Annual Themes

From the Brexit campaign with its call to ‘take back control’, to cultural fashions like the Marie Kondo phenomenon, through to criminological and sociological theories on self-control and socialisation, or political discourses around borders and immigration – everywhere we look, we find evidence of an intense preoccupation with ‘control’. A desire for and a drive to control can be identified …

In 2020, we will be sharing a series of podcasts and texts reflecting on the ongoing planetary crisis that we are all living through. How can the humanities help us to understand what is happening, to generate responses, and to imagine new approaches and solutions to the unprecedented challenges that face us in the days ahead? We invite you to think …

The 2019 SHAPS theme is "Walls" — walls we build to exclude and contain the Other, to control the movement of people, bodies, information, capital, ideas. Speakers will approach the theme from a range of disciplinary perspectives. Marking the 30th anniversary of the fall of the Berlin wall, we look at the historical rise and fall of walls; we examine …

In 2018 speakers included David Christian (Macquarie), Philip Pettit (ANU/Princeton), Harry Collins (Cardiff), and Greg Restall, Robyn Sloggett and Frederik Vervaet (SHAPS), who delivered public lectures on the subject of Truth. Professor David Christian Big History & Truth: Knowledge as Mapping (co-hosted with the History Council of Victoria, this was also the 2018 Kathleen Fitzpatrick lecture) (19 April) Professor Philip Pettit Truth, …

The theme for the 2017 SHAPS Public Lecture Series was “Love”. This was part of a broader series of events on this theme, in particular, the ARC Centre for the History of Emotions’ flagship collaborative exhibition, Love: Art of Emotion 1400-1820 at the National Gallery Victoria Each of the School’s five disciplines presented a lecture in the series, approaching the theme of love from a range of …

Who am I? What does it mean to be human? Where do I belong? These have always been central and urgent questions for the humanities. The 2016 SHAPS flagship public lecture series explored such questions under the broad theme of “Identities”. The concept of identity, both individual and collective, is fraught with complexity. There has always existed a multiform universe …

Selected content from the 2015 SHAPS public lecture series on 'Conflict': Dr David M. Pritchard (University of Queensland), War and Military Spending in the Ancient Athenian Democracy Professor Guoqi Xu (University of Hong Kong), The First World War and China’s Great Awakening Rodric Braithwaite (British ambassador to the USSR under Gorbachev and award-winning writer and historian), Managing Putin Image: riots-14, 2012. Photograph © Thanasis …