2026 Federation University Annual Reconciliation Lecture with Scientia Professor Megan Davis AC

The National Centre for Reconciliation, Truth, and Justice warmly invites you to the Fourth Annual Federation University Reconciliation Lecture, presented by Scientia Professor Megan Davis AC

Date: Tuesday 26 May 2026

Time: 6:00 pm – 7.15 pm (doors open at 5:30 pm)

Location: The Edge, Federation Square Swanston St and Flinders St, Melbourne VIC 3000

Register here: https://events.humanitix.com/2026-federation-university-annual-reconciliation-lecture-with-scientia-professor-megan-davis-ac

In the aftermath of the 2023 referendum, there has been a restoration of the status quo: an anaemic reconciliation project, a persistently unmet Closing the Gap framework, and a turn toward self-referential and non-consequential truth processes. This restored federal settlement is institutionally unchallenging and makes few demands on the state. Truth advocacy predicated on therapeutic categories of healing and trauma individualises harm and displaces questions of state responsibility. As such, it functions to re-inscribe the conditions the Uluru Statement from the Heart sought to transform, substituting safe and politically palatable alternatives for structural reform.

Against this backdrop, this lecture reflects on the 2023 referendum as a moment of political loss that sharpens, rather than diminishes, the case for constitutional recognition of First Nations peoples. The referendum did not mark the exhaustion of reform; it exposed the depth of the political, institutional and civic work required to secure it.

Political loss must not be mistaken for normative defeat; it instead demands a renewed commitment to constitutional recognition, properly understood.

Scientia Professor Dr Megan Davis is the Pro Vice-Chancellor Society (PVCS) at UNSW Sydney. Professor Davis is also a UNSW Scientia Professor and holds the Balnaves Chair in Constitutional Law and the Whitlam Fraser Harvard Chair in Australian Studies at Harvard University and is a Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School. She has also been appointed a Penn Carey Law Bok Visiting International Professor, University of Pennsylvania Carey Law School (Penn Carey Law).

Professor Davis is a renowned constitutional lawyer and public law expert, specialising on Indigenous peoples and the law, the constitutional recognition of First Nations and democracy.

She has been the leading Australian lawyer on constitutional recognition of First Nations peoples for two decades and designed the Referendum Council’s deliberative process that led to the Uluru Statement from the Heart.

Should you have any questions regarding the event please contact: events@federation.edu.au

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