Future Symposia

Indigenous and Tropical Health and Well-being

Casuarina campus, Darwin, 31 May – 1 June 2005

Convenor: Prof Kerin O’Dea, Director, Menzies School of Health Research, Charles Darwin University

Facilitator: Dr Norman Swan, Producer, Journalist and Broadcaster, Australia Broadcasting Commission

The escalating epidemic of chronic diseases (obesity, diabetes, heart disease and kidney failure) as a result of urbanization is already a serious problem in Indigenous communities. Trends towards a more sedentary lifestyle and a cheaper, highly processed food supply are leading to an obesity epidemic and increasing rates of chronic diseases, which impact seriously on quality of life and result in health care budget blowouts.

Increased air travel, climate change and drug resistance are bringing new challenges. The emergence of infectious diseases not previously seen here, the reintroduction of infectious diseases previously eradicated, and the escalation of dangerous environmental infections seriously threatens health standards.

Positive influences on good health and well-being will require early interventions, frequently outside the health sector. Poverty, overcrowded housing, poor diet and education, depression and other psychosocial stresses influence health and the burden of infectious and chronic disease.

This symposium will focus on future challenges in Indigenous and tropical health and well-being, as we seek to anticipate rather than merely respond to threats to good health. A new generation of Indigenous health experts will engage specialist researchers, practitioners, policy makers and the public in discussion and debate on local health issues that are of concern nationally and have enormous significance to countries to our near north.

The symposium, will also celebrate major achievements of Menzies School of Health Research, as 2005 marks the 20th anniversary of the school.

Imagining Childhood: Children, Culture and Our Community

Araluen Centre, Alice Springs, 20 – 22 September 2005

Convenors: Dr. Gary Robinson, Dr. Ute Eickelkamp, School for Social and Policy Research, Charles Darwin University

“Children are our future”, is a statement most of us would subscribe to. But it can mean very different things. It can express the heartfelt concern of parents who may set hopes they had for themselves onto their children, or who wish that change for their families and cultural communities will be realised through their children. Politicians increasingly talk about investing in human capital, and childhood has moved to the forefront of Australian domestic economic and social policy.

Scientists and scholars are asking: Why is this intense interest in children arising now? What is the idea of intervention? What are the meanings of child development and family functioning in multicultural and postcolonial society? How do these become significant for families, for the sustainability of child-centred interventions and programs, and for research?

This symposium aims to create international debate on childhood to the Northern Territory and invites the public, practitioners, policy-makers and intellectuals to engage closely with specialist scholars from the USA, UK and Australia.

Issues this symposium will present, debate and discuss in the form of key note addresses, panels, roundtables, workshop, posters, an exhibition, and film screening include:

Society in the mind of the child and the role of the imagination in growing up.
The idea of childhood and socialisation across cultures.
Risk and resilience.
Intervention: the concept, the history, the potential and limitations.
Knowledge and the caring society.
Language, learning and literacy: changing Indigenous perspectives on knowledge and the school.