Professor Grant, who currently fills the role of ABDC Secretary, will replace outgoing President Professor Tony Travaglione, of the University of Newcastle, who stepped into the position in February 2017.
In a statement, Professor Grant said he will focus on increasing the ABDC’s lobbying and advocacy activities, as well as strengthening ties between its member business schools and industry and government.
“ABDC members educate one-third of our domestic university students and graduate more than half of the international tertiary students in Australia,” Professor Grant said.
“International students in our business schools account for more than $5 billion in education export earnings — a significant portion of Australia’s third-largest export industry.”
Professor Grant’s appointment is not the first time a Griffith Business School head has taken up the top spot at the ABDC; his predecessor as Pro Vice Chancellor, Professor Michael Powell, was also elected to the role in 2013.
The ABDC represents 39 business schools around the country, and describes itself as “the collective voice of university pro vice-chancellors, executive deans and heads of Australian business faculties and schools”.
“Our 39 members teach and research areas vital to the success of the businesses that underpin Australia’s economy,” Professor Travaglione said.
“As their peak body, ABDC’s role is to ensure that those with political, social, cultural and economic influence appreciate and support how business education and scholarship contributes to Australia’s future.”
More than 20 of the world’s foremost minds will debate social, moral and political challenges at Griffith University’s Integrity 20 conference this week (October 25-26).
With a theme of ‘A World Divided’ they will discuss a range of issues – from thecrisis of democracy and unaccountable power of digital giants, to the increasingpolarisationin public andpolicicaldebate.
The fifthannual Integrity 20 is highlighted by a lecture –Unfettered and Alive– delivered by Australian feminist, cultural icon Anne Summers AO on the night of October 23.
Dr Summers has had an extraordinary career as a journalist, author, policy maker, political advisor, bureaucrat, board member, editor, publisher and political activist.Her bookDamned Whores and God’s Police, recalibrated our understanding of Australia’s history and contemporary society.
She has influenced and shaped the political, cultural and social fabric of Australia and is as committed as ever to bringing change to Australian women.
Integrity 20 Chair and Pro Vice Chancellor (Arts, Education & Law) Professor Paul Mazerolle said the event was an important part of Brisbane’s cultural calendar and provides a much needed public platform for discussion and dialogue.
“The speakers attending are at the forefront of their fields and can offer amazing insights and in-depth analysis of those themes at the core of some of our greatest global challenges,” Professor Mazerolle said.
A dedicated schools’ day kickstarts the Integrity 20 program on Wednesday, October 23 followed by two full days of lectures, round-tables and debates.
Helping adults in the mid stage of life to achieve healthy lifestyles is the aim of a new wellness program developed by Griffith University.
Led by Dr Amanda McGuire and funded by Griffith’s Menzies Health Institute Queensland, the nurse-led study will involve 60 participants aged 40-59 who will undertake an 8 week healthy lifestyle program called GroWell.
All aspects of health including physical activity, healthy eating, stress management, better sleep and preventative health behaviours will be looked at as part of an online questionnaire.
“Mid-life is known to be a good time to provide advice to people on their health, particularly as there are certain risks around this time such as overweight/obesity, diabetes and heart health,” says Dr McGuire, a nursing academic from Griffith’s School of Nursing and Midwifery.
Evidence-based research
“The positive aspect of this program is all the advice that provided is supported by strong evidence-based research. Unfortunately there is a lot of mis-information out there about health in the marketplace at the moment, and this program is also aiming to address this.”
Participants — who can live anywhere – will complete two virtual appointments (via Facetime or Skype) with either a trained nurse or research assistant at baseline and on completion of the program. All participants will be asked to complete an online questionnaire on three occasions.
Participants could also be randomly assigned to nurse-led coaching as part of the benefits of joining the GroWell program.
All participants must be able to speak and read English and have access to a computer, tablet or eReader device.
Griffith University have been crowned champions of the AON Women’s Rugby Uni 7s for 2018 after taking out the final round with a storming performance in the gold medal match.
A brace of tries from powerhouse Alysia Lefau-Fakaosilea set Griffith on the road to victory, with further five-pointers by Alana Elisaia and Ivania Wong keeping them in the driving seat.
Griffith had to resist a late rally from their Queensland rivals but deservedly hung on to win 26-19 and claim a third series round title in succession.
“This is pretty incredible,” team captain and Bachelor of Public Relations and Communication student, Kiri Lingman, said.
“We have dreamed of this moment and it’s very much a dream come through.
“We produced a gutsy effort in every tournament and dug deep right to the very end today.”
The outstanding Laura Waldie, a Bachelor of Oral Health Dental Science student, andAlysia Lefau-Fakaosilea were also named on the AON Series Dream Team for 2018, selected by Australian 7s coaching staff.
Kahli Henwood (Education), Eliza Flynn (Sport Development), Sophie Quirk (Exercise Science) and 13th player Katie Curtis (Sport Management) were the other current students involved over the weekend.
Griffith had taken a two-point advantage at the top of the ladder into the weekend action and an unbeaten run to the gold medal game meant the national title was secured before a tackle was made in the final.
Griffith proved too strong for University of New England (36-12), Bond University (30-0), University of Queensland (20-10) and University of Canberra (26-0) en route to the knock-out stages.
In the semi-final they saw off University of Sydney (39-5) to confirm the series. A string of high tempo performances were marked by composure, discipline and a run of crunching tackles which kept the opposition on the backfoot throughout the weekend.
Griffith finished top of the ladder with 94 points, eight clear of runners-up and defending champions, University of Queensland.
Griffith University has teamed up with Australia’s most famous family of conservationistsin order tounearth and develop lifesaving medications to combat human diseases.
Research scientists fromNatureBank, Griffith’s biodiscovery resource, were recently granted access to the 330,000-acre Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve (SIWR) in Far North Queensland on the back of the relationship forged between Griffith Institute for Drug Discovery (GRIDD) researchers and Steve and Terri Irwin many years ago.
Thereserve, which is made up of 35 different ecosystems, provides a habitat and refuge for a vast array of not only fauna but also flora. The unique biodiversity that is protected within thereserve has the potential for being the source of future human medicines.
Assoc Prof Rohan Davis in Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve.
NatureBank,locatedatGRIDD, is adrug discovery platform that isbased on natural products (small molecules from nature) that are derived from Australian biota. This precious resource enables ground-breaking and innovative work at GRIDD on not only drug discovery projects, but also agrochemical, nutraceutical and cosmeceutical research.
“Naturebankis used by collaborators, both locally and from around the world, for finding small molecules from nature that are unique, have interesting biological activity, and hopefully will one day make a lifesaving drug,”NatureBank’sAcademic Lead Associate Professor Rohan Davis said.
“I am sure there will be lots of interesting chemistry and biology in these new plant samples, some of which we hope can be exploited against a raft of different human diseases” said Rohan. Researchers at GRIDD and abroad are looking for new anti-cancer, anti-infective, and anti-inflammatory compounds from nature.
“Examples of drugs from nature include paclitaxel (from the Pacific Yew tree bark), which is used in the treatment of breast, ovarian and non-small cell lung cancers;Eribulin(based on a natural product from a marine sponge) that is currently used for treating metastatic breast cancer; and of course the famous antibiotic, penicillin (from amicrofungus), that is used to treat various bacterial infections.”
The recent four-day expedition to the SIWR by Griffith was led byAssociate ProfessorDavis, andresulted in the collection and taxonomic identification of >50 plant samples that are endemic to this remote location and could potentially hold the key to developing cures for cancer, Parkinson’s and other infectious and neurological diseases.
Associate Professor Davis saidNatureBank’sbiota (>30,000 samples) and screening libraries [extract (15,000) and fraction (75,000) libraries] and reputation as having the best natural product resource in the southern hemisphere put it in a strong position to discover potential new medicines from the recently collected SIWR plants.
Associate Professor Davis said having the Irwin’s support was integral for GRIDD to carry on its vital drug discovery work.
“Terri has visited our team at GRIDD andBindihas spent a day in the lab with me a few years ago, so it’s great to build on that relationship by being the only group doing drug discovery expeditions within the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve,” he said.
Terri Irwin, Owner of Australia Zoo said itwas anhonourto work withAssociateProfessor Davis and his team and to support their research that may go on to help develop cures for cancer and diseasessuch asParkinson’s.
“It’s incredible to think that the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve could be home to a unique plant species that could hold the key to unlocking potentially lifesaving medications,” Terri said.
“This highlights the importance of nature and just how vital conservation of our flora and fauna is. Steve’s dream was to have the cleanest water, the freshest air and wildlife in abundance; but most of all, he wanted a future for our children and this research could have such a huge impact on future generations.”
NatureBank’scollected plant samples from the reserve are expected to be processed within the next threemonths, andwill end up in the unique extract and screening libraries at stored at GRIDD. These libraries are regularly shipped off to Europe or the US or other overseas destinations for further screening to determine their potential as sources of new drugs of the future.
By Dr Chris Butler
Griffith Law School
This post draws on a research article ‘State power, the politics of debt and confronting neoliberal authoritarianism’ that will be published in a special issue of Law and Critique on Forms of Authority Beyond the Neoliberal State (vol. 29(3)). The article is currently available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9233-z.
Neoliberal authority
Recently, a growing body of legal scholarship has begun to consider the role of law in neoliberal governance (Brabazon 2017; Golder and McLoughlin 2018). In a forthcoming article in the journal Law and Critique, I explore the connections between neoliberalism as an intellectual, political and legal project and the consolidation of state authority (Butler 2018). While its tendencies toward economic deregulation, the commodification of public services and the undermining of collective systems of social welfare superficially suggest a reduction in state power in comparison to the Keynesian welfare state, it has been clear from the early 1980s that one of neoliberalism’s primary concerns has been the reshaping of state power to engineer specific social outcomes. Contrary to the commonplace ideological presentation of neoliberalism as dependent on the return of a classical liberal nightwatchman state, state institutions have played a crucial role in securing the dominance of market rule, the privatisation of collectively owned assets and the defence of private property rights. Indeed, active interventions of the state have been an essential prerequisite for the progressive neoliberalisation of social relations in areas such as criminal justice, social welfare, systems of urban governance, the policing of organised labour and the normalisation of entrepreneurial forms of citizenship.
The contribution of the state to the rolling out and entrenchment of processes of neoliberalisation is a topic of crucial importance in an era where the subjection of social relations to the logic of the market appears to be increasingly accompanied by political and bureaucratic forms of authoritarianism. Indeed, numerous scholars have noted that, from the outset, neoliberal governance has been premised on an implicit need for the reorganisation and strengthening of state power (Bonefeld 2010, 2017; Mirowski 2009). So perhaps it is not surprising that parallel forms of aggressive neoliberal interventionism have become firmly established across numerous fields of social ordering and policy formation in the decade which has followed the financial crisis of 2008. Contemporary examples of these authoritarian tendencies in the exercise of state power include the extension and deepening of regimes of austerity in the provision of social services, public education and healthcare, the progressive weakening of democratic controls over executive decision-making and the activities of non-market institutions, and the fusing of technocratic governance with authoritarian populist policies such as the militarisation of national territory and migration (Harvey 2005, Brenner 2004; Peck and Tickell 2002; Wacquant 2009; Pugliese 2013).
Debt, guilt and austerity
One important recent contributor to the study of state power under neoliberalism has been Maurizio Lazzarato, who has drawn on the work of Foucault, Deleuze, Nietzsche and Marx in explaining neoliberalism as an explicitly authoritarian imposition of the creditor-debtor relation on society (Lazzarato 2012, 2015). Lazzarato describes the relationship between creditor and debtor as the contemporary ‘archetype of social relations’ and as morally
producing a mode of subjectivity which is premised on ‘work on the self’; an ‘ethico-political labor constitutive of the subject’ (Lazzarato 2012: 33). Through our promises to honour our debts into the future, we are all transformed into indebted economic and political subjects whose tendencies towards potentially unpredictable or insurrectionary behaviour are kept under control. Accordingly, the neoliberal debt economy expands through a dual ‘exploitation of subjectivity’, both ‘extensively’ (through infiltrating the entire corpus of social activities), and ‘intensively’ by framing the relationship to the self
in the guise of the entrepreneur of the self — who is at once responsible for ‘his’ [sic] capital and guilty of poor management — whose paradigm is the ‘unemployed’. (Lazzarato 2012: 52)
There are certainly dangers in framing contemporary social relations solely in terms of debt and subsuming all political struggles to a terrain defined by the imperatives of finance capital. Nevertheless, Lazzarato’s approach provides a useful lens through which to view certain instances of punitive forms of austerity which rely upon an intimate association between debt and guilt.
Robo-debt and the politics of austerity
A recent demonstration of this association can be observed in the recent controversy over the implementation of an automated debt recovery system by the Australian Department of Human Services. Promoted by the Government on its introduction in late 2016, the ‘Online Compliance Intervention’ (OCI) system was projected to raise $2.1 billion by 2020, by eliminating welfare fraud and recouping overpayments of benefits (Morrison and Cormann 2016, p. 24). In practice, the OCI raised less than a quarter of the projected revenue during its first year of operation, but has generated thousands of incorrect debt notices to ‘customers’ who have been identified as owing debts for past overpayments of unemployment benefits. The Department of Human Services has been subjected to widespread criticism from activists in the welfare sector, commentators and legal academics for the system’s multiple design flaws and the aggressive way it has dealt with the process of debt collection (ACOSS 2017; Carney 2018; Hanks 2017).
While the Department had been using manual processes of cross-matching of declared income and taxation records since the early 2000s, the OCI system has removed previously necessary stages of human oversight, which ensured that an average of only seven percent of data discrepancies were pursued as formal debts. The new algorithms used by the OCI’s ‘robo-debt’ system average out yearly income into fortnightly amounts and effectively generate false discrepancies in any case where a person’s pay, employment or training circumstances have varied throughout the year. These design flaws and the removal of stages of data-checking has allowed for a massive increase in debt notifications sent to welfare recipients of up to 20,000 per week. This can be compared with around the same number of notifications annually, when the previous manual system of checking discrepancies was in operation.
The OCI system has effectively shifted the onus of proof of establishing whether a ‘debt’ actually exists, or whether the amount alleged is accurate, to the person who is notified of the ‘debt’, who then has the obligation to pay the debt, challenge its existence or dispute the amount which is owed. This is a very serious issue for the individuals involved because the inaccurate data used by the OCI algorithms has often either falsely generated debts, or grossly inflated the amounts of money alleged to be owed. In testimony before the Senate Committee Inquiry into the OCI system, the Department’s Secretary acknowledged that in ‘approximately 20 per cent of cases where an individual has received an initial letter identifying a discrepancy’ between [income and taxation records], the debt had been cancelled after they provided information clarifying their circumstances (Senate Community Affairs References Committee 2017: 32-33; McKinnon 2017).
Questions have been raised about the legality of this shift in the onus of proof onto welfare recipients and the state’s avoidance of its responsibility to prove the existence and size of a debt, given that there is no provision under the Social Security Act 1991 (Cth) which authorises the creation of a debt solely on the basis of a discrepancy revealed by data-matching technology, without further investigation (Carney 2018: 6). The robo-debt system provides a real-time demonstration of how neoliberal governance has aggressively harnessed emerging forms of digital technology and the management of large data sets to implement reductions in public sector staffing, and retrospectively impose responsibilities on welfare consumers (Galloway 2017; Desai and Kroll 2017; Coglianese and Lehr 2017). Perhaps most importantly for the purposes of this discussion, the shift in the onus of proof that is built into the system reveals the use of these technologies to administratively assign guilt for the provision of past welfare benefits as a reminder to the recipient that they will perpetually remain in the public’s debt. In this way, the robo-debt system can be seen as more than an administrative machinery to enhance financial accountability, but demonstrates the authoritarian character of the politics of austerity under neoliberalism.
References
Australian Council of Social Service (ACOSS). 2017. Submission to Senate Standing Committee on Community Affairs Inquiry into the Better Management of the Social Welfare System, 21 March 2017, available at: https://www.acoss.org.au/acoss-reports-submissions/.
Bonefeld, Werner. 2010. Freedom and the strong state: On German ordoliberalism, New Political Economy 17(5): 633-656.
Bonefeld, Werner. 2017. Authoritarian liberalism: From Schmitt via ordoliberalism to the euro, Critical Sociology 43(4-5): 747—761.
Brabazon, Honor, ed. 2017. Neoliberal legality: Understanding the role of law in the neoliberal project. London: Routledge.
Brenner Neil. 2004. New state spaces: Urban governance and the rescaling of statehood. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Butler, Chris. 2018. State power, the politics of debt and confronting neoliberal authoritarianism’, forthcoming in Law and Critique, 29(3), available at available at: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10978-018-9233-z.
Carney, Terry. 2018. The new digital future for welfare: Debts without legal proofs or moral authority? University of New South Wales Law Journal Forum March: 1-16.
Coglianese, Cary, and David Lehr. 2017. Regulating by robot: Administrative decision making in the machine-learning era, Georgetown Law Journal 105: 1147-1223.
Desai, Deven, and Joshua Kroll. 2017. Trust but verify: A guide to algorithms and the law, Harvard Journal of Law & Technology 31(1): 1-64.
Galloway, Kate. 2017. Big Data: A case study of disruption and government power, Alternative Law Journal 42(2): 89—95.
Golder, Ben, and Daniel McLoughlin, eds. 2018. The politics of legality in a neoliberal age. London: Routledge.
Hanks, Peter. 2017. Administrative law and welfare rights: A 40-year story from Green v Daniels to robo-debt recovery, Australian Institute of Administrative Law Forum 89: 1-15.
Harvey, David. 2005. A brief history of neoliberalism. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2012. The making of the indebted man: An essay on the neoliberal condition, trans. Joshua David Jordan, Los Angeles: Semiotext(e).
Lazzarato, Maurizio. 2015. Governing by debt, trans. Joshua David Jordan. South Pasadena: Semiotext(e)
McKinnon, Alex. 2017. Debt.Recovery. The Monthly, August, available at: https://www.themonthly.com.au/issue/2017/august/1501509600/alex-mckinnon/debt-recovery
Mirowski, Philip. 2009. Postface: Defining neoliberalism, in The road from Mont Pèlerin: The making of the neoliberal thought collective, eds. Philip Mirowski, and D. Plehwe. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press: 417-456.
Morrison, Scott, and Mathias Cormann. 2016. Mid-year economic and fiscal outlook 2016—17, Statement, December 2016, available at: https://budget.gov.au/2016-17/content/myefo/html/.
Peck, Jamie and Adam Tickell. 2002. Neoliberalizing space, Antipode 34(3): 380—404.
Pugliese, Joseph. 2013. Technologies of extraterritorialisation, statist visuality and irregular migrants and refugees, Griffith Law Review 22(3): 571-597.
Senate Community Affairs References Committee. 2017. Design, scope, cost-benefit analysis, contracts awarded and implementation associated with the Better Management of the Social Welfare System initiative (2017), Parliament of Australia, available at: https://www.aph.gov.au/Parliamentary_Business/Committees/Senate/Community_Affairs/SocialWelfareSystem/Report.
Wacquant, Loïc. 2009. Punishing the poor: The neoliberal government of social insecurity. Durham: Duke University Press.
Initial success in human clinical trials has given hope for the next stage in the development of a new malaria vaccine.
In a world first, researchers from Griffith University’s Institute forGlycomicstrialed the use of a whole parasite blood-stage malaria vaccineinhuman volunteers that has yielded safe and immunogenic outcomes.The study team also included clinicians from the Gold Coast University Hospital.
A single dose of the trial vaccine was administered to volunteers at Griffith’s Clinical Trial Unitwho were healthy, malarial-naïve males aged 18-60 and it induced a broad parasite-specific cellular immune response thatrecogniseddifferent malaria parasites and did not adversely affect the volunteers.
The results of the trial have been published inBMC Medicine.
“We are hopeful that the immune response induced by the vaccine would be able to kill the parasite if recipients were exposed to the parasite out in the field,” DrStanisicsaid.
DrStanisicsaid previous trials of sub-unit malaria vaccines have often included a limited number of proteins from the malaria parasite, and these proteins are often variable between different parasite strains present in the field.
“When sub-unit malaria vaccines have been tested in the field, because of the variability in the vaccine proteins between parasite strains, up until now they have shown limited or noefficacy,” DrStanisicsaid.
“Sothe idea behind a whole parasite vaccine is that you’ve got thousands of proteins in the vaccine, some of which are going to be the same between different parasite strains, so hopefully these proteins would be the target of protective immune responses and the vaccine would provide broader coverage and protection when it’s tested in the field.”
Professor Michael Good and Dr Danielle Stanisic.
The next stage in the malaria vaccine trial process is to determine if the immune response from the vaccine canactually killthe parasites in humans as it has been shown to do in laboratory animals. Once it has been established that it is safe and effective in human volunteers, the vaccine would be trialed in a malaria-endemic area then across multiple sites in multiple countries.
Dr John Gerrard, Director of Infectious Diseases at Gold Coast Health said the opportunity to oversee the transition from laboratory to human volunteers has been inspiring.
“An effective vaccine against malaria is a Holy Grail of medical research,” Dr Gerrard said.
“Gold Coast Health is supportive of such innovative research of global significance.
“This is the type of groundbreaking research that will help us attract medical leaders to the Gold Coast.”
Professor Good expressed great thanks to the volunteers and praised the hard work of the team over many years to get to this point.
“It is wonderful to have the community so much behind this important project. We allrealisewhat a devastating disease malaria is for so many people around the world,”he said.
Prof Mark vonItzstein, Director of the Institute forGlycomicsis delighted with this significant milestone in the development of the world’s first blood stage malaria vaccine.
“This is a tremendous advance in the development of a blood stagemalaria vaccine and as the Director of the Institute, I am thrilled to see this very important study now published” Prof vonItzsteinsaid.
There are approximately 3.2 billion people living in malaria endemic countries worldwide and of the 500,000 sufferers who die each year, 80 per cent are young children who are not strong enough to fight off the killer parasite.
The next step in the development of the vaccine is a 30-person trial at Griffith’s Clinical Trial Unit which will involve evaluating its effectiveness.
This project is being enabled by the Malaria Vaccine Project, which is a partnership between Rotary District 9640 and the Institute for Glycomics that aims to raise funds to support the clinical trial.
Memes, selfies, cyber-hate, big data, slow fashion and the global war on waste are some ofthe key themes that will be explored during the first dedicated schools day at GriffithUniversity’s 2018 Integrity 20 conference.
The dynamic one-day event will kick-start the annual Integrity 2018 conference at theQueensland Conservatorium (October 24-26).
Integrity 20 chair, Professor Paul Mazerolle, said the schools’ program was designed to explore issues of particular interest and concern to young people.
“Students will have the extraordinary opportunity to hear, learn from, and talk to, leadingthinkers from Australia and around the world.
“The speakers attending are at the forefront of their fields and can offer amazing insightsand in-depth analysis of some of our greatest global challenges.”
The day opens with a series of fast-paced lightning talks hosted by futurist, inventorand broadcaster Mark Pesce , before students break into small groups for roundtablediscussions and workshops.
The day closes with an interactive forum examining our increasingly complex relationship with technology, led by former Google data analyst SethStephens Davidowitz (US) and philosopher and ethicist Matt Beard .
The stellar line-up of speakers also includes US-based North Korea expert Jean Lee (US),renowned philosopher Julian Baggini (UK), ethical fashion advocate and podcaster ClarePress , founder of The Australian Leadership Project Victor Perton , and freedom of speech advocate Jodie Ginsberg (UK).
Professor Mazerolle said the Integrity 20 program would extend to the general public onThursday October 25 and Friday 26 October where a further 250 students in years 11 and 12would be in attendance.
Under the theme of ‘a world divided’ the Integrity 20’18 program explores issues such asthe crisis of democracy and the unaccountable power of the digital giants, to the increasingpolarisation in public and political debate.
Integrity 20’18 will be held at the Queensland Conservatorium Griffith University, SouthBank, October 24 -26.
About
The annual Integrity 20 conference is the flagship event in Griffith University’s Integrity 20program, which also features a series of stand-alone ‘integrity conversations’ eventsthroughout the year. The program covers issues which reflect many of the significant social, moral and political challenges we face as a global community.
There’s no time like the present to make a positive lifestyle difference, and a group of Griffith academics will be highlighting exactly that with their game-changing research during the two-day Change 2018 event at South Bank this month.
Presented by Social Marketing @ Griffith, Change 2018 highlights how leading change experts from around the world have developed lasting partnerships to engage people and organisations to deliver change for the better.
With more than 100 participants registered, Change 2018 will include keynote speeches, networking opportunities, groundbreaking ideas and two one-hour workshops for every delegate.
The event promises to inspire Founders, Entrepreneurs, Directors, Managers and Officers teaching delegates new ways to create, implement, and evaluate successful change initiatives.
As one of the event’s keynote speakers, Social Marketing @ Griffith Director Professor Sharyn Rundle-Thiele will discuss the need for organisations to change the way they practice, moving beyond the mere act of reinforcing the notion that change is good to actually altering practices to more effectively deliver change over time benefitting the communities served.
“I planned this event to equip delegates with the tools and thinking needed for their practice,” Professor Rundle-Thiele said. “Change is a challenging area to work in and great care needs to be taken at every step if we are to effectively engage people and organisations to embrace the change needed.
“We want social change practitioners to centre people at the heart of everything they do, and Change 2018 delivers practical techniques that delegates can immediately start to apply.”
Professor Rundle-Thiele has led multiple projects over the past 24 months, includingWaste Not Want Not, a food waste reduction program educating people about how to most efficiently use the food they have in their fridge to create nutritious, delicious meals, and Leave It, a program based in the Redlands to help reduce native wildlife deaths in the region by implementing training programs for dogs, their owners and their trainers.
Some of her Social Marketing @ Griffith team –Dr Joy Parkinson (Senior Lecturer), Dr Timo Dietrich (Lecturer), Dr Julia Carins (Senior Research Fellow) and Mr Ville Lahtinen (Research Fellow) – will also will deliver keynotes showcasing projects they lead. Among topics to be discussed are the role of gamification and case studies outlining changes in areas such as obesity and healthy eating.
Dr Parkinson champions wellness and healthy behaviours. She is playing a leading role in Queensland’sMy Health for Life program, which aims to see 10,000 Queenslanders complete a lifestyle behaviour change program over three years in the hopes of reducing their risk of developing chronic diseases.
My Health for Life was based on consumer-centred design research led by Dr Parkinson and Diabetes Queensland. The program has already seen sustained changes in behaviours such as increased fruit and vegetable consumption and increased physical activity.
Dr Dietrich, a gamification expert, has led the delivery ofBlurred Minds, a one-day alcohol and drug education program in Australian secondary schools to thousands of students. The program, which includes the use of VR goggles to simulate a house party scenario, is delivered in a fun and interactive manner, teaching students about the realities of drug and alcohol consumption.
Dr Carins leads a social marketing program to improve eating behaviour in such a way that not only individuals benefit, but society at large. Engaged in a collaborative research agreement between the University and the Defence Science & Technology Group, Dr Carins’ Go Food project delivers eating environment changes to support better nutrition and eating habits.
Originally from Finland, Mr Lahtinen is undertaking several social marketing projects. His PhD project involved the design, delivery and evaluation of theViisi Per Päivä (Five a Day) campaign, which got young subjects excited about tasting and eating different fruits and vegetables.
Griffith’s social marketing gurus are joined by invited industry experts who offer a wealth of experience in delivering change. Leading academics including Professor Gerard Hastings, Professor Alan Tapp, Associate Professor Svetlana Bogomolova (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science), Professor Linda Brennan (RMIT), Associate Professor Ross Gordon (Macquarie University), Professor Rebekah Russell-Bennett (QUT) and more will share their recent advances.
Change 2018 willbe held from 25-26 October at Griffith University’s South Bank campus.
Natasha Akib (Community Engagement — Digital Storytellers) Luke van der Beeke (Co-founder, Marketing for Change) A/Prof Svetlana Bogomolova (Ehrenberg-Bass Institute for Marketing Science) Penny Burke (Director, Essence Communications) Melanie Butcher (Director, The Social Deck) Prof Linda Brennan (RMIT) Dr Julia Carins (Senior Research Fellow, Social Marketing @ Griffith) Matthew Cox (Director, Logan Together) Peter Cunningham (Strategic Director, Redsuit) David Defranciscis & Scott Robinson (Sugar Cane Growing Changers) Dr Timo Dietrich (Lecturer, Social Marketing @ Griffith) A/Prof Ross Gordon (Macquarie University) E/Prof Gerard Hastings (Founder, Institute for Social Marketing) Dr Amantha Imber (Founder and CEO, Inventium) Mr Ville Lahtinen (Research Fellow, Social Marketing @ Griffith) Dr Joy Parkinson (Senior Lecturer, Social Marketing @ Griffith) Prof Sharyn Rundle-Thiele (Director, Social Marketing @ Griffith) Prof Rebekah Russell-Bennett (QUT) Prof Alan Tapp (UWE-Bristol) Joan Young (CEO, Colmar Brunton) George Zdanowicz (CEO, Enhance Research)
Griffith has collaborated with film schools in China and South Korea to make a screen trilogy that bridges language barriers, cultural clashes and the tyranny of distance.
Head of Griffith Film School Professor Herman Van Eyken said the international co-production was designed to spark a cross-cultural conversation and provide a model for future collaborations.
“This is a world-first achievement for Griffith Film School, and it reflects the university’s long and proud history of engaging in the Asia-Pacific,” he said.
“This co-production is part of our partnership with film schools across the region, and it has provided our students with the opportunity to gain new perspectives, broaden their world view and ensure they leave their degrees armed with unique knowledge and skills.”
Thinking big
The Australian section of the film was filmed in Brisbane with an all-star cast including Alastair Osment (Deadline Gallipoli, Home and Away), Emily Gruhl (Picnic at Hanging Rock) and David Soncin (River, Love Child).
The film follows John, a former journalist who now makes a living as an Uber driver. John is a man on the edge – facing a relationship breakdown, increasing debt and mental health issues – and when he picks up the man responsible for the loss of his job, all hell breaks loose.
It was developed by Griffith Film School post-graduate students Morgan Healy and Elizabeth Simard, with Adjunct Professor Trish Lake acting as a consulting producer and GFS alumnus Anthony Mullins from Matchbox Pictures serving as script consultant.
On The Move director Morgan Healy said it was exciting to see the film with local audiences, after shooting on location around South East Queensland.
“It’s really exciting to be part of an international co-production like this,” he said.
“You are usually constrained by time and money, but when you join forces with other film schools, you can think bigger.
“The shoot was an amazing experience – we had a big crew and a cast that really gave their all.
“We filmed in Brisbane’s CBD, along the Mt Lindsay Highway and out at Archerfield, and had roads closed down, a police escort…it was intense!”
Morgan said he believed the story would resonate with audiences around the world.
“Each of the short movies looks at the people left behind by the big technological changes that have transformed our society – something that concerns all of us.”
The fifthannual 
“This is pretty incredible,” team captain and Bachelor of Public Relations and Communication student, Kiri Lingman, said.
