Past events
Democratic Principles for a Multilevel, Multidemoi Democracy
Seminar
Democracy is conventionally understood as “delegation with accountability”. As such, it presupposes the existence of a demos from which the matching chains of delegation and accountability must, respectively, depart from and arrive to.Moreover, these chains must ideally be unbroken, but the…
What’s in a name? The inoculation of smallpox in early eighteenth-century Britain
Seminar
This paper questions the established narrative concerning the introduction of inoculation to Georgian Britain. Its arrival is typically attributed to the account of Turkish practice by Emanuel Timoni, which first appeared in the Royal Society’s Philosophical Transactions (June 1714), and the…
The Burden of Pollution: Trends in Life Expectancy and Health Disparities in the Asia-Pacific Region
Seminar
The detrimental effects of environmental issues on human health have become a critical focus for the global public health community. At the heart of these challenges lies pollution—a consequence of human activity that disrupts natural ecosystems and profoundly affects populations. Pollution…
Seminar Series | Oscar Capezio
Art forum
Jonas Balsaitis: Analogue Now showing at the Australian National University's Drill Hall Gallery, Jonas Balsaitis: Analogue is an exhibition of paintings, prints, and experimental film by Australian artist Jonas Balsaitis (b.1948 Hanau, Germany), re-examining the artist’s use of ‘…
Moral powers and institutional norms
Seminar
It is a familiar fact about social life that, by doing things like entering into contracts, getting married, consenting, and the like, we can change the profile of our legal permissions, rights, and prohibitions. Our ability to do so, in turn, stems from the legal powers the law confers upon us. A…
The Will of the People Revisited
Seminar
The notion of the “will of the people” has long been at the centre of populist conceptions of democracy, but it has taken on renewed salience in recent years, with the rise of populist movements. Following the UK’s 2016 referendum on leaving the European Union, for instance, references to “the will…
Matthew Flinders: British Spy or the Victim of an unfortunate Chain of Events? Shedding light on the explorer’s imprisonment on Mauritius (1803-1810) and its disastrous consequences
Seminar
Over 221 years ago, on 15 December 1803, having no charts of Mauritius and only information gleaned from the Encyclopaedia Britannica (lent by Sir Joseph Banks), Captain Matthew Flinders put in at Baie du Cap in the French colony of Mauritius, unaware that war had broken out between France and…