ACRN Speaking Out Series: Seminar 1 - Caring in and beyond academia

We welcome you to participate in our first of four seminars of the 2025 Australasian Cities Research Network (ACRN) Speaking out Series focusing on Women and carers in Australasian Urban Studies: changing cultures, building communities.

This first seminar will focus on Caring in and beyond academia. 

This seminar will host three renowned panellists who will discuss: Caring as a responsibility that extends beyond work (e.g. caring for children, for elders, for friends and community), and caring as a way of performing academe. Some of the topics to be discussed are: how might caring ethics infuse (and blur) the work/life binary, challenge the capitalist and neoliberal norms of contemporary academic workplaces, and shape, in particular, the experience of urban studies as a disciplinary practice/focus?

Here we will explore the cultures of academe through the lens of ‘women’, and how feminist politics and ethics of care can help to transgress the “normative” ways imposed by the neoliberal establishment on diverse people.

The panel member comprises:

A/Prof. Emma Power

Emma Power is an Associate Professor in Geography and Urban Studies in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University and an ICS Institute Fellow. Emma’s programme of research is concerned with urban living and the politics of care. It envisions a world of more caring and just cities, asking how the capacity of people to meet their needs for care and to live a good life can be better supported within cities and through the broader housing and welfare systems

Dr. Miriam Williams

Miriam Williams is a Senior Lecturer in Geography and Planning at Macquarie University. Her work focuses on how urban life could be made more just and caring for people and the planet. Miriam's research makes a contribution to urban studies with a focus on everyday practices of care and justice across a range of empirical foci, including planning, community food provisioning initiatives, public spaces, housing and commons in cities. 

Prof. Phillippa Carnemolla

Phillippa Carnemolla is a Professor in the School of Built Environment at the University of Technology Sydney. She is passionate about research that investigates the influence of our built environments on people's independence, autonomy and how care is provided and received. She focuses on promoting community-led research and innovation in housing, workplaces, residential aged care, specialist disability accommodation and inclusive cities across aged care and disability support contexts.

This is the first of four seminars within this series. The seminars to come will focus on the following topics:

• Seminar 2: Mother(ing) and caregiving in academia and beyond (August 2025- date TBC)

• Seminar 3: Women as "other", challenges and contributions transcending traditional family norms (October 2025- date TBC)

• Seminar 4: Community building - in-person event (at SOAC in December 2025- date TBC)