A ceremony last night saw two Flinders’ legal dynamos awarded Australian Awards for University Teaching; Unbound launches exhibitions on Anzac Day; and Flinders’ resident space junkie co-creates a cosmic experiment.
Legal dynamos awarded
Associate Professor Vivienne Brand and Dr Sulette Lombard received a Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning, in the highly competitive 2018 Australian Awards for University Teaching (AAUT).
The AAUT were established in 1997 by the Australian Government and have become a highly valued form of recognition for university educators across Australia.
The awards recognise the impact educators have on the experiences and outcomes of university students and promote excellence in learning and teaching in all aspects of higher education.
Vivienne and Sulette’s Citation was for excellence in design and sustained delivery of dynamic, inclusive and engaging corporate law curricula, integrating authentic legal tasks, collaborations with industry and research-led perspectives.
Unbound Collective launches Samstag exhibitions
The Unbound Collective was selected to help launch two exhibitions at The Samstag Museum of Art, at an event on Anzac Day that was held at the Australian War Memorial.
The Flinders University group performed Sovereign Acts V – Calling, which opened their exhibition that will show until 19 July at the museum. Members are First Nations women working across art, activism and academia: Ali Gumillya Baker (Mirning), Faye Rosas Blanch (Mbararam/Yidinyji), Natalie Harkin (Narungga) and Simone Ulalka Tur (Yankunytjatjara).
The Unbound Collective seeks to engage Aboriginal community members who historically have been contained and excluded within and beyond Adelaide’s so-called cultural precinct, and to speak back to colonial institutions of power as dominant repositories of knowledge. They offer poetic, performative and music-based investigations of sovereign identity and (re)representation.
Space art and experiment
Meanwhile, the Cosmic Living Room exhibition at the University of South Australia’s MOD was co-curated by Alice Gorman with US artist Jonathan Keats – designed to imagine possible interaction with extra-terrestrial beings.
Similar to an earlier experiment at Flinders University’s Bedford Park campus, a circular rug in the centre of the room – representing the concept of congregation – has been quietly collecting dust since late last year.
The coloured orbital paths on the rug symbolise the converging of humans and aliens at a common centre-point.
With the exhibition now over, dust collected from the mat will be analysed for organic, magnetic and non-magnetic materials to assess ‘what’s out there’.