Queensland College of Art (QCA) Bachelor of Fine Art graduate, Bridgette Shepherd has been selected as a finalist in the 2014 National Contemporary Jewellery Award (NCJA).
Bridgette, who majored in Jewellery and Small Objects at QCA, is the only Queenslander amongst 25 finalists from across the country.
Her series of brooches, ‘Grandparent Portrait Series’, will be exhibited at the Griffith Regional Art Gallery and will tour to Courtesy of the Artist gallery in Sydney and Sturt Contemporary Craft and Design gallery in Mittagong.
The NCJA program started in the town of Griffith 22 years ago and is the Art Gallery’s major exhibition for the year, bringing together Australia’s established and emerging contemporary jewellery practitioners.
Bridgette says she’s flattered to be recognised alongside jewellers she studied as part of her degree.
“It is very exciting to be included in such an esteemed award with so many jewellers I looked up to during my studies at QCA,” she said.
“It’s also wonderful to participate in a national touring exhibition.”
One of the two judges, part-time lecturer at Monash Art, Design and Architecture in Melbourne, Manon Van Kouswijk, who is also an artist and jeweller, says the award offers fantastic opportunities for finalists.
“The NCJA is a great opportunity for Australian jewellery students and professionals to have their work shown in an exhibition and to win a very attractive residency or a major prize,” she said.
The National Contemporary Jewellery Award program at the Griffith Regional Art Gallery will be open from September 5-28.
In what area/s do your current research interests lie?
Although applied in many different contexts, in a nutshell it is all about optimising the a) creation, b) transfer and c) absorption of complex knowledge within and between organisations’ boundaries. This may include, but is not limited to, the knowledge involved in practices such as marketing strategies or new product and service development and delivery, and incorporates both the sending and receiving of knowledge within the organisation, e.g. at team-, department, subsidiary-level, and between other organisations, e.g. through strategic alliances, or with suppliers, buyers and customers.
Are there emerging or ongoing trends in your field/s of research?
All are consistently evolving. Perhaps the most interesting is the realisation that all three research streams must be fused. Put differently, although traditionally scholars treated knowledge creation, transfer, and absorption as complementary yet distinguished research streams, emerging studies point to the need to study these processes/ mechanisms in combination with one another in order to truly understand how we best gain, share, and utilise knowledge within and across organisations’boundaries.
Have there been major developments in the field/s or key findings that have directed the trajectory of the research?
Since its inception, absorptive capacity is one of the most researched phenomena in the organisational literature and yet it remains one of the least understood (predominately due to the unknown processes and mechanisms needed for optimal absorption).New developments do suggest though interesting ways to overcome the treatment of this important conceptual organisational phenomenon as tangible. I have, in response, directed some of my key research endeavours/ publications in the last two years down this path, rejuvenating it and fusing related research findings with those on knowledge creation- and transfer- capabilities.
What are you working on at the moment?
I am involved in several interesting research projects with some amazing collaborators. Whilst both are especially close to my heart, my favourite ‘pet’ project is run as part of the Danish ‘MADE Platform for Future Production‘, a multi-million dollar academic-industrial collaboration that was established in 2014 for the development of new, efficient and enhanced types of manufacturing that will strengthen the manufacturing industry and increase competitiveness. I lead a project that focuses on how inter-firm and intra-firm processes and mechanisms can jointly increase the capacity to transfer, absorb, and ultimately utilise new knowledge at the managerial, team, and organisational level for enhanced long-term manufacturing capabilities.
The second project is in collaboration with several European research centres who have committed to collect reliable, comprehensive and compatible data on the modernisation of manufacturing at a European and OECD levels. As part of this wider long-term initiative, I am involved in research that aims at better understanding the nature of specific organisational and technological knowledge-creating, and then sharing, capabilities as they focus on what is needed to optimise the transfer from sender to receiver. Commonly inter-related, both activities often appear in sets of practices e.g. within day-to-day operations and/ or future-focussed business- and corporate-strategies. We are specifically focussing on their complementary role for long-term innovative and organisational performance.
Both of these projects are currently run in the European context and I will extend them to Australia in 2015/2016.
Are there challenges in your field in bridging the gap between research, practice and policy?
I believe that for the literatures on knowledge creation, transfer, and absorption, theory, policy and practice are highly inter-related. Only through validation (which occurs when organisational concepts and theories are applied) and generalisation (which uses meaningful samples that statistically represent populations), does knowledge-related organisational theory become truly meaningful for practitioners and policy-makers. Similarly, organisational decision-makers and policy-makers need innovative theoretical frameworks and models in order to benchmark and optimise their knowledge creating-, transferring-, and absorbing capabilities.
Have you got a minute?
Griffith University has released a vault of 60 second videos to celebrate the power of knowledge.
Our staff and students have expertise across an extraordinary range of subjects. To capture some of their great ideas, Griffith has launched the Know More in Sixty Seconds website.
In one example, Dr Erik Streed explains how the single aluminium atom clock is revolutionising the way we keep track of time. But there are plenty more amazing things to know in 60 seconds. And the website will keep growing with new clips being added regularly.
So check out our Know More in Sixty Seconds website. You’ll be amazed by what you discover. In just a minute!
Have you got a minute?
Griffith University has released a vault of 60 second videos to celebrate the power of knowledge.
Our staff and students have expertise across an extraordinary range of subjects. To capture some of their great ideas, Griffith has launched the Know More in Sixty Seconds website.
In one example, law and languages student Georgia Sands explains in just 60 seconds about the power of a single Chinese word which sums up so much.
But there’s plenty more to know in 60 seconds and the website will keep growing with new clips being added regularly.
So check out ourKnow More in Sixty Secondswebsite. You’ll be amazed by what you discover. In just a minute!
Theatregoers are in for a unique treat when the Ship of Fools berths at South Bank in September.
The Ship of Fools is an immersive theatre piece performed by third-year Griffith University Contemporary and Applied Theatre students, which promises to take audiences on a rollicking ride along the Brisbane River.
The performance is the culmination of a year-long creative development process with the students driving the entire creative process in collaboration with director Shaun Charles.
“In years gone by we have put on an arts festival and the year before that we took shows to the Brisbane Powerhouse.The key here is that each year it’s different,’’ Shaun said.
“This year, inspired by vaudeville and the history and philosophy of Plato’s Ship of Fools, we decided to embark on an immersive theatre piece that’s set on a boat.
“By immersive we mean in a non-traditional venue and one in which the audience or Land Folk, in this case, are totally immersed in the happenings on the boat.”
With no seats, the Land Folk are free to roam for the much of the performance. They will encounter an array of characters and situations as those on The Ship of Fools struggle to create a fair and just world.
“The problem is as soon as anyone is appointed captain they turn toxic and shortly after they have to be done away with. It’s a never ending cycle of revolution.”
An allegory for the conflict in today’s world, The Ship of Fools is fun and crazy, but also violent and political.
Theatre-goers can embark The Lady in Red to immerse themselves in The Ship of Fools at South Bank from September 22-25. For more information and to book visit: follyfleet.wordpress.com
Have you got a minute?
Griffith University has released a new vault of 60 second videos to celebrate the power of knowledge.
Our staff and students have expertise across an extraordinary range of subjects. To capture some of their great ideas, Griffith has launched the Know More in Sixty Seconds website.
Ben Pole from the Gold Coast Tourism Corporation holds a Master of International Business and a Bachelor of Communication from Griffith. In just 60 seconds he explains the astonishing impact of tourism on Australia, and reveals just how outnumbered we are by visitors!
That’s just one example. There are plenty more amazing things to know in 60 seconds and the website will keep growing with new clips being added regularly.
So check out ourKnow More in Sixty Secondswebsite. You’ll be amazed by what you discover. In just a minute!
Researchers from Griffith University’s Eskitis Institute for Drug Discovery have returned from the Steve Irwin Wildlife Reserve with new flora samples that may one day be used to fight the world’s most serious diseases.
Within the 135,570-hectare reserve at Cape York, researchers Dr Ngoc Pham, Associate Professor Rohan Davis, Dr Ian Hayward and Associate Professor George Mellick spent a week collecting samples they hope will contribute to cures for cancer and other infectious and neurodegenerative diseases.
The Eskitis team brought back 15 flora samples to add to Nature Bank, a collection of more than 45,000 samples of plants and marine invertebrates from tropical Queensland, Tasmania, China, Malaysia and Papua New Guinea.
The new inclusions range from moss and fern found in a melaleuca swamp, to orchids, rare lilies and a tree with a trunk resembling tiger stripes found growing by rare bauxite springs that deliver some of the purest water on the planet into the Wenlock River.
Associate Professor Rohan Davis says the reserve is also home to vulnerable species such as the rainforest plant Calophyllum bicolor.
“This species of rainforest plant would be very interesting to look at from a medicinal chemistry perspective,” he says.
“Calophyllum is a plant genus known to produce a number of significant bioactive compounds, some of which have anti-HIV, anti-cancer and anti-microbial activities.”
Seasonal visits
The first of what will become seasonal visits to the reserve came about thanks to an agreement between the world-leading Eskitis Institute and Australia Zoo’s Mrs Terri Irwin AM.
In 2007, the Queensland Government handed Terri the pristine parcel of land to manage as a living legacy to her late husband’s conservation work.
“There’s been the discovery of an entirely new ecosystem here and new species of plants, so we’re excited to see what Eskitis will find as these visits unfold,” she says, speaking from the reserve’s Camp Coolibah base where each year she brings daughter Bindi, 16, son Robert, 10, and Australia Zoo staff for crocodile research.
Now a member of the Eskitis Foundation Board, Terri is thrilled the first batch of samples from the reserve will be processed and added to a library already containing more than 200,000 natural product fractions ready for high throughput screening against disease.
“The thought of the plants here having the potential to offer better treatment or even cures for diseases such as Parkinson’s, malaria, Alzheimer’s and different types of cancers … it’s so exciting because I’m really about that mix of conservation and wildlife and humans,” she says.
“It’s so beautiful here and, as we’ve learned over the past seven years since we were given this land in Steve’s honour, it’s also extraordinarily unique.
“This place has 35 different ecosystems, from scrub to relic rainforest, and if Eskitis can find these special things to help treat people, it will be wonderful.”
What is missing from the G20 Leaders Summit agenda is arguably as noteworthy as the issues listed for high-level discussion.
Prime Minister Tony Abbott’s decision to resist calls to elevate climate change to the G20 table in November has confounded and troubled many observers, not least the Director of Griffith University’s Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise (APCSE).
Professor Jeremy Williams finds it difficult to understand how G20 leaders can discuss measures to accelerate global economic growth without simultaneously addressing how greenhouse gas emissions can be reduced.
APCSE’s response comes in the form of ‘Economic Growth, Climate Change and the G20’, a one-day conference to be hosted by the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise at the Brisbane Convention and Exhibition Centre on October 7.
“Climate change is the biggest emergency facing the global economy today. Ignoring it is not an option,” he said.
“What kind of economy can you have in a climate-constrained world? This is a major focus for the Asia Pacific Centre for Sustainable Enterprise and it is a crucial issue to be explored by leaders in the field at the conference.”
Former Liberal Party leader Dr John Hewson (Asset Owners Disclosure Project), Mara Bun (Green Cross Australia), Senator Larissa Waters (Australian Greens Senator for QLD) and Professor Clive Hamilton (Charles Sturt University) will be among the speakers attending, while US economist and director of The Earth Institute Jeffrey Sachs will also take part via video conference.
Leading climate change scientist at Griffith’s School of Natural Sciences, Professor Ian Lowe, will take part in the first of four panels on the day, to consider what future generations might say about the economic growth strategies of the G20 in the early 21st century.
The other panels will discuss economic growth in a climate-constrained world, capital markets and stranded assets, and the opportunities for sustainable enterprise arising from the need for climate adaptation.
Registration reached full capacity more than four weeks before the conference.
“We’ve been overwhelmed by the level of interest which is a clear indication of the urgency surrounding this issue. There has to be an intelligent conversation about economic growth and climate change,” Professor Williams said, “this conference will go some way to addressing this need.”
The conference is sponsored by bankmecu and Australian Ethical Investment.
Good climate change data and information management practices are critical for supporting decision-makers, researchers and practitioners to undertake more effective adaptation and resilience planning was a key topic discussed at the 3rd International United Nations Conference on Small Island Developing States (UN SIDS 2014) held in Samoa in September 2014.
The dialogue was part of a side event, “International cooperation on climate change data and information management,’ hosted by the Government of Vanuatu in collaboration with The Secretariat of Pacific Regional Environment Programme (SPREP) and Griffith University. The side event was opened by the Honorable James Bule, Minister for Climate Change and Natural Disasters, Government of Vanuatu and had strong attendance from delegates, including the Ambassador of the Kingdom of the Netherlands and the Pacific Director of German Agency for International Cooperation (GIZ), Wulf Killman.
The side event was jointly facilitated by Dr Netatua Pelesikoti, Director, Climate Change, SPREP and Professor Brendan Mackey, Director, Griffith Climate Change Response Program and involved presentations on lessons learnt, existing barriers and progress made in climate change data and information cooperation by delegates from the Governments of Fiji, Tonga and Vanuatu.
The side event dialogue kept to the UN SIDS 2014 theme of “Sustainable Development of Small Island Developing States through Genuine and Durable Partnerships,” and the key recommendation of greater cooperation on climate change data and information management among SIDS now forms part of the Samoa Pathway Outcome Document.
Professor Mackey said that “the UN SIDS conference is a unique event in that it is held every 10 years, and provides a platform for SIDS and their stakeholders to come together to share their experience and knowledge and to commit to genuine development partnerships.”
The Pacific iCLIM project is supported by the Government Partnerships for Development program (an Australian Government Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade initiative) and being implemented by Griffith University in collaboration with SPREP.
The Pacific iCLIM project aims to provide stakeholders in the Pacific with the capability to store data and information on stable infrastructure that will be available over the long-term; improve the capability of stakeholders to discover data and information through greater connectivity among information portals; ensure that connected data and information is clearly described with standard metadata, making it more widely discoverable to stakeholders; and ensure that data and data produced from tools are in a format and system that makes it both reusable and re-discoverable. More information on the Pacific iCLIM project can be found at www.griffith.edu.au/pacific-iclim.
Edited byAssociate ProfessorBruce Gilley and Professor Andrew O’Neil
China’s rise is changing the dynamics of the international system.Middle Powers and the Rise of Chinais the first work to examine how the group of states referred to as “middle powers” are responding to China’s growing economic, diplomatic, and military power. States with capabilities immediately below those of great powers, middle powers still exercise influence far above most other states. Their role as significant trading partners and allies or adversaries in matters of regional security, nuclear proliferation, and global governance issues such as human rights and climate change are reshaping international politics.
Contributors review middle-power relations with China in the cases of South Korea, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Australia, South Africa, Turkey, and Brazil, addressing how these diverse nations are responding to a rising China, the impact of Chinese power on each, and whether these states are being attracted to China or deterred by its new power and assertiveness. Chapters also explore how much (or how little) China, and for comparison the US, value middle powers and examine whether or not middle powers can actually shape China’s behavior. By bringing a new analytic approach to a key issue in international politics, this unique treatment of emerging middle powers and the rise of China will interest scholars and students of international relations, security studies, China, and the diverse countries covered in the book.
“A refreshingly readable account of the theory and practice of middle power influence in the contemporary world, which should help to correct the longstanding and rather patronizing neglect of these actors by US academics and policymakers. The jury may still be out on the full extent to which the norm-creating and multilateral institution-building initiatives, and strategic positioning of these states, including my own, have moderated–and will continue to moderate–the course of China’s rise. But the analysis and argument here makes it hard to argue that the traditional great powers are the only players who matter.”
Gareth Evans, foreign minister of Australia 1988-96, and president emeritus of the International Crisis Group, Australian National University
