Campus Review Volume 25. Issue 6 | Page 36

on the move campusreview. com. au
VU selects McGuinness fellow
Dr Tony Birch will join Victoria University from July this year as the first recipient of the Dr Bruce McGuinness Indigenous Postdoctoral Research Fellowship.
The Bruce McGuinness Fellowship is named for one of Victoria’ s most respected Aboriginal Elders and supports Indigenous researchers in the early stages of their career.
Birch is head of the creative writing honours program at the University of Melbourne, and his Fellowship at VU will involve academic research and creative writing projects, student mentoring, lecturing and community engagement.
Birch plans to travel to the University of Columbia to conduct research with Canadian Aborigines on climate change.
Oxford prof joins Melbourne’ s India centre
Professor Craig Jeffrey has been appointed the next director of the Australia India Institute
( AII) based at the University of Melbourne.
The AII is Australia’ s only national centre for research and analysis on India and is a hub for dialogue, research and partnerships between Australia and India.
Jeffrey is a professor of development geography at Oxford University and will take up his five-year appointment in October 2015. He will succeed professor Amitabh Mattoo, who will move to the Delhi branch of the institute. Mattoo has described Jeffrey as“ an inspired choice”.
Griffith PICKS new Chancellor
Griffith University has welcomed Henry
Smerdon as its new Chancellor following the retirement of
Leneen Forde.
With a long career in finance – including a stints in senior executive roles at both Queensland Treasury and the Queensland Investment Corporation – Smerdon steps into the role as the university’ s fifth chancellor having served on the university’ s council for the last 15 years.
Griffith vice-chancellor professor Ian O’ Connor said Smerdon’ s experience and wise counsel had“ proved invaluable”.
Smerdon said he believed the university’ s leadership had placed it well for a bright future of growth and success and that he was looking forward to being a part of it.
Sandra Harding stayS as JCU VC
Professor Sandra
Harding has been re-appointed James Cook University’ s vice-chancellor and president through the end of 2021. Lieutenant-General John Grey, chancellor of JCU, said the university council recognised Harding’ s strong leadership of the university and that she“ is held in deep respect by the people of northern Queensland, as well as nationally and internationally”.
Harding said it was a privilege to lead JCU and that despite what the university had accomplished over the years, there was still much more to be done.
QUT prof joins science academy
Professor Peter Bartlett, from the Queensland University of Technology, has been named a fellow of the Australian Academy of Science.
Each year, 20 fellows are elected to the academy for their achievements and excellence in science. Bartlett was appointed in recognition of his pioneering work on statistical machine learning and the science behind algorithms that learn from data.
He said he was honoured by the appointment and that the computer and information sciences were underrepresented in Australia, despite their importance to industry, science and government.
Business leader appointed to UC Council
Leading business executive Joanne
Metcalfe has been appointed to the University of Canberra Council by Andrew Barr, the ACT chief minister.
Metcalfe is the ACT and Southern NSW operating centre manager for consulting services firm GHD and has experience in business, planning and construction management.
Her term on the council will be three years. Metcalfe said UC has the potential for great things and could break into the world rankings and attract greater student numbers.
Strictly speaking | Swirling
Swirling means having a partner of a different race. The term has been around since the early 2000s, according to urbandictionary. com, and has been brought to more prominence recently by Christelyn Karazin, who has written a book about it, and launched a dating website and a reality web series called Swirlr. The sugary imagery of chocolate and vanilla ice cream evoked by swirling is a long way from the turbulent history of mixed marriages, and the anti-miscegenation laws of Nazi Germany and many US states.
Miscegenation( literally‘ the mixing of races’) had an interesting genesis. It was originally coined in 1863 in a hoax pamphlet designed to discredit the American Republican party’ s abolitionist platform. The pamphlet promoted the blending of races as a desired outcome of freeing slaves, and created the word as a scientific term, to add a spurious authority to its argument. The negative associations of miscegenation have taken it out of use, so perhaps a new word is needed for our( hopefully) more enlightened age. The fact that a label is needed at all is a sign that we have not progressed as far as we might. As a recent article in dailylife. com. au noted:“ If the world was really post-racial, we wouldn’ t celebrate interracial couples for being interracial. Love depends on feelings that occur entirely beneath the skin.”
Written by Adam Smith, senior research assistant at the Centre for Language Sciences, Macquarie University.
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