News and events

The School extends congratulations to the following Higher Degree Research 2019 Graduates and their Advisors. Well done to three Philosophy, four History, one Studies in Religion and one Classics and Ancient History Graduates.

On 21 November we celebrated philosophy’s diversity and potential for exploring interdisciplinarity with an all-day event to begin the Peace and Stability Dialogue Series. The event, a symposium and workshop, focused on establishing an ongoing series of discussions about how different disciplines approach the social and political ordering of human societies.

On 3 August 2019 UQ hosted an interdisciplinary workshop which considered power and legitimacy in the Roman and Byzantine worlds. Along with international keynote speakers, the workshop included participants from the University of New England, University of Sydney, and Macquarie University. In addition to the organizers, UQ was represented by Associate Professor Tom Stevenson, who addressed the use of monuments in Rome and Constantinople as expressions of power, MPhil Candidate Tyla Cascaes, who considered Augustus’s use of Julius Caesar’s legacy to bolster his legitimacy, and MPhil Candidate Jessica Zelli, who compared the use of Lucrecia with the Christian martyr Perpetua as figures of female authority.

On 9 October the Schonell Theatre and HPI hosted “A Sunshine State? Remembering Queensland’s 1980s: Public Symposium and Film Screening” to an engaged and enthusiastic audience. UQ former postgrad Dr Jackie Ryan (award-winning author and 2019 Queensland Writing Fellow) presented her film on Expo ’88, followed by a panel discussion where Ryan joined prize-winning Australian novelist and journalist Matthew Condon, and ANU’s Professor of History Frank Bongiorno. UQ’s own Geoff Ginn facilitated the evening with great success.

On Wednesday July 17, the Studies in Religion Discipline hosted over 400 year 11 secondary school students and their teachers for the annual World Religions Symposium. The day was a great success, with the students hopefully learning new things (as certainly the hosts did) and having an experience of the University's campus.

Researchers in the School have recently achieved significant grant success with the award of an ARC Linkage Grant to develop a Queensland Atlas of Religion in partnership with the State Library. The new project will investigate, document and interpret the diversity of religion and religious practices in Queensland's past and present.

Listen to the podcast from our 2019 Ed Conrad Memorial Lecture, delivered by Professor James Crossley.