home cooked theory

Professional precarity, 1

This is a note to self, and to anyone who didn’t catch Mark Bousquet’s recent post on professionalism and academia. It really highlights how the sacrificial labour of academics helped to make voluntary labour commonplace beyond the campus, in turn contributing to a broader deterioration of professional status that can no longer be rewarded financially [...]

Published!

The opinion piece referred to previously is in the Higher Ed section of The Australian today. The print version has a very cute cartoon alongside with a sandstone tower and a book as the draw bridge. The young girl struggling to cross the moat bears an uncanny resemblance to my grad school self. I’m [...]

Design help

The State of the Industry conference needs a poster to advertise itself. We can guarantee exposure!
If you or anyone you know might be willing to offer an idea, please get in touch. So far the organising committee has been thinking a hallway image would be good. I think this could help symbolise how the themes [...]

The State of the Industry: Initial program launch

Thanks to John, Angela, Graeme, Emily, Clif and Alison, it’s time to formally announce:
The State of the Industry:
The future for cultural research in the university
26th and 27th November 2009
The University of New South Wales, Kensington
The State of the Industry is a two day conference that will discuss the future for cultural research in the [...]

Rural melancholy and the metronormative

Since getting back from my travels I’ve been working on a few things, including plans for Crossroads 2010 and invites for the CRN State of the Industry conference in November. I’ve been really excited about the plenary speakers for Crossroads for weeks, so it’s great to have the news official now. Meanwhile, we will probably [...]

Day Two - Research

Guest post by Emily Potter. Emily is an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, University of Melbourne. Her current research, funded by an ARC Discovery Grant held with Professor Paul Carter, focuses on the poetics of place, and the work of public art in the remaking of environments. She [...]

Day Three - Outreach

Guest post by Clif Evers. Clif is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Journalism and Media Research Centre at the University of New South Wales. He is Co-Editor of Kurungabaa - A journal of literature, history and ideas for surfers, and Altitude - A journal for emerging humanities research in Australia. Clif co-convenes the ‘early [...]

Day One - Teaching and Learning

A working model for the conference so far is based on three sessions of provocations each day.
Two speakers will provide responses to themes that have been established beforehand, following which the audience will be invited to take over the discussion.
Done in blocks of two hours, there will be two major themes for each session. [...]

The State of the Industry

Frankie magazine has a feature this month on postgrads with cool PhD topics. [Disclaimer: I know two of the three interviewees quite well; in fact it feels as though I "know" half the people in the issue in one way or another...] Nestled in with other stories of “creative types” who do what they do [...]