News & Events
Subscribe to the TfC News and Events list. Download the latest TfC Calendar of Events [pdf]
TfC holds events of all kinds: Seminar Series, Public Lectures, Annual Lectures, Workshops and Postgraduate Masterclasses, Reading Groups and Conferences. There are also partnership events such as Exhibition Panel Discussions with the UTS Gallery and the Yarning Circle with Jumbunna IHL twice per semester.
For details on Past TfC Events (2008 and before), link to our News and Events archive here.
For further details on these or any other TfC events, contact Transforming.Cultures.
2009 News & Events
* Conferences
* Lectures
* Transforming Cultures Seminars
* Yarning Circle
* IOSARN Seminars
* Reading Group
* Research Projects News
* Research News
For those who missed the TfC annual lecture given by Kathleen Stewart (University of Texas, Austin) on 'Atmospheric Attunements', please click here to download [pdf].
Seminars
The Bagel: 
The Bagel provides a space for critically engaged discussion and informed debate. Organised and hosted by TfC members. The Bagel is also available for members to book for reading groups, presentations and informal discussions.
Contact Transforming Cultures for further information on any of the above.
The Transforming Cultures Seminar Series:
This seminar and workshop series provides an opportunity to showcase TfC core member and associate members' research work in a friendly setting, providing ample opportunity for further discussion. They are open to all and free.
Date: Seminars and workshops are scheduled for Wednesday Lunchtime between 12:00 - 2:00.
Venue: The Bagel, Transforming Cultures Research Centre, Building 3, Room 4.02.
IOSARN Seminars Series: (Indian Ocean and South Asia Research Network)
Date: The IOSARN seminar are scheduled for Friday fternoons, 5.30 pm; exact dates to be individually announced.
Venue: TfC Bagel, Building 3, Level 4, Room 4.02
For more information on the IOSARN seminars, visit www.iosarn.com
Reading Group
Research Projects
Convenors: Tanja Dreher (UTS), Justine Lloyd (Macquarie University), Penny O'Donnell (Sydney University), Cate Thill (Notre Dame)
A series of workshops looking at the politics, technologies and practices of listening. The project develops a new area of study through an innovative model of networking, bringing together researchers across a range of disciplines as well as media and cultural producers.
[Sponsored by the ARC Cultural Research Network. CRSI Centre for Research on Social Inclusion and TfC]
Click here for more information on the Listening Project.
Continuum Journal of Media & Cultural Studies, Vol. 23 Issue 4 2009: 'Listening - new ways of engaging with media and culture'. Click here to access the articles.
The Listening project now has its own website. Please visit www.thelisteningproject.net/
UPCOMING LISTENING EVENTS:
15 February
PG/ECR WORKSHOP on Methodologies with Prof Nick Couldry: Researching Media as Practice
Postgraduate and Early Career Researchers are invited to participate in a workshop on methodologies to be conducted by Professor Nick Couldry of Goldsmiths College. Interested participants should send an expression of interest to tanja.dreher@uts.edu.au by COB this Friday, 22 January outlining the relevance of the workshop to their research. A small amount of funding is available to support participants attending from outside Sydney. This funding will be allocated on a competitive basis and interested PG/ECRs should contact tanja.dreher@uts.edu.au as soon as possible.
The event will start with an informal workshop exchanging ideas on research methodologies and discussing the various challenges of researching the huge range of things people now do with and through media. The suggested reading is, Nick Couldry (2004) 'Theorising Media as Practice', Social Semiotics 14(2) [a pdf will be circulated to registered participants]. This will be followed by smaller sessions with Nick Couldry for informal research mentoring.
NICK COULDRY is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London where he is Director of the Centre for the Study of Global Media and Democracy (www.goldsmiths.ac.uk/global-media-democracy/). His interests include media power, ritual dimensions of media, audience research, media ethics, the methodology of cultural studies and voice.
He is the author or editor of eight books, including Media Rituals: A Critical Approach (Routledge 2003), and (with Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham) Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007 with new paperback edition February 2010) and Media Events in a Global Age co-edited with Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz (Routledge, 2009). His forthcoming book is Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (Sage, June 2010).
He has run doctoral workshops in Australia and Denmark and is a faculty member of Richard Sennett and Craig Calhoun's NYLON doctoral network (http://www.nyu.edu/projects/nylon/membership.html)
The workshop is funded by the ARC's Cultural Research Network and is hosted by the Transforming Cultures Research Centre, UTS.
16 February
COLLOQUIUM: Listening for Media Justice
9am - 5pm, University of Technology, Building 3, Level 2, Room 2.10
Invited discussant: Prof Nick Couldry (Goldsmiths)
This colloquium will consider the ways in which recent attention to political voice and a turn to 'listening' might offer productive resources for research and practice aimed at media justice in global, mainstream, community and alternative media. This will be a small group discussion (max. 20 participants) addressing the following central questions:
- to what extent do the concepts of voice, recognition and listening generate productive insights and/or practical strategies for media justice?
- how might an invigorated conception of political voice and listening challenge established approaches to communication rights?
- what do listening and voice have to offer to work on Indigenous people and the media, global media justice, disability and communications, media and multiculturalism, environmental justice etc?
- how does media justice relate to new visions of the role of voice in economic social and political "development"
- how do listening and voice relate to emerging notions of cultural citizenship?
- how can we further develop a research and advocacy agenda around voice and listening?
- and how can we better listen for emerging possibilities for media justice 'beyond the echoes' of corporate media?
The colloquium will generate discussion across a number of productive tensions, including the tensions between
ethics and justice
voice and listening
media and politics
normative and empirical enquiry
Presenters are asked to prepare an informal paper (approx 15 mins) in response to the colloquium themes and drawing on their own research expertise. Full papers will be considered for an edited collection, deadline July 2010.
Background readings are available to registered participants in electronic format.
Lectures
17 February
PUBLIC LECTURE by Nick Couldry (Goldsmith, University of London): Voice: Culture and Politics Beyond the Horizon of Neoliberalism
6 for 6.30 pm, UTS, Building 2, Level 4, Room 4.11
RSVP to: Transforming.Cultures@uts.edu.au
This talk will start out from the way neoliberal discourse’s absolute prioritization of market functioning over and above other political and social values generates a crisis of voice in what we might call neoliberal democracies, a crisis that operates along many dimensions: in the economic sphere, in politics, and in culture. After outlining aspects of that multiple crisis, I will explore what values are available from which a counter-rationality (in Wendy Brown’s term) to neoliberal discourse can be developed.; in this, I will draw on various sources from Amartya Sen’s criticism of the assumptions of neoliberal economics to Axel Honneth’s theory of recognition. While drawing particularly on the dilemmas faced within the UK’s governance culture, I will reflect also on their relevance for other countries which have adopted neoliberal discourse to a significant degree. I will end by reflecting on the implications of my argument for current priorities for media and cultural studies research.
Nick Couldry is Professor of Media and Communications at Goldsmiths, University of London and Director of its Centre for the study of Global Media and Democracy. He is the author or editor of eight books including most recently Media Consumption and Public Engagement: Beyond the Presumption of Attention (Palgrave 2007, new edition February 2010, co-authors Sonia Livingstone and Tim Markham), Media Events in a Global Age (Routledge 2009, coedited with Andreas Hepp and Friedrich Krotz) and Listening Beyond the Echoes: Media Ethics and Agency in an Uncertain World . (Paradigm 2006). His next book is Why Voice Matters: Culture and Politics After Neoliberalism (Sage June 2010).
Prof Couldry's public lecture is funded by the ARC's Cultural Research Network and hosted by the Transforming Cultures Research Centre, UTS. Please join us for a drink before the lecture.
Conferences
28-30 April
FORUM: Open Fields
This inaugural unthemed academic camp will be held at UTS and Serial Space Gallery, April 28-30, 2010, and is organised by TfC HDR students.
For more information and the call for submissions, please read further here or visit openfieldssydney.wordpress.com
Research News
TfC congratulates Prof. Anne Cranny-Francis (TfC Director) and TfC member Dr Tara Forrest who have been awarded an ARC Discovery Grant for 2010 funding.
Prof. Anne Cranny-Francis: Jack Lindsay: critic, writer, socialist
The national benefits of this project are two-fold. Firstly, it aims to describe the process by which people are ableto move beyond conventional ways of thinking and working and to be both creative and innovative, whereinnovation refers to the ways in which this new creative thought is put into practice as a new product ortechnology. The other benefit of the project is that it describes the landmark work of an Australian artist andintellectual who is not as well-known as he should be, Jack Lindsay, oldest son of Norman Lindsay. It will provideaccess to Jack Lindsay's ideas and writing, both analytical and creative, to show how these can contribute to ourcurrent need for new and creative ways of working and thinking.
Dr. Tara Forrest: Alternative Public Spheres: Alexander Kluge's Film and Television Experiments
This project will make a significant contribution to the emphasis on 'Promoting an Innovation Culture andEconomy' outlined in Research Priority 3 through its analysis of the important role film and television producerscan play in the establishment of alternative public spheres. Taking Alexander Kluge's groundbreaking work as acase study, it will highlight the integral relationship between an active public sphere and the sustenance of aninnovative and democratic culture in which the capacity to think 'outside the square' is fostered, supported, andappreciated. In doing so, it will internationalise Australia's knowledge base in the field, and place Australia at theforefront of international debates in Screen Studies.
Transforming Cultures members have successfully been awarded funding through the ARC Discovery and Linkage grants process to commence in 2008.
1. Intercolonial networks of the Indian Ocean: Devleena Ghosh, Heather Goodall, Stephen Muecke, Michael Pearson [ARC Discovery Grant, 2008 - 2010].
2. Information and Cultural Exchange: a study of best practices in community building, participation and cultural citizenship through creative practices: Ilaria Vanni, Tanja Deher, Devleena Ghosh, Chris Ho, Tony Mitchell [ARC Linkage Grant, 2008 - 2010].
Past Events
2009: See Recent Events for further details.
2008 - 1998: See Past Events for further details.
