Policy Bites – Global to local: Using humanities to activate and connect communities

Join us for a Policy Bites lunchtime seminar with Associate Professor Sophie Gee on "Global to local: Using humanities to activate and connect communities".

Light lunch will be provided. Space is limited. Please register to secure your place.

Global to local: Using humanities to activate and connect communities

Looking at the University of Sydney Campus Collaboration and projects at Princeton, this paper explores some effects of academic humanities working in collaboration with local communities. A key question for universities now is how best to cross between academic departments and communities and organisations outside the academy, with the goal of rethinking the purpose of universities and humanities during an age of “polycrisis.”

The skills and values intrinsic to Humanities research – creative analysis, powerful storytelling, emotional connectivity and bringing unheard voices and perspectives into focus – are uniquely suited to address issues of inequality, exclusion and marginalisation. At the same time, there’s a dearth of conversation about how humanities skills can offer new perspectives to local communities across the globe and how community practices can change humanities research. Working with communities and building local networks is crucial to the future of humanities, and the humanities offer crucial perspectives and capacities to problem solving outside their own faculties and beyond university settings.

About Associate Professor Sophie Gee

Sophie Gee teaches in the English Department at Princeton. She’s also Vice Chancellor’s Fellow at the University of Sydney, where she’s engaged in building the public value of the humanities. She’s the author of two scholarly monographs and a historical novel, and co-hosts the globally successful Secret Life of Books podcast. She writes for many publications including The New York Times, the TLS and the Sydney Morning Herald. The Secret Life of Books hosts the official State Library of NSW Bookclub.

Format

30 minute presentation followed by audience discussion.

Time and location

1:00 pm, Tuesday 3 June.

Seminar Room 203, RD Watt Building (A04), Science Road, The University of Sydney, NSW 2050.

See more information about getting to the Lab.

Accessibility

We are committed to ensuring our spaces are safe, accessible and enjoyable for all. The RD Watt building is fully accessible for people who use wheelchairs or other mobility aids and service animals are welcome. Enter via the rear door of the RD Watt Building, near the entrance to the Social Sciences Building at the University of Sydney. Our meeting and events space is equipped with PA and assistive listening systems.

If you have any other access requirements, please do let us know when you register.

About Policy Bites

The Sydney Policy Lab’s lunchtime seminars – Policy Bites – are a forum for researchers and practitioners to present their exploratory and applied policy work in its early stages. Each public seminar gathers the Lab community in our collaborative space to hear and discuss new research as we exchange ideas across disciplines.

Policy Bites are organised by Dr Kate Harrison Brennan (Director, Sydney Policy Lab), Dr Assel Mussagulova (Lecturer in Public Policy and Public Administration, School of Social and Political Sciences) and Associate Professor Meru Sheel (Sydney School of Public Health).