Culture and Creativity Seminar Series

Abstract  This presentation introduces the initial findings of a cross-faculty research project that aims to develop a social sustainability rating system for medium- and high-rise residential complexes, with Canberra as the case study. The study examines how the built environment can support mental and physical health, building management, community cohesion, and other essential factors that collectively influence the creation of socially sustainable multi-unit residences. Conducted collaboratively between the Faculty of Arts and Design and the Health Research Institute, the project reinterprets social sustainability through the lens of Canberra’s urban context. Its findings aim to provide evidence-based strategies to assist policymakers, developers, and communities in creating healthier, more inclusive, and socially supportive multi-unit residential environments.  Bio  Rahmatollah Amirjnai:  Rahmatollah Amirjani is a Lecturer in Architecture at the School of Design and Built Environment, University of Canberra. With a focus on the dichotomy between tradition and modernity, Rahmatollah’s research examines recent developments in housing provision in Australia, as well as in developing countries, investigating the impacts of inappropriate housing policies and design approaches on communities.  Milica Muminovic:  Milica Muminovic is a Senior Lecturer (Architecture) in the School of Design and the Built Environment at the University of Canberra. Her research focuses on capturing and understanding the complex aspects of the built environment transformations that maintain place identities. Taking a case study approach, coupled with lived experience from Europe to Southeast Asia, with a focus on Japan and interdisciplinary collaboration, she aims to understand ways of mapping slippery and hard to measure aspects of the built environment.  Support and Funding  1. DVCR & E – Cross Faculty Seed Funding  2. FAD Research – Emerging Researcher Development Grant Funding  3. Sahar Masoudian [Research and Innovation Service – RIS] – Data analysis  4. Dr Suzanne Carroll for her collaboration and contribution  5. Others: Anupa Ranasinghe, Louise Nicole Viduya, Courtney Walmsley, and Paulo Sembrano.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to RomAmirjani_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  Analysing the feedback from the speaker’s major PhD exhibition, and looking at three recent Royal Commissions, this presentation focuses on key themes emerging from these large truth-telling/witnessing exercises. It explores ongoing research into art making centred on issues of social injustice examined in commissions of inquiry, and asks whether art, using a specific aesthetic approach can be an effective entry point into the issues being examined and an ongoing platform for action or conversation.  Bio  Kerry is a visual artist and researcher, and this year’s recipient of the Donald Horne Creative and Cultural Fellowship at the University of Canberra’s Centre for Creative and Cultural Research. Her research explores how art can act as a platform or catalyst for the continuation of conversations about some of our country’s most shameful social histories.  Acknowledgements  This research is funded by the CCCR Donald Horne Research Fellowship and the PhD was funded by RTP Stipend.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to KerryMartin_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  This presentation is a conversation about a research collaboration between academics from three universities. What started as a collaboration between three women from Edith Cowan University and four from Canberra University has grown to include another woman from both universities and one more from the University of Wollongong. We call ourselves the Kind Regards Collective.  Bio  Wendy is a Jerrinja woman from the South Coast of NSW. She is the inaugural First Nations Post-Doctoral Researcher with the CCCR.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to WendySomerville_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  Laser cleaning provides a highly controlled, non-invasive method for removing surface contaminants without damaging the underlying material, making it especially valuable in the preservation of sensitive cultural artifacts. Over the past year, the Victoria and Albert Museum’s conservation team has applied this approach across various materials and object types, such as plastics, micromosaics, ceramics, and paintings. This seminar will offer an overview of how laser cleaning works, its advantages, and the results obtained during the projects undertaken in 2024. It will also share practical insights, highlight challenges and benefits, and demonstrate the growing role of laser technology in the preservation of cultural heritage.  Bio  Julia is a postdoctoral research fellow specialising in the application of laser technologies for the conservation of cultural heritage materials. She completed her PhD at University of Canberra in 2023, focusing on the use of femtosecond pulse lasers to clean the granite cladding of the Sydney Harbour Bridge. Following her doctoral studies, she undertook a laser cleaning fellowship at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, where she worked closely with conservators to integrate laser cleaning into routine treatment practices. Julia has since returned to Canberra, where her research will explore the application of laser cleaning to Aboriginal rock art.  Acknowledgements  This fellowship was funded by Ed and Anne Teppo.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to JuliaBrand_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  In this lecture, Manuela de Barros explores how technology has interfaced with the concept of magic since the Renaissance, influencing how beliefs and expectations about their capabilities are formed. She considers how these cultural beliefs endow technologies with magical powers to take care of social problems, inviting us to reflect on their significance in the context of expanding space exploration.  Bio  Manuela de Barros is Assistant Professor in philosophy, aesthetics and theory of arts at Université Paris 8 Vincennes - Saint-Denis. Her research concerns the aesthetics of contemporary art and new media ; relationships between arts, sciences and technologies; the biological, anthropological and environmental modifications brought by technosciences; the passages between sciences and fictional constructions (in art or in literature); feminism and gender. She is the author of several publications including Magie et technologie (UV éditions).  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to ManueladeBarros_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  In the first half of 2025, I was fortunate enough to conduct research on the Outside Studies Program towards completion of an academic textbook, How to Write Haiku, to be published by Bloomsbury Press. This included a month spent in Japan conducting background cultural research and, more specifically, interviewing and talking with contemporary poets and critics about Gendai Haiku. Gendai literally means ‘new style’ and arose with the New Rising Poets movement of the late 1930s, a group that was suppressed by the government in what became known as the Haiku Persecution Incident. Gendai leans towards surrealism, and, I argue, constitutes a significant form of postmodernism which has the potential to inform and re-invigorate English-Language Haiku.  Bio  Owen Bullock’s most recent poetry collection is Pancakes for Neptune (Recent Work Press, 2023), following three previous poetry titles, five books of haiku, a bilingual edition of tanka, and a novella. His research interests include arts and health; haikai literature; poetry and process; semiotics and poetry; prose poetry, and collaboration. His scholarly work has appeared in Antipodes, Journal of Creative Arts Therapies, Axon, Journal of New Zealand Literature, Ka Mate Ka Ora, Medical Humanities, New Writing, Qualitative Inquiry, Social Alternatives, TEXT and Westerly. He is Discipline Lead for Creative Writing and Literary Studies at the University of Canberra.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to OwenBullock_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  What are the essentials of Gille Deleuze’s philosophy? There is a multiplicity of Deleuzes, with multiple points of engagement. This presentation begins with the presupposition that they are all actualised examples of a philosophy of the event. Emphasising Deleuze’s philosophy as a philosophy of the event is largely congruent with major commentaries but is purposefully constrained and minimalist. What happens when the mechanics of the event itself, rather than philosophical development or contestation, becomes the only focus? This minimal Deleuze is organised around three concepts.  The first concept is of the ‘fourth-person singular’ which denotes a perspective beyond first, second and third perspectives common to narrative writing and understandings of subjectivity. The fourth-person singular is the perspective of the event, in its eternity and expression. Other perspectival positions are arrayed in the multiplicity of the event as a dimension of the event. The challenge is to think the fourth-person singular of any given event. The second concept is of the ‘fifth dimension’ that helps us imagine a cosmic realm of pure multiplicity where causality is in flux. Causality is fixed as events are actualised into states of affairs and correlating finite perspectives. The challenge is to think causality in its full recursive blossom. The third concept is of the ‘adventure’, borrowed from Whitehead, which helps situate us in the turbulence of human finitude that unravels in the midst of events. An applied mechanics of the event will necessarily be an adventure of perspective and causality. We have myriad techniques of adventure – from affect to aesthetics – for helping us implicate sense from chaos, and ‘fix’ perspective and causal relations.  The paper ends by arguing a critical event mechanics needs to be vigilant for those dark masters who manipulate events to discipline (human) finitude in exploitative causal traps.  Bio  Glen is a professor of communication and media. He has published across a range of topics and fields, including cultural studies, communication and media studies, and gender studies.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to GlenFuller_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  The production of creative objects for wellbeing seems to have been part of human culture since the dawn of our emergence as a species. It did, though, take until the 20th century before it became formalized and institutionalized – first as art therapy and more recently as a part of social prescribing. In this seminar I will briefly touch the history of creative intervention for wellbeing, and then outline key contemporary aspects of this significant practice.  Bio  Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor Emerita of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra. A poet and cultural theorist, she has published a number of books on key concepts in culture. Her recent poetry collections include Moving Targets (2018), Flight Mode (2020); and The Daily News (2024).  Her current scholarly work focuses on creative practice and/for wellbeing; her poetry focuses on material poetics, and questions of being.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to JenWebb_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  This paper takes fire from Seamus Heaney’s comments on the “cultural depth charges latent in certain words,” and in particular from his analysis of poet Ted Hughes’s predilection for those with Anglo-Saxon roots. Heaney sees Germanic word choices as integral to Hughes’s attempts to evoke “the being-thereness. . . of sea, stone, wind and tree.” So Heaney makes critical mileage of the well-known existence (Jespersen 1938; Ulmann 1962; Durkin 2007) of two key strata in the English lexicon: the Latinate vocabulary of administrative, legal, commercial, educational, intellectual and ecclesiastical power, brought by the French overlords from 1066 on and later massified through Renaissance borrowings, and those older words—typically shorter, felt to be more earthy and everyday—which evidence the English language’s long descent from proto-Germanic. Inspired by Heaney’s analysis, the article asks how much the emotive power, and “being-thereness,” of the words “belong”, “belongs to” and “belonging”, can be attributed to etymological imaginings of this order. In other words, is their invocation really a kind of trick? The analysis covers artistic, scholarly and party-political uses of the “belong” words, problematising the universality scholars have attributed to the concept of “belonging” in the process. The paper concludes by suggesting that an era dominated by propaganda (a.k.a. populism) requires new uses for the tools of literary criticism.  Bio  Paul Magee is Professor of Poetry at the University of Canberra, where he directs the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR). His most recent books are Later Unearthed (Puncher and Wattman, 2025), in verse, and the monograph, Suddenness and the Composition of Poetic Thought (Rowman and Littlefield / Bloomsbury, 2022).  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to PaulMagee_Presentation.pptx

Abstract  This seminar explores the complexities behind a deceptively simple directive: just put it on a map. Drawing on recent web-based mapping projects, I will unpack the messy realities of transforming research data, often buried in Word documents or scattered across unstructured formats, into meaningful digital interfaces. From wrestling with datasets to navigating design dilemmas, I will examine both practical and theoretical considerations of mapping digital cultural heritage. Along the way, I'll share how experimenting with code and genAI has opened new possibilities while revealing unexpected limitations in creating these rich, exploratory interfaces.  Bio  Ben is a Senior Lecturer in Design at UC. He has spent many late nights turning messy cultural heritage data into (mostly) functional web-based interfaces. His broader practice spans data visualisation, interface design, digital storytelling and user experience. He has contributed to research projects for the National Gallery of Australia, British Council, ACT Government, and the ARC-funded Heritage of the Air, among others.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to https://uni.beneb.com/cccr

Abstract  Technological innovation has evoked anxiety in (some) contemporary writers. But writers are also well-placed to adapt to technological change by virtue of the multiple worlds they already inhabit. This paper examines two novels written contemporaneously with the pandemic by Ali Smith as a way of tracing the heightened embedding of people in the virtual world, made possible by improved digital infrastructures and technological development, which accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. While Smith’s Summer (2020) and Companion Piece (2022) evoke the outbreak of COVID-19 and characters’ responses to contagion-induced lockdowns in the UK, they also repeatedly underscore the importance of artworks, including painting, theatre, and writing, during a period which involved the segmentation of time and space. Smith’s fiction, and the material she wrote around the time her books were published, are engaged in making statements about the value of the material arts in a world where the virtual is overtaking the real.  Bio  Lucy Neave is the author of the forthcoming monograph, Infrastructures of Crisis in Global 21st-Century Literature (Edinburgh University Press, 2025). Her most recent novel, Believe in Me (UQP, 2021) won the ACT Book of the Year. She teaches English and Creative Writing at the ANU.  This presentation was accompanied by slides. To view the slides head to LucyNeave_Presentation.pptx

Distinguished Prof. Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, where she researches the role of art and artists in society and writes poetry. Recent scholarly books focus on gender and the creative labour market and art and human rights in Asian contexts, while Jen’s poetry collections engage social, political and environmental issues. Her current research addresses the relationship between creative practice and wellbeing, specifically the role of arts mentors in health and wellbeing programs. She has supervised 52 PhD candidates to completion, and is currently primary supervisor for 6 PhD candidates, 5 of whom are working on arts/health projects.