Upcoming events
Expand your mind with the Institute of Advanced Studies.
Each year the Institute hosts events by distinguished visiting and local scholars, artists, writers and public intellectuals. These events contribute to our goal of sharing research, new ideas and encouraging discussion and debate within the broader community.
Public Lectures
Geotechnical Risk: What are the Chances?
14 July, 6pm-7pm, Woolnough Lecture Theatre
Professor D. Vaughan Griffiths, Head, Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, Colorado School of Mines and UWA Gledden Visiting Fellow.
Soil and rock are among the most variable of engineering materials, but geotechnical engineers rarely take account of this variability directly. They are more likely to assign a single conservative property to the entire site and ignore the variability. This usually leads to an assessment of safety using a “Factor of Safety (FS)” where FS>1 implies safety and FS<1 implies failure. A more scientific approach tackles the soil variability directly leading to a “Probability of Failure”. The tricky part is then to decide what is an acceptable probability of failure given the consequences of failure and the available resources. This lecture will describe some methods for assessing the probability of failure of geotechnical systems ranging from quick “back of the envelope” calculations to computational intense methods requiring supercomputers. Benefits and shortcomings of these methods will be discussed.
Harmony in Spite of Individuality
15 July 2025, 6-7pm, UWA Social Sciences Lecture Theatre
Alan R Harvey, Emeritus Professor and Senior Honorary Research Fellow, UWA School of Human Sciences.
Why do humans possess two complementary but distinct communication systems, language and music, each with its own relatively specific neural circuitries? It is suggested that, early in our evolutionary history, music’s capacity to promote prosocial interactions and bonding in a group context (groups that extended beyond immediate family members) may have acted as a counterweight to the increasing awareness of articulate and intelligent humans as they became cognisant of their own individuality and finite existence on this earth.
Politics of the Machines - Synthetic Sentience
16-18 July 2025 | UWA Institute of Advanced Studies
What does it mean to be sentient - and who gets to decide?
POM 2025 will explore the evolving politics of sentience across a wide array of fields, including neuroscience, artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, cultural studies, creative arts, philosophy, bioart, music, psychology, food, and the intersection of art and science.
The conference theme centres around understanding and navigating the political, ethical, technological, artistic, and cultural transformations brought about by the rise of sentient and proto-sentient entities - from AI and autonomous machines to brain organoids and synthetic life forms.
Postgraduate Masterclasses
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14 July - Masterclass with D. Vaughan Griffiths, Colorado School of Mines: Computational Slope Stability Analysis Slope Stability Analysis
Computational Slope Stability Analysis
A Masterclass with D. Vaughan Griffiths, Professor and Head of the Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the Colorado School of Mines.
14 July, 10am-12 noon, Institute of Advanced Studies
Slope stability analysis remains a central activity for geotechnical practitioners and a continued area of interest and research for academics. A wide range of methodologies for slope stability analysis have been developed, ranging from Taylor’s charts from the 1930s to state-of-art random finite element methods for probabilistic analysis. The lecture starts with a general discussion of the factor of safety and discusses the significant contrast between factors on loads, as opposed to factors on strength. A classical slope problem solved by Taylor is then revisited using (i) simple optimization assuming circular failure mechanisms, (ii) elastic-plastic finite elements with strength reduction and (iii) upper- and lower-bound finite element limit analysis. The results show the benefits of the finite element approaches, especially as the slope becomes relatively flat where the simple approach starts to overestimate the factor of safety.
Professor Vaughan's research interests lie in application of finite element and risk assessment methodologies in geotechnical engineering, and his papers on slope stability analysis are among the most highly cited in the geotechnical engineering literature. He is the co-author of three textbooks that have gone into multiple and foreign language editions on Programming the Finite Element Method, Risk Assessment in Geotechnical Engineering and Numerical Methods for Engineers. He gives regular short courses worldwide on risk assessment in geotechnical engineering and slope stability analysis. He has acted as a consultant to industry on projects ranging from landslide analysis to petroleum geomechanics. He was the inaugural Suzanne Lacasse Lecturer in 2016 and in 2017, was named the Cross-Canada Lecturer by the Canadian Geotechnical Society and received the H. Bolton Seed Medal from the ASCE/Geo-Institute. He gave the TH Wu Distinguished lecture in 2021, the Wilson Tang lecture in 2022 and has been named the Terzaghi Lecturer for 2026. He was awarded a Fulbright Distinguished Chair for 2023 to work at the University of Newcastle, NSW. He served on the Board of Direction of ASCE from 2010-2013 and was inducted as a Distinguished Member of the ASCE in 2020.
Professor Griffiths is a UWA Gledden Visiting Fellow, working with Professor Yuxia Hu in the UWA School of Civil, Environmental & Mining Engineering.
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23 July - Doing Media History: Masterclass with Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, media historian, Macquarie University
Doing Media History
A UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Masterclass with Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley, media historian, Macquarie University
Wednesday 23 July 2025, 10am-12.30pm, UWA Institute of Advanced Studies
This masterclass will explore strategies for using newspaper and other media sources in historical research. Focusing on, but not limited to, Australia, the masterclass will examine some of the conceptual tools and critical questions needed to analyse different forms of media as historical sources. It will consider the value, and some of the pitfalls, of the digital turn in media historiography.
Participants are asked to submit a paragraph about their current research project when registering for the masterclass and encouraged to bring examples of their own research challenges to discuss on the day.Bridget Griffen-Foley FAHA is a Professor of Media at Macquarie University, where she founded the Centre for Media History. Her books include The House of Packer: The Making of a Media Empire (1999), Party Games: Australian Politicians and the Media from War to Dismissal (2003) and Changing Stations: The Story of Australian Commercial Radio (2009). She also edited A Companion to the Australian Media (2014), now available via the AustLit database, and served as historical consultant to the television mini-series Power Games: The Packer–Murdoch Story(2013). Bridget is currently leading an ARC Linkage Project on ‘The ABC, its Archives and its Audiences’, and is New South Wales chair of the Australian Dictionary of Biography.
Professor Bridget Griffen-Foley is a UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Visiting Fellow, working with UWA Institute of Advanced Studies Associate Hosts, Associate Professor Steven Maras, Media and Communication, and Professor Jane Lydon, History Discipline.
Past lectures
Many of our events are recorded. See our Past lectures page for more information and links to these recordings.