Categories
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ANU Africa Network
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This website was established in 2013 by David Lucas, and renovated and relaunched in 2020 as part of a project to increase awareness of Africa and African studies in the ANU and the ACT, funded by the Australian Government’s Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Another outcome of that project was a major research report, published in August 2021, African Studies at the Australian National University and in the Australian Capital Territory, analyzing the past, present and future of the study of Africa at the Australian National University and the wider Australian University sector.
The major innovation on this updated website is the creation of the ACT Africa Expert Directory which lists experts on Africa from institutions around the ACT, primarily the ANU. We will continue to curate this list, offering a key resource for media, government and non-government organizations seeking expert facts and opinions on Africa. Individuals can request to be added to the list by contacting the website managers.
Another notable addition is the expanded directory of PhD theses on Africa produced in the territory’s universities, a solid measure of the vitality of the study of Africa in the city of Canberra.
Reviewing these directories, it is revealing to note that the vast majority of research on Africa is produced by disciplinary experts (environmental scientists, economists, demographers, etc.) rather than area studies experts. This means that the study of Africa is woven into the fabric of the research culture of the ANU and the ACT’s other universities in ways that are not necessarily apparent.
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Music, Health, and Power in The Gambia
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Research Seminar and Book Launch by Dr Bonnie McConnell, ANU School of Music, Thursday May 7th, 3.30 pm.
Details of the book, ‘Music, Health, and Power: Singing the Unsayable in The Gambia
are given below
This is a virtual seminar only. You can join the Zoom meeting by selecting this link:
https://music.cass.anu.edu.au/news-events/events/research-seminar-dr-bonnie-mcconnell-1
(If this does not open you will need to copy the link to your browser).
You will then be invited to ‘join the Zoom meeting here’ and you should click on ‘here’The seminar will be recorded as well.
‘Music, Health, and Power: Singing the Unsayable in The Gambia. (Routledge, 2020). The book offers an original, on-the-ground analysis of the role that music plays in promoting healthy communities. It brings the reader inside the world of kanyeleng fertility societies and HIV/AIDS support groups in The Gambia, where women use music to leverage stigma and marginality into new forms of power. Drawing on ethnographic research conducted over a period of 13 years (2006–2019), the author articulates a strengths-based framework for research on music and health that pushes beyond deficit narratives to emphasize the creativity and resilience of Gambian performers in responding to health disparities.’
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The Prejudice Census: Making Sense of Prejudice
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How many African Australians will complete this questionnaire?
Project Title: The Prejudice Census: Making Sense of Prejudice
Researchers:
Professor Michael Platow and Dr. Dirk Van Rooy from the ANU Research School of Psychology are leading this research.
General Outline of the Project:
Description and Methodology. This is an on-line questionnaire that asks you to describe an encounter with prejudice.
Participants. We have opened this Census up to the entire world, and hope to get thousands of volunteers to respond.
Use of Data and Feedback. We hope to report the results in published journal articles, chapters, books, student theses, and professional conferences. We will also periodically update our Prejudice Census Facebook page with reports on what we find; we anticipate our first update after we receive our first 1,000 responses.
Project Funding. This research is funded by the Australian Research Council.
See:
https://anupsych.co1.qualtrics.com/jfe/form/SV_8AG8RwpF3Yc4Q17?Q_JFE=qdg
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Catherine Hamlin
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In a letter to the Canberra Times on 30 April 2020 the Reverend Robert Willson of Deakin, in a piece entitled ‘A life well lived’, noted while that the present pandemic had rightly dominated the news, the death of Dr Catherine Hamlin should not go unnoticed
Catherine was born in Sydney in 1924 and in 1958 she and her husband Dr Reg Hamlin went to Ethiopia to set up a school of midwifery in Addis Ababa. More than 60,000 Ethiopian women suffering with obstetric fistulas have received surgery at the Hamlin Fistula Hospitals
Over several decades the Australian government and AUSAID supported the Fistula Hospital ( see for example https://www.sydney.edu.au/medicine-health/news-and-events/2020/04/14/commemorating-humanitarian-catherine-hamlin-.html )
Here are extracts from the Official Obituary from Catherine Hamlin Fistula Foundation (see https://hamlin.org.au/obituary/ )
‘The world is mourning the death of Australia’s most renowned obstetrician and gynaecologist, Dr Catherine Hamlin AC, who died, age 96 at her home in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia on Wednesday March 18th, 2020.
‘Catherine, together with her late husband Dr Reginald Hamlin OBE, co-founded Hamlin Fistula Ethiopia, a healthcare network treating women who suffer from the debilitating effects of an obstetric fistula – a horrific childbirth injury.’
Her husband Reg died in 1993.
‘She was much-admired for her work in Australia and globally. She was twice nominated for a Nobel Peace Prize, has been recognised by the United Nations as a pioneer in fistula surgery, in 1995 Catherine was awarded Australia’s highest honour – the Companion of the Order of Australia, in 2018 she was named NSW Senior Australian of the Year. In 2012, the Ethiopian Government awarded Catherine Honorary Ethiopian Citizenship and in 2019 the Ethiopian Prime Minister Abiy Ahmed presented her with Eminent Citizen Award in recognition of her lifetime of service to the women of Ethiopia.’
In 2020 Catherine celebrated her 61st year in Ethiopia, having lived most of her life there.