Ever wondered why the heart is associated with love, how it beats relentlessly without thought of mind, or why your physical fitness changes your resting heart rate? Understanding how the body works is "physiology" and Julian Paton is a passionate physiologist who insists "Fizziology is phun".
Is there life out there beyond Earth? And why does it matter? Join former NASA researcher and University of Auckland astrobiologist Professor Kathleen Campbell.
Is there life out there beyond Earth? And why does it matter?
Join former NASA researcher and University of Auckland astrobiologist Professor Kathleen Campbell as she explores the quest for extraterrestrial life in our Solar System, past and present.
She will share the remarkable discoveries that are raising the odds of finding life.
It's a highlight of 2023's Raising the Bar series.
About the speaker
Professor Kathleen Campbell is a geologist and astrobiologist investigating extreme environments as analogues for early life on Earth and possible life on Mars. Originally from the United States, she completed post-doctoral research at the NASA Ames Research Center in California, is an elected Fellow of the Royal Society Te Apārangi and is founding director of Te Ao Mārama - Centre for Fundamental Inquiry, a transdisciplinary research centre at the University of Auckland exploring the origin and evolution of the Universe and its life. She teaches paleoecology and astrobiology alongside her research.
A hundred years after Katherine Mansfield died at the age of 34, six writers and performers share their personal connections to the New Zealand writer's life and legacy.
A hundred years after Katherine Mansfield died at the age of 34, six writers and performers share their personal connections to the New Zealand writer's life and legacy.
Listen to Miranda Harcourt, Stephanie Johnson, Karl Stead, Charlotte Yates. Paula Morris and Redmer Yska speaking at a 2023 Auckland Writers Festival event
2023 marks the centenary year of Katherine Mansfield's too-soon demise from pulmonary tuberculosis.
In New Zealand and across the world, Mansfield is still cherished for her role in shaping modernism and her experimental, genre-defying body of work.
Some literary critics have called her the best short-story stylist of all time.
Stephanie Johnson says:
"Somehow it was planted in my head, as well as the heads of many of my generation, that Katherine Mansfield was an icon up there with Edmund Hillary and Kiri Te Kanawa. A hairstyle later popularised by Mary Quant had already been rocked by KM. The punk desire to die at 30 had already been achieved by KM who almost managed it at 35. The ubiquitous idea that in order to achieve anything you had to leave dull, restrictive New Zealand and never come back was pioneered by KM in 1908. "
Phrases entered our lexicon by osmosis: 'I seen the little lamp!' from The Doll's House being the most well-known, closely followed by 'Risk, risk anything. Care no more for the opinions of others for those voices. Do the hardest thing on earth for you. Act for yourself. Face the truth!'
"In the 1980s, like many others, I was further drawn towards Katherine Mansfield the woman, through Cathy Downes's brilliant play The Case of Katherine Mansfield which she performed over a thousand times in six different countries. I suspect others, much later in 2011, were drawn to her by Fiona Samuel's timeless and evocative film Bliss."
"By the time I started to write seriously (and miraculously to be performed or published), I still felt no real connection with Katherine Mansfield. She had left. I had stayed. She had a father who funded her departure and life thereafter. I had a father who loved me, but didn't love the things that I did, and expected me to make my own way in the world."
"It was in Menton that I read, cover to cover, her collected stories. It wasn't until then that I felt closer to her, less envious of her opportunities, and more admiring of her writing."
About the speakers
Miranda Harcourt…
To engage young people accustomed to visual storytelling, historian Monty Soutar wrote Kāwai: For Such a Time as This as if it were a movie.
To engage young people accustomed to visual storytelling, historian Monty Soutar wrote Kāwai: For Such a Time as This as if it were a movie.
In this 2023 Auckland Writers Festival event, he discusses the book with Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu).
Listen to the conversation
A historian with deep knowledge of Māori history (and an ONZM for services to Māori and historical research), Dr Monty Soutar had puzzled over how to communicate his knowledge of subjects like the Māori Battalion and the New Zealand Pioneer Battalion to today's non-book-reading digital generation.
"I thought, well, they watch these screens all the time. Perhaps moving pictures are where I've got to get to if I'm really going to educate them about our past.
"When you read this book, Kāwai, truly it's like watching a movie. So I wrote it with that in mind. Somebody told me, if you can see each scene like you would in a theatre, then you're probably getting there."
"So that was my intention - to write it for young people, to write it like you'd be watching a movie. I didn't realise that by doing that I'd capture everybody."
During his conversation with Stacey Morrison at the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre, Soutar reveals the inspiration that Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots provided and how he sold the family home to support himself while writing Kāwai.
Kāwai - the first volume in a planned trilogy - draws on Soutar's lifetime of research into the whakapapa and oral traditions of his own ancestors, beginning with the birth of Kai-tanga near Ruatoria.
He talks with Stacey Morrison (Te Arawa, Ngāi Tahu) in this highlight recorded in May of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
About the speaker
Monty Soutar
Dr. Monty Soutar (Ngati Porou, Ngati Awa, Ngai Tai ki Tamaki, Ngati Kahungunu) is a member of the Waitangi Tribunal. He has worked as a teacher, soldier, university lecturer, museum director and Senior Historian for the Ministry of Culture and Heritage. His best-selling novel Kāwai: For Such a Time as This is the first in a trilogy and was shortlisted for the 2023 Ockham NZ Book Awards.
This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023
Dr Qu Mai Nguy n Phan's latest novel Dust Child sets out to subvert Hollywood movie stereotypes of Vietnamese women being subservient and passive. She talks to Paula Morris in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai's latest novel Dust Child sets out to subvert Hollywood movie stereotypes of Vietnamese women being subservient and passive.
She talks to Paula Morris in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Listen to the conversation
Presenting an alternative to the American gaze, Dust Child highlights the struggles of Amerasians - children born from relationships between American soldiers and Vietnamese women who suffered discrimination and other ill-treatment.
Is it odd for a Vietnamese woman to write in the character of a young Amerasian man? No more than it has been for white American authors to create the recognisable trope of a Vietnamese bar girl, Dr Quế Mai says.
Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is the author of 12 books of poetry, short fiction and non-fiction in Vietnamese and English.
In this discussion with Paula Morris, she speaks about writing in two languages, the importance of decolonising literature in English about her homeland and the need to acknowledge untold stories and silenced trauma.
During the course of a lively session in the Kiri Te Kanawa Theatre at Auckland's Aotea Centre, Dr Quế Mai sings a number of songs, including one created especially for the audience in front of her.
About the speaker
Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai
Dr Nguyễn Phan Quế Mai is an award-winning author of eleven books of poetry, short fiction and non-fiction. Her best-selling debut novel The Mountains Sing won the 2021 International Book Award, the 2021 Pen Oakland/Josephine Miles Literary Award, the 2020 Lannan Literary Award Fellowship for Fiction, and was runner-up for the 2021 Dayton Literary Peace Prize. Dr Quế Mai is an advocate for the rights of disadvantaged groups in Việt Nam and was named by Forbes Vietnam as one of 20 inspiring women of 2021. Her latest novel is Dust Child.
www.nguyenphanquemai.com
This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023
Gaylene's Take is the autobiography of an influential director who created a style of cinema unlike that of male directors of her generation. Dame Gaylene Preston talks about her career at the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Gaylene's Take is the autobiographical memoir of an influential director who created a style of cinema unlike that of male directors of her generation.
Dame Gaylene Preston talks about her career at the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Listen to the talk
'A beatnik, introverted, smoking, drinking student culture was well established out at Ilam by the time I arrived. The artist took a back seat in society, and so did we.'
Gaylene's Take is not only a story about the difficulties of filmmaking in Aotearoa/New Zealand, but about the making of an influential artist who was determined to create films fulfilling her unique vision of what cinema could be about.
The writer-director of enduring classics such as Mr Wrong, Ruby & Rata, War Stories Our Mothers Never Told Us and My Year With Helen talks about going where others feared to tread with Michelle Langstone.
As a child, Gaylene Preston would sit drawing on the floor under the table round which her mother and female visitors gathered. In this unobserved spot, she would overhear conversations and secrets not meant for her, and she attributes her love of storytelling to this formative time of her life.
Gaylene's Take reflects on the attraction of voices.
In about 1977, I sat in a small house of this old man in his eighties, who was living in what had been his family home. The ghost of his wife was ever-present as he sat on the grey rug thrown over his ancient couch and told me his experiences of the battle of the Somme. I sat there in the little house in with the occasional train woefully passing, listening to his tales of the horror. The blood mixed with mud, and the boys he left behind, as though it had happened only yesterday.
I was stunned.
He assumed I knew much more about the whole sorry tale than I did, as he described terrible things. Hearing the stories of death and destruction, I found some of what he told me surprising. Mysterious. Like the fact that no matter how bad it gets, in the icy rain and rancid mud, the bully beef is always hot.
This is when I fell in love with oral histories. When the teller hits the present tense, you can tell that they're right there. Pure memory. I'm transfixed, barely daring to move, checking that the little cassette tape is recording.
About the speaker
Dame Gaylene Preston
"I believe that the basic responsibility of New Zealand filmmakers is to make films principally for the New Zealand audience. If we don't, no-one else will."…
Richard Fidler speaks with Jack Tame about The Book of Roads and Kingdoms, bringing to life the dazzling cosmopolitan culture of Baghdad during Islam's Golden Age. A highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Hear Richard Fidler talk to Jack Tame in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
The Book of Roads and Kingdoms brings to life a dazzling culture of science, literature, philosophy and adventure arising out of the flourishing metropolis of Baghdad during Islam's Golden Age. Australian writer/broadcaster Richard Fidler recounts how medieval Persian and Arab wanderers ventured by camel, horse and boat into the unknown, bringing back tales of wonder, horror and delight.
Ever curious, Fidler's previous bestsellers have also delved entertainingly into the history of worldly places - The Golden Maze (Prague), Ghost Empire (Constantinople) and Saga Land (Iceland). The host of ABC's Conversations - Australia's most downloaded podcast - speaks with broadcaster Jack Tame about what he describes as a 'crazy quilt atlas of a lost world'.
About the speaker
Richard Fidler
Richard Fidler is the popular presenter of Conversations with Richard Fidler on ABC Radio. He is the author of four acclaimed books blending travel and history: Ghost Empire (Constantinople), Saga Land (Iceland), The Golden Maze (Prague) and latest The Book of Roads & Kingdoms (imperial Baghdad).
This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023
The world of AI has leapt into focus recently, fuelled by interest in ChatGPT. Prof. Toby Walsh talks to Toby Manhire about its future, in a highlight from the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Hear Toby Walsh in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
There are approximately three million robots working in factories around the world, and another 30 million in people's homes. Soon robots will outnumber humans. But what happens if an autonomous AI harms or kills a person, deliberately or accidentally? It will happen. In fact, it already has.
In Machines Behaving Badly, Professor Toby Walsh - Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at UNSW Sydney, and a leading advisor to the UN on lethal autonomous weapons (aka killer robots) discusses a future where machines start to shape society in ways we are not aware of.
Described as a 'rock star of Australia's digital revolution' he explores whether robots can have rights and the issue of agency with Toby Manhire.
The session begins with an absorbing demonstration of the benefits and pitfalls of using ChatGPT to create original content.
About the speaker
Toby Walsh
Toby Walsh is a Laureate Fellow and Scientia Professor of Artificial Intelligence at the University of New South Wales in Sydney, Australia. He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Science and author of three books on AI including most recent Machines Behaving Badly: The Morality of AI exploring the ethical challenges of AI such as autonomous weapons.
This session is broadcast thanks to the generous help of the Auckland Writers Festival held in May 2023
Three Booker Prize winners, Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo and Shehan Karunatilaka share their experience of being awarded the world's most esteemed literary prize with Karyn Hay at the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Hear Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo, Shehan Karunatilaka and Karyn Hay in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
It's the Oscars of the writing world - winning the Booker Prize supercharges a writer's career, immediately lifts sales, multiplies overseas deals and opens up opportunities all around the world. But what does this kind of superstardom feel like for the writer on the inside? Three Booker Prize winners, Eleanor Catton, Bernardine Evaristo and Shehan Karunatilaka share their experience of being awarded the world's most esteemed literary prize with broadcaster and author Karyn Hay.
Shehan Karunatilaka:
All awards - Oscars, Grammies, Baftas, Emmies - are all bullshit, until you win one. Then, maybe the Booker is as well, but this year the judges got it right. Up until October I worked in advertising, and if my next book flops I'll be back working in advertising, and I think there's no industry more obsessed with awards. You do your normal day-to-day work for these brands, but then you do these scammy little awards. This happened a lot in the '90s. You had these scam things winning at Cannes, and all of that.
And you had all these old-school creative directors saying "That's all nonsense. Advertising is about the real work." Until they win an award. When they win the award, it's in the newspapers, and they put Cannes-winning agency presents and all of that.
The thing is, these are flawed. There's plenty of examples of that. Hitchcock never won for best director. The Beatles won one Grammy, but Post Malone has fifteen. There are many examples.
But the Booker does have meaning. Even being on a long list, a short list, and obviously - winning.
About the speakers
Eleanor Catton
Eleanor Catton's latest novel Birnam Wood, follows her Booker Prize-winning epic The Luminaries, and her award-winning debut, The Rehearsal. As a screenwriter she adapted The Luminaries for television, and Jane Austen's Emma for feature film. Born in Canada, she grew up in Aotearoa New Zealand and now lives in the UK.
Bernardine Evaristo…
Two-time winner of the Pulitzer Prize, Colson Whitehead has written The Underground Railroad, The Nickel Boys, and Harlem Shuffle. He talks to Kim Hill at the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Hear Colson Whitehead in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
In his novel John Henry Days, the author Colson Whitehead includes moments of humour which appeal to Kim Hill. She says, "this is a joke I like: Tiny says, 'you know, I don't mean to be un-PC, but I like Little Black Sambo. My mother used to read me Little Black Sambo when she tucked me into bed at night. It's a cute story underneath.' And Jay Sutter says, 'You were undisturbed by the eyeholes cut into the pillow you lay your little head on?'"
To laughter from the audience, she adds, "It's good! They are funny. The Underground Railroad is not funny. There are no jokes in The Underground Railroad."
Colson Whitehead explains that once he was committed to writing the novel (which posits a world in which there is a real underground railroad transporting slaves fleeing the American South to freedom), he was chose not to avoid that kind of ironic, sardonic, tone.
"I was not going to write a kind of slave story like Gone with the Wind," he says. "I was going to be accurate, and undertaking the research, and coming to the material in my 'forties, rather than being a kid watching Roots, I realised that my props, my jokiness would not fit. And also that it had to be really brutal just to be realistic. And I wanted it to be realistic because my ancestors had somehow survived that."
"Terribly brutal," Kim Hill agrees, and reads from the text:
On the third day, just after lunch, the hands were recalled from the fields, the washerwomen, the cooks and the stablehands interrupted from their tasks, the house staff diverted from its maintenance. They gathered on the front lawn. Randall's visitors sipped spiced rum, as Big Anthony was doused with oil and roasted. The witnesses were spared his screams as his manhood had been cut off on the first day, stuffed in his mouth, and sewn in.
"Did that happen?" she asks…
In Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, Louisa Lim captures the city's untold history, just as it is being erased from the official record. A highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
Hear Louisa Lim in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
In the opening to Indelible City: Dispossession and Defiance in Hong Kong, Louisa Lim is torn between journalistic neutrality and her love of Hong Kong as she is invited by guerrilla sign painters to grab a brush and help produce pro-democracy banners. When the Hong Kong protests begin over concerns about an extradition treaty, and escalate to a crackdown on freedom of expression, Lim finds herself uniquely placed to capture the city's untold history, just as it is being erased from the official record.
While researching her book on the loss of freedom in Hong Kong, Lim came across a set of interviews which had just been released from a 30-year embargo. Undertaken with the senior Hong Kong advisors who had witnessed at close hand the diplomatic negotiations undertaken by the UK government with Beijing in the leadup to the handover of the city to mainland China, they were, she says, "astonishingly frank and emotional accounts of what they saw as betrayal by the UK authorities."
The advisors were so upset, angry, and panicking. "And the questions that they raised the weaknesses with the agreements that had been made, were all the ones that caused all the problems later on." Based on her reading of these reports, Lim is sure that this was a strategic choice by the British, who viewed there task as being almost like a game. "In the negotiations they liked to use these metaphors of card-playing. They'd say to the Hong Kong advisors 'Our hand is not that strong.'"
"The advisors thought the British just didn't understand how to negotiate with the Chinese. They thought they didn't understand the culture. They also thought they didn't understand the language because there were not native Chinese-speakers on Britain's negotiating team. They thought the British were being played."
"One of the advisors said 'If I went to shop in Harrods I wouldn't try to haggle over the price. But if I'm buying something in China, with any negotiation, the contract is just the start of the negotiation. And the British don't understand that.'"
Lim shares her experience of Hong Kong dispossession and defiance with Sam Sachdeva, author of The China Tightrope. A highlight recorded in May of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
About the speaker
Louisa Lim…
MasterChef UK judge and restaurant critic William Sitwell joins Richard Fidler for a conversation about a life in food.. A highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival.
William Sitwell is a British food and travel writer, MasterChef UK judge and restaurant critic for The Telegraph. Known as much for his love of authentic cuisine as his witty, sometimes provocative and occasionally controversial views, he joins ABC Radio host Richard Fidler for a conversation about a life in food.
In his most recent book, The Restaurant: A History of Dining Out, he takes readers on a gastronomic journey over the last 2000 years - venturing into the inns and taverns of Pompeii before their destruction in AD79; revealing the tumultuous emergence of fine dining during the French Revolution; and exploring the result of technological innovations on the rise of McDonald's.
Hear William Sitwell in this highlight of the 2023 Auckland Writers Festival
The result is a lively, discursive amble through the social and culinary history of eating out, ranging from the influence of Elizabeth David, to the effect of the dissolution of the monasteries, and the revolution in UK cuisine since the 1960s.
As the editor of Waitrose Food Illustrated magazine (until his departure after he made a joke about "killing vegans"), Sitwell broadened the range of commentators and contributors. But his attempt to get Sir Les Patterson (one of the many alter egos of Australian comedian Barry Humphries, creator of the more famous Dame Edna Everage) fell at the last hurdle.
"I was very privileged to know Barry Humphries since he became a friend of my family's. He was a fan of my grandfather Sir Sacheverell Sitwell . I remember staying at my grandfather's house and I saw these postcards from Edna on the kitchen table. My grandfather's housekeeper Gertrude was talking about how this strange person kept on writing to my grandfather calling herself Dame Edna Everage. This was in the late '80s when Edna ruled the airwaves. She was the Queen of the Saturday night's TV schedules. But Gertrude and her husband only really watched wrestling, and switched the television off in the evening."…
An analysis of racism from Dr Mahdis Azarmandi at the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Dr. Mahdis Azarmandi in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
What do we mean when we say racism? And how do we fight and challenge it?
Dr. Mahdis Azarmandi discusses why it's difficult to talk about racism and how to make sense of the often-misunderstood idea of 'race'. The opening of her talk is aimed at defining, understanding, and analysing what racism is, exploring the Spanish "conquest" of the Americas and the theological arguments which provided cover for slavery. Jim Crow laws in the southern USA and apartheid in South Africa are explored because of their connection to the pseudoscience of racial theory.
Later, her talk concentrates on what it means to pay more than lip service to being 'anti-racist.'
She argues that being anti-racist requires us to actively challenge white supremacy, and examine our own lives for examples of unrecognised racism. She says that education which results in just raising awareness is not enough. Instead, it's time to translate ideas into actions which dismantle the colonial status quo.
About the speaker
Dr Mahdis Azarmandi
Mahdis Azarmandi is a Senior Lecturer in Educational Studies and Leadership at the University of Canterbury. After obtaining her PhD from the National Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at the University of Otago, she held a position as Assistant Professor at DePauw University. She has also taught in Germany and Denmark. Her research looks at anti-racism and colonial amnesia in Aotearoa New Zealand and Spain. Her research interests are at the intersection of race critical, decolonial theory & peace studies. She also researches on anti-racism and politics of memory.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
Antibiotic resistance has been creeping up for 70 years. Prof. Jack Heinemann, discusses how its doomsday scenario in this highlight of Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Jack Heinemann in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
The Doomsday clock of the Bulletin of Atomic Scientists has been set closer to midnight than ever before in its history because of the risk of nuclear war.
Other doomsday clocks relating to climate change and chemical use also get lots of press. In this Raising the Bar talk, Prof. Jack Heinemann discusses another doomsday clock, relating to something which is all around us, and inside us. It's antibiotic resistance and it has been creeping up on us for about 70 years.
Antibiotic resistance isn't just a medical issue, as nearly ⅔rds of the world's food production is also at risk. Professor Heinemann talks about what preventing this doomsday requires, and how individuals have more agency in this process than they commonly realise.
The cure, he says, is one which requires an injection of new thinking.
About the speaker
Jack Heinemann
Professor of Molecular Biology and Genetics in the School of Biological Sciences Jack Heinemann worked at the US National Institutes of Health before joining UC. He gained his PhD from the University of Oregon and was on the UN Roster of Biosafety Experts until 2009. From 2009 to 2016, and in 2020, he was a member of Cartagena Protocol for Biosafety's Ad Hoc Technical Expert Group. He was also an author for the International Panel for Climate change (6th report). In 1993, he won the ICAAC Young Investigator Award from the American Society for Microbiology, and the New Zealand Association of Scientists Research medal in 2002.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
Assoc. Prof. Elsamari Botha looks at how AI, and language models like ChatGPT, have the potential to revolutionise the way businesses operate, at Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Elsamari Botha in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
AI, and language models like ChatGPT, are increasingly being integrated into business processes to improve efficiency, productivity, and customer satisfaction. However, there are many myths and misunderstandings about their current and future use.
AI has the potential to revolutionize the way businesses operate, but it is essential to approach its implementation with caution. To get the most value out of AI, it is crucial to establish a robust human-AI relationship. This means understanding the limitations of AI and ensuring that humans are still involved in decision-making.
In addition to understanding the human-AI relationship in business, companies also need to understand how embedding AI in business might affect their processes and structures. This talk provides practical insights into implementing AI in business.
About the speaker
Assoc. Prof. Elsamari Botha
Elsamari Botha, PhD, is an Associate Professor and the MBA Director at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand and an extraordinary associate professor at the University of Stellenbosch Business School, South Africa. She attained her PhD at KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden. With over 15 years of consulting experience, involvement in technology start-ups, and many public speaking engagements, Elsamari's research focuses on technology transitions within companies to enable businesses to get the most out of significant technology investments while preparing for digital disruption.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
Is Science making our food safer? Kim Hill talks with a panel of experts at the annual seminar of the New Zealand Food Safety Science & Research Centre
Hear Kim Hill chair this highlight of the annual seminar of the New Zealand Food Safety Science & Research Centre
Is science helping or hindering the seemingly unending challenges with our modern food production systems? Issues such as the emergence of new and deadlier pathogens, increased scrutiny on chemical use, the packaging revolution and the overall impacts of climate change.
Kim Hill discusses the future of food and what it means for New Zealand producers and consumers, contrasting the advice of food guru Michael Pollan to eat what our grandmother would have recognised as food, with what is produced by the food manufacturing and production sectors.
Her panel brings together a wide range of specialists taking part in the the annual seminar of the New Zealand Food Safety Science & Research Centre in July 2023.
The participants
Jocelyn Eason from Plant And Food Research; Peter Cressey from the Institute of Environmental Science and Research (ESR); Glen Neal from Food Standards, Australia New Zealand; Sirma Karapeeva from the Meat Industry Association (MIA); and Phil Bremer from the University of Otago.
This session was broadcast thanks to the New Zealand Food Safety Science & Research Centre and New Zealand International Science Festival.
Professor of Marketing Ekant Veer argues that online 'trolling' need not be a form of bullying, but something playful which is also good for society. From Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Ekant Veer in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
When we hear the word 'troll' or 'trolling' it usually conjures up negative associations of bullying, misogyny, abuse, racism and hate. The prevalence of online bullying has become widespread over the last decade with sometimes deadly consequences.
In this discussion Prof. Veer talks about the different types of trolling behaviours and trolls, what the potential motivations are behind these trolling behaviours, and ultimately, what we can do to combat harmful trolling. Yes, this implies that not all trolling is harmful and can, actually, be good for society.
Some trolls are community builders and activists who leverage their platform and prominence to draw people together for a common, sometimes positive, cause. Conversely, there are trolls and trolling communities that are so invested into their ideology and behaviours that they may never be able to accept their behaviour is in any way destructive and harmful to others.
About the speaker
Ekant Veer
Ekant Veer is a Professor of Marketing in the University of Canterbury's Department of Management, Marketing and Tourism. His research focuses on how marketing technologies and techniques can be used to understand and promote behaviour that is beneficial to individuals and society. He is a multi-award winning teacher and researcher, having been named in the Top 40 under 40 Business Professors worldwide in 2017, an Ako Aotearoa Tertiary Teaching Excellence award winner, UC Teaching medallist and five-time UCSA Lecturer of the Year award winner.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
Cheryl Brown and Kathryn MacCallum explore the digital landscapes that young people occupy today. A highlight of the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Cheryl Brown and Kathryn MacCallum in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
Digital tech dominates our world, from the devices we use every day to elements that govern the news we're exposed to, and that regulate our lives in the background. It's become harder to separate what's online and what's off. We're connected, and yet we're not. How does this reality affect young people?
Cheryl Brown and Kathryn MacCallum, co-Directors of the Digital Education Futures Lab, as they explore the digital landscapes that modern young people occupy. They look at how digital technology has shaped a new reality that's far from black and white, focusing on how we can support young people as they navigate this new world that is rapidly evolving and changing every single moment.
About the speakers
Cheryl Brown and Kathryn MacCallum
Cheryl and Kathryn are Associate Professors and co-Directors of the Digital Education Futures Lab. Cheryl is the Head of the School of Educational Studies and Leadership, and along with Kathryn, a member of the Waitaha Regional Digital Equity group. Kathryn is the President of the International Association for Mobile Learning and a board member of EdTechNZ. Together their research covers digital and media literacies, digital wellbeing, augmented and virtual realities to support learners, digital inequality, and mobile learning.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
What is going on with transport in Aotearoa? Prof. Simon Kingham explores what the evidence tells us about transport now and in the future, at Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023.
Hear Simon Kingham in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
There are as many questions about transport as there are questioners, and what they ask about can reveal a lot about what is though of as a priority in this essential sector of the economy, affecting how we all lead our lives.
Questions such as:
"What is going on with transport?.. The government is trying to make speed limits so slow it will take ages to get anywhere and cripple the economy... They are spending millions of dollars building cycleways that no one uses... And they keep telling us that cars are to blame for global warming when everyone knows it is dairy cows that are the problem... And anyway, we're a tiny country so we can't make a difference... As for the potholes, why don't they just fix them and leave us to get on with our lives."
So what is happening? Why is the government pursuing these policies? And what does the evidence tell us about our transport and what might happen in the future.
A leading expert in the field, Prof. Simon Kingham, lays out the issues of significance for all of us, from cycleways, to speed restrictions, public transport and decarbonisation.
About the speaker
Simon Kingham
Simon Kingham is Ahorangi o te Matawhenua/Professor of Geography at the University of Canterbury. In this role he teaches and undertakes research on a range of issues related to the impact of the urban environment on wellbeing, with a specific focus on transport. He is also seconded to Te Manatū Waka/the Ministry of Transport as their Chief Science Advisor. His role there is to ensure that policy is evidence-based.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023
Assoc. Prof. Heather Purdie explains why glaciers are the perfect barometer of climate change. A highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023 series.
Hear Heather Purdie in this highlight from the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch 2023
Are you still uncertain about climate change? Go and visit a glacier - if you can find one.
Glaciers don't lie; their size is directly linked to climate; they expand and recede as temperature and snowfall patterns change. Glaciers store fresh water, conveniently releasing it during the warmest months of the year. If water is locked-up in a glacier, then it cannot contribute to sea level rise. Glaciers provide pathways into remote mountains, they are beautiful, they are complex.
Weaving her latest research results from inside crevasses at Haupapa/Tasman Glacier with long-term glacier monitoring in Ka Tiritiri te Moana/Southern Alps, Dr Heather Purdie takes the audience on a journey into the mountains explaining how glaciers work, and why scientists view them as accurate indicators of climate change.
About the speaker
Heather Purdie
Dr Heather Purdie is an Associate Professor and glaciologist in the School of Earth and Environment at the University of Canterbury. Also a mountaineer, she has spent two decades exploring the mountains of Aotearoa/New Zealand. During this time she has been monitoring glacial health, thickness and reach. Her research focuses on how glaciers respond to climate change and the implications of glacier recession on mountain recreation and tourism.
This session is broadcast in association with the University of Canterbury's Raising the Bar Christchurch night, held in May 2023