More information can be found at https://nceph.anu.edu.au/research/highlight-stories/caldwell-fellowship-2017-call-applications

The closing date is 17 September 2016.
Please let people in your networks know about this opportunity. If you have any questions, don’t hesitate to contact me at ann.larson@anu.edu.au.

Ann Larson
Convenor
JC Caldwell Chair Endowment Fund
Australian National University

The seminar will run from 3:00-4:15pm on Thursday (18 Aug) in the APCD boardroom (room 2.54 in the Hedley Bull building).

Christian Enemark will take up the post of Professor of International Relations at the University of Southampton in September His latest book is Biosecurity Dilemmas: Dreaded Diseases, Ethical Responses, and the Health of Nations (Georgetown University Press

“In 2014 the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) described the Ebola outbreak then ongoing in West Africa as ‘a threat to international peace and security’ (Resolution 2177). It was the first time a disease outbreak of natural origin had attracted language ordinarily applied to political violence. This presentation assesses the significance of Resolution 2177 as an instrument of health governance, with particular regard to the Council’s primary aim in the resolution: to effect the lifting of state-imposed bans on travel to and from West Africa. As travel bans were arguably a harmful move to securitize a disease at the national level, the UNSC’s response might at first appear to have been an international-level attempt to remove Ebola from the realm of security policy for the sake of public health. However, the use of threat language in Resolution 2177, and the rapid mobilization of disease-control resources by some governments represented on the Council, suggests that some kind of security logic was indeed driving the international response to Ebola. It was not the logic of securitization which some other governments, intent upon using borders as barriers to contagion, were apparently applying. Rather, to counteract this, the UNSC appears to have acted according to the security logic of governmentality whereby the health of populations (in and beyond West Africa) would be secured by facilitating cross-border circulation of people with medical expertise. The Council’s contribution to health governance on this occasion was to support a shift in security logic: from securitization to securing circulation.”

From Dr. Benjamin Zala
Department of International Relations, ANU

 Australians against Apartheid: Hawke, Evans and Holland

The exhibition Memories of the Struggle at the Australian Museum of Democracy was launched on April 27th by former Prime Minister Bob Hawke. His description of Australia’s contribution to the demise of apartheid can be found at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2016-04-27/bob-hawke-opens-apartheid-exhibition-in-canberra/7364762

For more details of the exhibition see: apartheid.https://moadoph.gov.au/exhibitions/memories-of-the-struggle/

Later that day at the Freedom Day reception at the South African High Commission the South African High Commissioner H.E.Sibusiso Ndebele noted that  In December, 2015, ANU  Chancellor Gareth Evans had  received a silver award of the Companions of O.R.Tambo. As Australian Foreign Minister between 1988 and 1996 Professor Evans had been a driving force in promoting financial sanctions against the apartheid regime and had been a frequent visitor to Southern Africa as apartheid crumbled.

ANU Chancellor Gareth Evans has agreed to give the inaugural ANU Anthony Low Commonwealth lecture at the ANU on the afternoon of November 17. Professor Low was famous for his  work on Africa and the Commonwealth as a historian. Given Professor Evans’s  own role on the Commonwealth Committee of Foreign Ministers on South Africa, a provisional topic would focus the Commonwealth and  the End of Apartheid.

Visiting from Zimbabwe in April were Sakia and Jim Holland who had met at the ANU and were married in 1965. A description of Sakia and Jim as anti-apartheid activists can be found at https://www.abc.net.au/news/2012-10-30/burgmann-holland-peace-prize/4340694