Each year since 1959, the ABC has sparked conversation about critical ideas with the Boyer Lectures. In 2018 the lectures will be delivered by Professor John Rasko AO. His series will examine impact of revolutionary genetic and cell-based technologies on our lives.
In this fourth and final lecture, John Bell discusses how William Shakespeare imagined a different world and encouraged his audience to do the same.
In this third lecture of the Boyer series, John Bell discusses Shakespeare's Women and how through his female characters he imagined a better world.
In this second lecture of the Boyer series, John Bell discusses what Shakespeare can teach us about governance, about politics and power.
In the first lecture of the 2021 Boyer series, John Bell opens our eyes and our ears to how relevant William Shakespeare is in today's world and what he can teach us through his own observations from four hundred years ago.
In the third Boyer lecture, Dr Andrew Forrest discusses how inequality manifests in our modern capitalist system — through intergenerational dependence on welfare, lack of access to finance, a lack of policy focus on early childhood development in vulnerable communities and through modern slavery.
In the second of his 2020 Boyer Lectures, Andrew Forrest mounts a passionate defence of our oceans. Dr Forrest argues the key issues facing our oceans — deoxygenation, overfishing and plastic pollution — are our fault, and it's us who must fix them. He says it's philanthropic and government interventions, at a scale not yet seen, that will save our seas.
In this first Boyer lecture, leading philanthropist and businessman Andrew Forrest calls for an urgent move to green hydrogen "on a global scale". For Dr Forrest, the question is not whether green hydrogen will become the next global energy form, but who will be the first to mass-produce it?
In Rachel Perkins final Boyer lecture she details the dual proposal for a Makarrata Commission and a process of truth telling about our nation.
From colonial times to the present, Indigenous people have wanted a say about the laws and policies that affect them. Rachel Perkins discusses what needs to be done to guarantee that the Indigenous voice is heard.
Rachel Perkins reminds us of the significance of the Uluru Statement from the Heart and why it's the most important message Indigenous people have sent to their fellow Australians in over four decades.
How advances in genetics and biomedicine have quietly brought eugenics back from exile.
Human GMOs already walk amongst us and the implications of this are enormous.
There's a dark side of stem cell research — John Rasko shines a light on the low points and scandals of unproven cell therapies.
In the fields of gene and cell therapies we've already crossed many thresholds — but do we really understand the consequences of what we're doing?
Professor Genevieve Bell outlines her proposal for how Australia should build its digital future. This talk was recorded in front of a live audience in Studio 22 at ABC Ultimo on Saturday 21 October, 2017, and features questions from former Boyer lecturer and sociologist Eva Cox and chief commissioner of the Greater Sydney Commission Lucy Turnbull.
We asked what your hopes and fears are for where technology is heading, and here's what you told us.
Professor Genevieve Bell reveals how new technologies change life, but rarely in the ways we anticipate. How might the origin stories of the typewriter, the robot and electricity equip us to invent the future?
Professor Genevieve Bell looks at how personal computers and the internet have reshaped our lives, and the possibilities we’ve imagined for ourselves and each other.
Professor Genevieve Bell explains why she’s returned home after decades in Silicon Valley, and explores Australia’s role in building our current digital world.
What does it mean to be human, and Australian, in a digital world?
There are examples from around the world, of community and government actions that make a difference to health inequalities. Creating the conditions for individuals to take control over their lives will enable social flourishing of all members of society.
Unemployment is bad for health, but work can damage health, too. When work is no longer the way out of poverty, health suffers.
Absence of the nurturing and presence of the harmful are important for the whole of life and are strong contributors to inequalities in adult health. There is much we can do to make things better at both the level of national policy and at the local level supporting families and children.
There are large inequalities in health within and between countries. To explain this we have to look at the social determinants of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live work and age; and inequities in power, money and resources.
There are examples from around the world, of community and government actions that make a difference to health inequalities. Creating the conditions for individuals to take control over their lives will enable social flourishing of all members of society.
Unemployment is bad for health, but work can damage health, too. When work is no longer the way out of poverty, health suffers.
Absence of the nurturing and presence of the harmful are important for the whole of life and are strong contributors to inequalities in adult health. There is much we can do to make things better at both the level of national policy and at the local level supporting families and children.
There are large inequalities in health within and between countries. To explain this we have to look at the social determinants of health—the conditions in which people are born, grow, live work and age; and inequities in power, money and resources.
Australia now finds itself on the centre stage. Staying there is the challenge. In the final of the 2015 Boyer Lectures series, Dr Michael Fullilove calls for a larger and more ambitious foreign policy; one that ensures that our national interests once again align with our national capabilities.
In his third Boyer lecture, Michael Fullilove argues the need for a larger politics and some big thinking on the economy in order to respond to global challenges, like immigration and climate policy.
In his second Boyer Lecture, Dr Michael Fullilove examines how the dizzying rise of China has pulled Australia onto a new world stage as a key player, a leap that calls for a serious examination of foreign policy
In this first lecture, delivered at Peking University in Beijing, Dr Michael Fullilove explains the crumbling of world order. As wealth and power shifts to the East, Australia finds itself in a new and precarious position.
In the fourth and final lecture Professor Cory highlights the concerning scientific brain drain in this country: "We are losing women from all areas of science and the deficit at senior levels is particularly disturbing."
In the third lecture Professor Suzanne Cory reflects on her other great passion, the environment, and warns that 'humankind is fouling the nest' and that if action is not taken soon, by 2100 Earth will be hotter than any time in the last few million years making mass species extinctions and global human conflicts over energy and water inevitable.
In the second lecture Professor Cory shows how extraordinarily important scientific research and development is for our economy.
In this first lecture Professor Cory reflects on where medical science has come from and where it is heading, drawing out implications for health and the economy.
Courage, compassion and resilience in everyday life
In her final lecture, Professor Langton reflects on the economic transformation underway in the lives of Aboriginal people -- from increasing Indigenous enrolments in higher education, through rising employment in mining and other rural industries, to the explosion of cultural production by Aboriginal people into the Australian mainstream not only on canvas and on the stage, but also in music, literature, cinema and television.
In her fourth lecture, Professor Langton examines how some beliefs within the nature conservation movement in Australia have perpetuated the idea that Aboriginal people are the enemies of nature, and describes recent examples of Indigenous tractional land practices which combine western ecological knowledge to create sustainable and economically viable custodianship of country,
In her third lecture, Professor Langton illuminates the experiences of two Aboriginal communities who are levering economic advancement through agreements with mining companies, and examines why it is that the private sector is leading the way in forging new working models with Indigenous Australia while government policies lag far behind.
In her second lecture, Professor Langton examines the confluence of historical, political and social factors which have created entrenched barriers against the economic advancement of Aboriginal people in Australia.
In this first lecture Professor Langton explores the changing relationship between Aboriginal communities and mining companies since the 1993 Mabo agreement and native title legislation, and asks whether this could offer a model for the economic empowerment of all Indigenous people in Australia.
It is my great good luck that the words I use are English words, which means I live in a very old nation of open borders; a rich, deep, multi-layered, promiscuous universe, infused with Latin, German, French, Greek, Arabic and countless other tongues. I would not be able to swim so far, dive so deep, in a linguistically isolated language such as Hungarian, or even a protectively elitist one such as French.
If one definition of the word 'home' is a goal or objective, then I have to be clear that becoming the kind of journalist who covered war was never my goal or intention.
The idea of home is bigger than the floorplan of any given four walls or the mass of any roof line. It cannot be compassed by rote recitations of suburb or postcode, nation or state. In last week's lecture, I mentioned the various definitions that dictionaries give for that small, heavily laden word, home. Tonight I would like to explore some of them: home as 'a place of origin, a native habitat', home as 'an environment offering security and happiness' and home as 'the place where something is discovered, founded, developed or promoted. A source.'
In dictionaries, definitions of home are various. It is both 'a place of origin, a starting position' and 'a goal or destination.' It may also be 'an environment offering security and happiness' or 'the place where something is discovered, founded, developed or promoted. A source.'
Universities may appear unchanged and enduring, yet the world of the mind is shifting quickly. This is a moment of unparalleled growth, but also of new challenges — the web, on-line learning, and international competition. Australian higher education must think about its role in the republic of learning, so there is a place for every citizen, for every community.
In the modern university, the new sits awkwardly alongside the ancient — medieval gowns and corporate branding, academic board and a chief financial officer. Yet despite its many contradictions, campus remains a place of vitality and imagination, as each new generation seeks its place in the world.
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