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One of Australia’s leading scholars of Australian Studies will give a free public lecture at The University of Western Australia on Wednesday (October 31) on what it means to think and write as Australians.

Professor Peter Beilharz, Professor in Sociology and Australian Studies at La Trobe University, will present his lecture Rewriting Australia in which he asks whether Australians are the bearers of a strong national narrative, or whether we rather tell stories governed by closer spheres of colony, city and region. He also considerers the idea that we are ‘accidental’ Australians.

The lecture will revisit the idea of the antipodes and the notion of cultural traffic as ways to think about where we as Australians have come from and where we might be going.

Professor Beilharz co-founded the international journal of social theory, Thesis Eleven and has been director of the Thesis Eleven Centre for Critical Theory at La Trobe since 2002. Previously he was Professor of Australian Studies at Harvard, and a Faculty Associate of the Sociology Department at Yale. He has written or edited twenty two books and eighty papers.

The free public lecture on Wednesday will be held at UWA’s Social Sciences Lecture Theatre, from 6pm.

For information please contact the Institute of Advanced Studies on 6488 1340 or email [email protected]

Media references

Audrey Barton (Institute of Advanced Studies) 61 8 6488 1340

Simone Hewett / Sally-Ann Jones 61 8 6488 7977
(UWA Public Affairs) 0420 790 097 / 0420 790 098