Hancock Lecture: Dr Nathan Gardner

Join us on Monday 2 September for the 2024 Hancock Lecture. Presented by Dr Nathan Gardner from the University of Melbourne.

What makes a multicultural nation? The contribution of Chinese Australian communities.

Since its enthusiastic inception in the 1970s, the place of multiculturalism is today contested. It has faced challenges of credibility mounted from both the left- and right-wings of politics and its original incisive message worn blunt. Claims like Australia is ‘one of the most successful multicultural countries in the world’ ring like an ironic cliché while government functions related to immigration and ‘social cohesion’ sit within the nation’s domestic security apparatus, the Department of Home Affairs. Nevertheless, multiculturalism is still ‘happening’ daily in this country; Australia’s diverse communities – ethnic, religious, civic – enact it through actions ranging from the prosaic to the highly political. Chinese Australian communities are exemplary in this regard.

For the AAH’s twelfth Hancock lecture, Dr Nathan Gardner considers what ‘Australian multiculturalism’ has been in theory and in fact by tracing the distinctive contributions of Chinese Australian communities and organisations to its origins and evolution: from the time of federation, through the ‘long, slow death’ of the White Australia policy to the eventual turn to multiculturalism and its emerging challenges today. With the ontological boundaries placed around ‘ethnic communities’ by scholarship often being arbitrary or stifling, Gardner will also show how the experiences and interests of Chinese Australian communities have intersected with those of other communities along the way. Through the use of non-English materials, oral histories and community engagement, the lecture is intended to demonstrate how the humanities – and Gardner’s home discipline of history in particular – may better engage with Australia’s multicultural reality and the diverse communities that comprise it. With populist and ethno-nationalist movements gaining traction across the world – not least in democratic nations – Gardner suggests a reconsideration of multiculturalism’s place in ‘building the nation’ is a timely and worthy endeavour.

Dr Nathan Gardner is a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an historian of (forced) migration, diasporas and multiculturalism in Australia. He especially uses oral history interviews and community-produced or non-English language materials to inform his studies of Australia’s diverse communities.

His forthcoming monograph, In the Face of Diversity: A History of Chinese Australian Community Organisations, 1970-2020, will be published by Sydney University Press. It examines the political actions of community organisations and their expressions of ‘community unity’ in response to significant local and international developments.

Nathan is currently working as part of an ARC Discovery Project with Prof Susan Kneebone to produce a comprehensive history of community sponsorship initiatives for refugee resettlement in Australia.

This event will be followed by a reception.

Event details

Hancock Lecture: Dr Nathan Gardner, University of Melbourne
Lecture Date: 5.30pm, 2 September 2024
Venue: Gallery room, State Library of New South Wales
Return to the Hancock Lecture Website

100% of Humanitix booking fees associated with this event will go towards funding education projects for the world's most disadvantaged children to close the global education gap.

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Image credit: King Fong, at Dixon St., Haymarket, July 1993