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Wednesday, 27 July 2011

If anyone wanted confirmation of Vice-Chancellor our University's central place in global scholarship, they need only look at a list of events for the first few days of this month organised or hosted by staff of the University.

Four major conferences attracted more than 1,000 delegates from around the world.

First was the World Planning Schools Conference, about advancing urban and regional planning scholarship, teaching and collaborations. From Australia, Asia, Europe, the Americas and Africa, 500 scholars and researchers delivered more than 400 papers that considered planning from social, environmental, political, physical and economic standpoints.

Representatives of organisations such as the World Bank also took part in the conference, which had as its theme Planning's Future - Future Planning: Planning in an Era of Global (Un) Certainty and Transformation.

Next was the biggest anthropology conference to be held in the southern hemisphere, attracting more than 500 delegates from 30 countries. Entitled Knowledge and Value in a Globalising World: Disentangling Dichotomies, Querying Unities, the four-day conference covered areas as diverse as globalisation, Indigenous knowledge and resource use, neoliberalism, migration, food, creativity, religion, medicine, climate change, education, and developments in psychological anthropology.

Third was the China's Growth and the World Economy conference, hosted by the Business School and the Association for Chinese Economic Studies (Australia). With delegates from universities around Australia and China, the conference represented another instance of the deepening friendship between Australia and China and examined topics such as the behaviour of companies and industrial dynamics and energy and sustainability.

Finally there was the Australian Association for European History's conference, War and Peace, Barbarism and Civilisation in Modern Europe and its Empires. It was hosted by UWA's School of Humanities in collaboration with UWA's Institute of Advanced Studies and the Faculty of Arts at Murdoch University.

There are countless advantages in encouraging international relationships such as those engendered at these conferences. In hosting scholars from other countries we gain significant geopolitical and cultural benefits. We also broaden our own experience.

The global research links initiated at such gatherings is vital. By enabling people from universities around the world to meet and interact, we enable new ways of thinking and collaborating. In this way, we effectively marshal the intellectual and logistical resources that are needed if we are to have any success in solving global problems.

That so many delegates travelled so far to be at our University for these four major events speaks volumes for the esteem in which UWA is held internationally.

Vice-Chancellor Alan Robson

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