IAC Culture Talks
Following the launch of IAC Art Talks, the Institute for Australian and Chinese Arts and Culture (IAC) at Western Sydney University is excited to launch another webinar lecture series focusing on research around various aspects of culture. The aim of IAC Culture Talks is to build up cultural knowledge and understanding of multiculturality through sharing recent studies of specific areas that will engage, inform and enlighten audiences so as to better relate to the world of diversity and understand humanities.
IAC Culture Talks is a cross-disciplinary series exploring a diverse range of topics from contemporary society in mainland China, the Chinese Cultural Renaissance Movement in Taiwan to cultural investigations across Asia. Specially invited speakers include leading researchers and experts in ethnographic research, international legal practice, social and cultural studies, feminist studies, ethnomusicological research, Chinese Australian studies and more.
The series will be held via Zoom Webinar to enable interstate, national and international access. Each lecture will be recorded with each recording adding to IAC resources on arts and culture for ongoing usage by the general public.
For the Inaugural Lecture, we are greatly honoured and privileged to have the renowned and widely published scholar of media and cultural studies, Professor Wanning Sun of the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). The lecture focused on Professor Sun’s latest publication Love Trouble: Inequality in China and Its Intimate Consequences. Four decades of economic reform have made China one of the most unequal countries but the impact of inequality is not just socioeconomic. Love Troubles is the first book to examine the emotional cost of this inequality to the intimate and emotional lives of people in China. Drawing on first-hand ethnographic research among rural migrant factory workers in the Pearl River Delta in southern China, Professor Sun provides a critical and insightful analysis of narratives about love, romance, and intimacy in contemporary China. This book not only reveals a cultural anthropologist approach to China’s social changes, but also presents a significant intellectual intervention into worldwide debates on inequality. In this lecture, Professor Sun took the audience to the site of her research and show them what she had learned from talking to and interacting with some of the rural migrant workers who produce our iPhones.
(20%)
(80%)
For many cultures, dating is never simply about two individuals meeting. It is shaped by and rooted in traditions, cultural values and expectations around love, relationship, gender, family, marriage, social status, and belonging. What may seem like a personal choice can therefore carry layers of cultural meaning. For the second session of the IAC Culture Talks 2026 series, we are delighted to welcome Associate Professor Asha Chand, who will speak about her research on Online Dating and the Rolling Canvas of Indian Weddings in Sydney.
IAC Culture Talks 2026 #1: AI, Expertise & The Future of Knowledge Work: In Dialogue with Kevin Yeoh (Catch up Online)[[link]]
Artificial intelligence is reshaping knowledge-based industries in ways that go far beyond the automation of routine tasks. This talk, Kevin Yeoh, Chief AI Strategist at Pinnacle Investment Management, will use his experience as a starting point for a broader discussion of AI’s disruptive potential: for individual employment, for the career pathways through which professional expertise has traditionally been formed and for the structure of knowledge-based industries and society more broadly.
Interpreting at the highest levels of government and diplomacy demands not only linguistic mastery but also an acute awareness of political, cultural, and ethical complexities. In this talk, Professor Qin draws upon his experience as an interpreter for Australian Prime Ministers, Governors-General, Ministers, Premiers, and leaders, as well as Chinese Presidents and Premiers, to explore the intricate world of high-level interpretation.
Exophony, writing in a second language for literary purposes, is a relatively new concept in literary scholarship, although the practice it describes is longstanding. With the growth in globalisation, migration and displacement, the phenomenon has become increasingly widespread. Among exophonic writers of diverse circumstances, Dr Isabelle Li has selected for critical analysis Yiyun Li. Through close reading Dr Li investigates various aspects of her creative practice, including her decisions to adopt another language, her relationships with Chinese, the potential for new identity formation, and the thematic choices she makes in her writing.
Every year since 2008, Australia has been host to over 100,000 Chinese international students annually, with the largest proportion studying at university level. Although a majority of Chinese university students in Australia are women, the gendered dimensions of China’s educational diaspora are little understood. Drawing on fieldwork and interviews, Professor Martin explores the identity transformations that occurred as a result of participants’ experiences of transnational educational mobility.
Humour is a universal human attribute, but is there something special or unique about humour in Chinese life or literature? In the present digital age, when the world is more divided and threats of conflicts abound, humour is needed more than ever. In this talk, Professor Jocelyn Chey
This talk began with the question of how cookbooks are a source to understand changing culinary fashions, historical commodity prices and household budgets, class aspirations around dining, and the changing social figure of the cook. Professor DuBois then brought these perspectives to China’s wealth of cookbooks before focusing his attention on technique, cuisine and authenticity by examining the evolution of particular dishes from the Song dynasty to the present day.
The country that we call “China” is built on the foundation of a vast empire close to the size of Europe that spans radically different climatic and environmental zones. Populations in these different zones developed distinctive languages, customs, cuisines, and ethnic identities. Archaeological discoveries in the late twentieth century have demonstrated that the development of China was not unidirectional as once thought but multiregional. There were significant civilisations to the south and west of the Chinese heartland that developed earlier than the first known dynastic states based near the Yellow River. The focus of this talk is on the culture of China’s southern civilisation.
People sometimes asks which Australian books they should read. The question is part of a more general curiosity about Australian literature. What is it? Where can it be found? Australian literature exists as a category in libraries, bookshops, school and university courses and research projects. Where to start? How to read the past? How to write the future? How can different voices and new stories change the way we imagine ourselves? This talk attempts some answers by way of a practitioner’s guide.
The 20th Chinese Communist Party (CCP) National Congress, held in October 2022, caught the world’s attention — not least because there was not a single woman among the Politburo’s 24 members, breaking a tradition of two decades. While the number of women in key political roles globally is steadily improving, female representation in the CCP has worsened over time. In the talk, Dr Minglu Chen talks about the contributing factors through an examination of the ‘Innocent Young Girls’ assumption about female political leaders in China.
In this talk, Dr Quah Ee Ling talks about her second book Transnational Divorce: Understanding Intimacies and Inequalities from Singapore (2020) which focuses on the transnational aspects of divorce experiences. Though set in Singapore, the book tells more of a global story of transnational divorce. Using the transnational divorce biography framework, the book exposes how global hierarchy of citizenship, capitalism, transnational patriarchy, gender dis(order), administrative violence, masculinity projects and heteronormativity shape the conditions under which transnational divorce stories are constructed, developed, constricted and silenced.
IAC Culture Talks: Inaugural Lecture by Professor Wanning Sun (Catch up Online)[[link]]
In this lecture, Professor Wanning Sun shares her experience of doing research as a cultural anthropologist studying social change in China. She takes the audience to the site of her research and shows them what she has learned from talking to and interacting with some of the rural migrant workers who produce our iPhones. Her talk offers rare glimpses into the ways social and economic inequality impacts on rural migrant workers' intimate lives, their pursuit of love, and their ideas about romance.