Upcoming Student Events

Are you interested in who will be representing you at University? Students who have been nominated for a range of positions have presented their statements. Check out the who’s who at the Student Elections webpage. All students eligible to vote will receive an email from the Returning Officer with a link to the online ballots. Voting will take place between 6 -17 April – be sure to keep an eye on your student email account! The results of the election are expected to be available online the week starting Monday 20 April.

Contact:

Sophie Buck Returning Officer, University Committee Elections returningofficer@westernsydney.edu.au

Vic Miglionico Returning Officer, Student Representative Council V.Miglionico@westernsydney.edu.au

In the weeks spanning April 9-30, the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney will suspend the planned break in its seminar series to pursue a discussion of the social and cultural effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Clearly, the emergence of the coronavirus and the attempts to contain its spread have produced a time of change, marked by a before and an after as well as a sense that the contours of transformation have not yet been fully established.

The academic sphere is being flooded with attempts to situate the virus, to subordinate it to analytical grids and curves, to discern what COVID-19 is ‘trying to tell us’ and so on. In the spirit of thinking in common, the ICS discussion invites us to collectively (and stutteringly) probe the limits and possibilities of current knowledge practices in the humanities and social sciences, proceeding with respect for the intelligence of this novel lifeform, and at the same time recognising and addressing the vulnerability of those lives altered or threatened by the crossing of the virus into the human world.

Please join us on Zoom at 11.30am on April 9 to initiate the conversation. After opening statements from HDR candidate Tsvetelina Hristova and Emeritus Professor Bob Hodge, the floor will be open for general discussion. We will explore the possibility of using readings as a prompt and organising a seminar on April 30 to ask how the emergence and impacts of the coronavirus intersect other pressing crises that currently wrack our delicate and diverse worlds.

BIOGRAPHYS:

• Tsvetelina Hristova is a PhD candidate at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her main research interests focus on labour, migration, digital infrastructures and the ways in which digitalisation transforms the political as a field of power and resistance.
• Bob Hodge is an Emeritus Professor of ICS, after a long and diverse career of interdisciplinary research in aspects of cultural studies. His most recent book is Social Semiotics for a complex world. His current research field is best described as Applied Metatheory.