After 50 years as a university teacher, researcher and student, Raewyn Connell wrote a book, The Good University. Today, universities face a more toxic set of challenges than she has ever seen before.
The line between what is normal and what is pathological has blurred. We risk our collective sanity and our planet if we stick to business as usual.
Kangaroo Apple collected by Preiss at Swan River in the early19th century.
Catalogue des herbiers de Genève (CHG). Conservatoire & Jardin botaniques de la Ville de Genève
Johann August Ludwig Preiss was the first professional botanist to systematically collect flora in the Colony of Western Australia. Yet he is little remembered today.
The objects we gather around us - from op shops, from roadsides, from the intimate spaces of lost loved ones - are far from inanimate. They carry wisdom, comfort and guidance.
In Victoria in 1992, every government-employed school cleaner was terminated overnight.
from shutterstock.com
Public schools in some states outsourced their cleaning services to private companies as part of a neoliberal experiment starting in the 1990s. This has had a host of impacts, including on students.
Relative sizes of planets that are in a zone potentially compatible with life: Kepler-22b, Kepler-69c, Kepler-62e, Kepler-62f and Earth (named left to right; except for Earth, these are artists’ renditions).
NASA
Sydney’s Parramatta is developing fast, building over a rich archaeological history. Finding ways to retain it can help visitors and residents feel a sense of physical connection with those who came before.
Lake Mungo and the surrounding Willandra Lakes of NSW were established around 150,000 years ago.
from www.shutterstock.com
Without a clear full stop there can be no certainty that the unravelling of the British Empire has ended even now.
A reversion to imperial imbalance in the British-Australian relationship began with the Whitlam government’s election and ended with its dismissal.
AAP/NAA
The continued embargo on documents relating to the dismissal of the Whitlam government point to the lingering imperial power that comes from an incomplete severance of colonial ties.
The Commonwealth Games at the Gold Coast will set the scene for a year of challenges for this grouping of nations.
AAP
In late 2015, 200,000 refugees a month were arriving on the Greek island of Lesvos. Tasos Markou went there to photograph their plight - and ended up joining the locals to help the new arrivals.
Donald Trump constantly invoked the idea of political correctness gone mad in his presidential campaign.
Reuters/Scott Morgan
Owning a home has deep cultural and economic connotations. A home owner is a member of a street, a community. They are a successful adult human. They own a piece of the pie, the dream.
In a country consistently rated as one of the world’s most liveable, we’ve somehow developed a deadly disregard toward our own welfare.
AAP/Joel Carrett
Research Fellow, Institute for Health & Sport, member of the Community, Identity and Displacement Research Network, and Co-convenor of the Olympic Research Network, Victoria University