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2021 events

Not a Solution but a Plan: Anticipatory Governance of Geoengineering

  • Abstract: The simultaneous rising of emissions and Earth's temperature demand drastic measures. Technologies under the umbrella of 'geoengineering' (GE) promise to limit global temperatures, although they are risky and uncertain. Although it is impossible to see a clear outcome of either the climate crisis as it unfolds today or the possible usage of GE technologies, they must be anticipated. Anticipatory Governance (AG) offers a capacity oriented process to strengthen foresight, public engagement and interdisciplinary research, all under a strategic vision. This presentation will investigate AG as de facto and future governance, as governance to enable and to restrict, as well as a prescriptive approach and analytic tool.
  • Presenter: Nils Matzner, Post-Doctoral Researcher, Technical University of Munich. Nils Matzner: is a post-doctoral researcher in Sociology of Science at the Technical University of Munich. He researches and teaches governance and responsibility of new climate technologies, as well as interdisciplinary, mixed methods, discourse and network research. He studied Political Science at RWTH Aachen University. He worked in 2011 and from 2012 to 2014 at the RWTH Aachen University and from 2011 to 2012 at the Goethe University Frankfurt. Further, he worked from 2014 to 2020 at the University of Klagenfurt in a research project funded by the German Research Foundation in its Priority Program 1689 on Climate Engineering. In 2019 he earned his doctoral degree in Science and Technology Studies.
  • When: 4 pm, Wednesday 6 October 2021
  • Where: Zoom only

Climate Change in the Kiwi Mind: An Audience Segmentation Analysis

  • Abstract: ‘Know your public’ is the first step in effective public engagement campaigns. Based on a national sample survey (N = 1083) conducted in March 2021, audience segmentation analysis of New Zealanders’ climate change beliefs, attitudes, behaviours, and policy preferences show five distinct publics: Alarmed, Concerned, Cautious, Doubtful, and Dismissive. Building on research in New Zealand, Australia, and the US, this talk will discuss challenges and opportunities to engage these diverse publics by government and advocacy groups. Understanding how people make sense of, and respond to, climate change will help tailor messages that are aligned with the needs and values of the target audiences.
  • Presenter: Dr JT Thaker, Senior Lecturer, Massey University. Dr Jagadish Thaker (JT) is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication, Journalism and Marketing, Massey University. He is an affiliate researcher with the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication, Center for Climate Change Communication at George Mason Universit y, and Center for Culture-Centered Approach to Research and Evaluation. His research examines ways to understand and enhance public, business, and policy engagement with the issues of climate change and health.
  • When: 1–2 pm, Thursday 5 August 2021
  • Where: HMLT 103

The Establishment of the Matariki-Puanga National Holiday

  • Abstract: The revitalization of Māori astronomy has led to the growing desire for communities to reconnect and reclaim ancestral knowledge of the sun, moon, and stars. Within Māori astronomy sits a framework of time called the maramataka, the Māori calendar system, that alongside celestial knowledge, weaves environmental and ecological knowledge which is used to understand and track time. Matariki and Puanga are some of the main stars within the maramataka that signify the Māori New Year. As New Zealanders learn and engage in Matariki and Puanga celebrations, Māori communities are growing and regaining their knowledge and cultural practices associated with these stars. With the Prime Minister earlier this year announcing that Matariki is to be a national holiday, Dr Harris will discuss the different ways that Māori and non-Māori communities are currently celebrating this time, and how New Zealanders can learn to celebrate and honour the Māori New Year together with greater cultural understanding.
  • Presenter: Dr Pauline Harris, Senior Lecturer, Centre for Science in Society. Dr Pauline Harris is from the tribes Rongomaiwahine, Ngāti Rakaipaka and Ngāti Kahungunu. Dr Harris is an astrophysicist who has specialized in high energy neutrino production and inflationary cosmology. Her research currently focuses on mātauranga Māori associated with Māori astronomy, Māori calendars called maramataka, as well as climate change. Currently, Dr Harris is the Chairperson of the Society for Māori Astronomy Research and Traditions (SMART). She is also the Principal Investigator for the Marsden funded project, "Ngā Takahuringa ō te Ao: The Effect of Climate Change on Traditional Māori calendars". Most recently Dr Harris has been appointed to the Matariki Advisory Group to the government to determine the date and advise on the Matariki holiday.
  • When: 12–1 pm, Friday 28 May 2021
  • Where: MYLT 101

Science in the media—News in the time of the pandemic

  • Abstract: With over a decade of experience working on the front lines of breaking news and science in Aotearoa New Zealand, the Science Media Centre is uniquely placed to track the ways controversial issues emerge and evolve in the public arena. From climate change and disease outbreaks to meth-contaminated houses, pesticides and natural disasters, their team understands first-hand the pressures shaping journalism. With a particular focus on science communication during the Covid-19 pandemic, this seminar will look in depth at how the SMC takes practical steps to improve the quality and depth of news coverage of critical issues that impact society.
  • Presenter: Dacia Herbulock, Director—Science Media Centre. Dacia Herbulock is Director of the Science Media Centre, an independent, publicly-funded initiative supporting high quality journalism on science, health, technology, environment and the implications of emerging research for society. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the SMC has been instrumental in linking essential news media with relevant experts to provide evidence-based context on everything from coronavirus vaccines and immunity rates to impacts on rural communities and the psychological impact of lockdown. Dacia joined the SMC at its launch in 2008 with media experience covering science, environment and social issues for Radio New Zealand's Our Changing World, as well as US public radio, documentary production and network television news while studying abroad in Beijing. Over the past decade, she has designed and led initiatives to broaden New Zealand’s network of media savvy experts, improve journalists’ understanding of complex science issues and make relevant information accessible to the media when science is in the headlines. She is an Adjunct Research Fellow with the Centre for Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington and Executive Committee member of the Science Communicators' Association of New Zealand (SCANZ).
  • When: 12–1 pm, Friday 21 May 2021
  • Where: MYLT 101

Astropsychology: SETI and Mind Perception

  • Abstract: 
    • Until we can travel to distant planets and see whether aliens inhabit them, we are limited to searching the skies for relevant evidence. The science of astrobiology uses our understanding of earthbound organisms to look for signs of life (any life, including microbes and plants) in the cosmos. The search for extraterrestrial intelligence (SETI), however, is a psychological quest: it looks not just for life but for intelligent, sentient minds.
    • Would we recognise evidence for such minds if we came across it, though? In this talk, I will discuss why this question is as much about us as about aliens: how do people identify and distinguish minds from mindless objects in their environment? In psychology, this is known as the question of mind perception; and just as astrobiology draws insights from biology, SETI should draw on emerging insights from behavioural sciences about what makes people perceive minds as the cause of events in their environment.
    • Such insights may help us formulate criteria for recognising alien minds—and avoiding false alarms—in cosmic observations. People are bad at distinguishing intentional activity from naturally-occurring physical phenomena, terrible at recognising randomness, and prone to seeing meaningful patterns in noise. People intuitively perceive minds not as a single concept but as a composite of independent factors, termed agency (intentional planning and acting) and experience (subjective feelings). I will describe what this implies for our perception of both terrestrial and extraterrestrial minds, and how we can use speculative fiction to help us define the landscape of relevant observations.
  • Presenter: Dr. David Carmel is a Senior Lecturer in Psychology at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. He is a cognitive neuroscientist who studies mind perception and consciousness in the human brain.
  • When: 12–1 pm, Friday 7 May 2021
  • Where: MYLT 101

A front row seat – science advice in Aotearoa New Zealand’s COVID-19 response

  • Abstract: In this talk Juliet will give a personal account of the science-policy interface in an emergency setting. In particular, she will focus on how the role of PM’s Chief Science Advisor adapts to urgency, how the information flows to decision makers, and the critical role of other science advisors and science communicators.
  • Presenter: Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard FRSNZ, HonFRSC. Professor Dame Juliet Gerrard trained at Oxford University and moved to Aotearoa in 1993, where her career has included roles in Crown Research Institutes and universities. Juliet’s research background is broad and interdisciplinary, with particular interest in fundamental and applied protein science. She has held an Industry and Outreach Fellowship with Callaghan Innovation, founded a start-up company, chaired the Marsden Council, served on the Board of Directors of Plant and Food Research, and is currently on the Board of Te Papa. Since Juliet’s appointment in 2018 as the Prime Minister’s Chief Science Advisor, Kaitohutohu Mātanga Pūtaiao Matua ki te Pirimia, she has worked from a base of four founding principles: rigour, inclusivity, transparency, and accessibility. She has supported the science and science advisor community to provide advice to the PM, ministers, and the public on a wide range of topics, including advice on the Christchurch mosque shootings, the response to the Whakaari | White Island eruption, the Cannabis referendum and the Covid-19 pandemic. In 2019, the Office released a major report, Rethinking Plastics in Aotearoa New Zealand, which created a vision for a new relationship with plastic.
  • When: 12–1pm, Wednesday 28 April 2021
  • Where: HMLT103

Writing the Tasman

  • Abstract:
    • In late 2018, when Su was living in Wollongong, we decided to write letters. These letters were to form a project focused on the Tasman Sea—we would be writing about the Tasman, but our letters would also be materially crossing it, and so the words and the paper and whatever other materials would, we hoped, cross and trace its coasts and boundaries. We were first interested in the Tasman because it wasn’t quite a thing in itself. Though located unambiguously between the coasts of Australia and New Zealand, it was harder to locate other boundaries. Its waters wouldn’t stay put, nor its marine fauna; it was an area on a map but also a series of routes.
    • We sent letters, postcards and photos—and one audio recording on a USB stick—back and forth from late 2018 to mid 2020. The project traversed not only space but also a year and a half when the Tasman itself was altered by the crises of the globe. This was another way in which the sea reached beyond itself, all the coal and oil in the world conspiring to feed Australia’s worst ever bushfire season and then send the smoke across to us here to give everything a sepia tint. Almost immediately afterwards, the global pandemic grounded flights and reinforced the sea as border between Australia and New Zealand.
    • In this seminar we will present two of our ‘letters’, written for the ASLEC-ANZ ‘Strange Letters’ symposium in February 2021, and discuss the project.
  • Presenters:
    • Dr Susan Ballard (Associate Professor, School of English, Film, Theatre and Media Studies). Susan Ballard is Associate Professor of Art History at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, New Zealand. Her research spans the fields of art history, creative nonfiction, and the environmental humanities, with a particular focus on artists from Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand. She often works in collaboration. Her books include Alliances in the Anthropocene: Fire, Plants and People (with Christine Eriksen), 100 Atmospheres: Studies in Scale and Wonder (with the MECO network) and Art and Nature in the Anthropocene: Planetary Aesthetics (coming out in March 2021).
    • Dr Tim Corballis (Senior Lecturer, Centre for Science in Society). Tim Corballis is Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Science in Society at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington. His practice includes fiction, art and academic writing as well as art collaboration, and has turned recently toward the political aesthetics of science and technology. He is the author, most recently, of Our Future is in the Air (VUP, 2017) and, with Fiona Amundsen, the multi-channel video and text installation Human Hand at the Dowse Art Museum, Lower Hutt.
  • When: 12–1 pm, Friday 26 March 2021
  • Where: MYLT 101

Documentary Screening: "Intersexion"

  • Abstract: Is it a boy? Is it a girl? What if it’s neither? This award-winning documentary explores the world of the intersexed (formerly known as hermaphrodites)—those born with any one of 30 conditions that make their gender ambiguous. Presenter Mani Bruce Mitchell—New Zealand’s first ‘out’ intersex person—and director Grant Lahood had to travel overseas to find interviewees who would talk freely. They discuss living in a society with a binary view of gender which, at best, has made them all but invisible; and, at worst, has subjected many to damaging “corrective” surgery. Read more here.
  • This screening is made possible with support from ITANZ (Intersex Trust Aotearoa New Zealand). The screening will be followed by a discussion with Georgia Andrews and Dr Rogena Sterling.
    • Georgia Andrews (she/her) 
      Georgia grew up on a sheep and beef farm in rural Central Otago. Following the completion of a BTchg (Primary) at the University of Otago in 2013, Georgia worked extensively across the youth disability sector before commencing her Rainbow and Inclusion Adviser role at Te Herenga Waka—Victoria University of Wellington, Student Academic Services (Retention, Achievement and Equity). Outside of work, as an intersex and lesbian woman, Georgia is passionate about advocating for the rights of the Rainbow community and speaks internationally at human rights conferences.
    • Dr Rogena Sterling (she/her)
      Rogena is specialist in identity, intersex, equality and human rights. Currently researching in areas of Indigenous and Māori data sovereignty, Māori rights and interests in data, categorisation in data and biopolitics, and social policy at Te Kotahi Research Institute at the University of Waikato. Rogena has given talks on intersex at various events and in education courses.
  • When: 12–2 pm, Friday 5 March 2021
  • Where: MYLT101