What to expect at ‘Doing Interdisciplinarity: 6 years of the SSN’  

Doing interdisciplinarity: 6 years of the SSN is happening on Tuesday July 8th from 1pm-5pm at Deakin Downtown.

The Deakin Science and Society Network is celebrating 6 years of enabling impactful interdisciplinary research. On 8 July we are gathering five of our former grantholders, Professor Christina Twomey of the ARC and our team at Deakin Downtown. Inspired by the Ted-X format, our grantholders will sum up their research stories and our team will facilitate discussion. What can the audience expect?

The gratification of good storytelling, for a start. Kaja Antlej, for example, will pitch you from the Cape Otways to a spaceship hovering above earth. Then she’ll take you back to Geelong in a ute, allowing you to imagine the myriad possibilities of digital heritage to combat isolation and enrich our lives along the way. Neuroscientist Tim Silk knew something was amiss with how Tourette’s was studied. Going somewhat against the grain, he paid close attention to patient’s subjective experiences. He takes the audience along on a journey from blinking to the brain and back. We learn how much an invisible sensation may teach us, and help those with the ‘urge to tic’.

Inspiration: When film producer Ben Pederick realised the world was on fire he very nearly pitched his lifelong career out the window. Instead, he developed a scalable solution that builds climate resilience. This solution is so impactful that it has been taken up by over 33 councils and has just won a 400 000 Euro grant to help it grow. Bahareh Nakisa works on the increasing (and oftentimes worrying) intermingling of Artificial Intelligence in our lives. She asks: “how do we ensure AI respects human boundaries—socially, emotionally, and ethically?” and charts a novel approach to apprehend and address these concerns.

Insight: The research landscape is changing, and we know we need more researchers who work in teams to anticipate, understand and address society’s most pressing problems. Our first speaker, Professor Christina Twomey of the ARC will lay out this landscape for us. Thinkers who are orienting themselves to a world of interdisciplinary will glean insight and ideas from the unique combination of thinkers and the fantastic outcomes. Natalie Lander’s story of her impactful “Moving the Next Generation” project maps out key features of research that identified a critical gap and then delivered usable, practical solutions.

Audience engagement: Whilst this day spotlights a handful of successful projects, the audience – of stakeholders, citizens, and fellow researchers and interdisciplinarians – will be invited to engage with speakers and each other in two facilitated panel discussions. Nibbles will be served on arrival and in the break, when we imagine plenty of networking and the sparking of new ideas will take place.  

Register here.