Panels, Academic Conferences and Other Events

Panel at Macquarie University 3 April 2019: ‘Can the Subaltern Speak?’ Navigating anti-racism, academia and advocacy as a person of colour today

Prompted by interviews for high school and university students on the subject of politics and activism in today’s social and political environment, I organised a panel discussion at Macquarie University on 3 April 2019. The event was chaired by Dr Alana Lentin, President of the Australian Critical Race and Whiteness Studies Association (ACRWSA).

A recording of the event is available here: https://echo360.org.au/media/7b61a4c4-f056-4518-a313-6fc66af0755b/public

Event blurb:

Anti-racism is often dismissed as political correctness or identity politics. To speak out and act against racism is to attract accusations of ‘playing the race card’ or ‘shutting down free speech’. At a time when collective mobilization that makes demands on the state is delegitimized in favour of individualised activism that celebrates racial illiteracy, academics and activists are challenged to build new modes of participation, activism and political communities. What are the stakes, the threats, the challenges, the lessons, the hopes and goals of anti-racism work today? In this panel discussion, academics and activists reflect on their experiences of ‘speaking out’ against racism and injustice.

Panelists:

Amy Thunig is a proud Gamilaroi woman, raised on Darug and Awabakal lands. An associate lecturer in the Department of Educational Studies at Macquarie University, Amy holds a Masters Degree in Teaching, and is currently undertaking her PhD titled ‘sovereign women: why academia?’

Dr Waqas Tufail is a Senior Lecturer in Criminology at Leeds Beckett University, UK. His research interests primarily concern the policing, racialization and criminalization of marginalized and minority communities and the lived experiences of Muslim minorities. Waqas is a Board Member of the International Sociological Association (ISA) Research Committee on Racism, Nationalism, Indigeneity and Ethnicity, serves on the Editorial Board of Sociology of Race and Ethnicity and is co-editor of Media, Crime, Racism (Palgrave MacMillan, 2018).

Atem Atem came to Australia from Sudan in 2002 as a refugee. He completed a degree in Medical Sciences (Medical Laboratory) and worked as a Pathology laboratory technician for three years before going back to university and studying Social Policy. Atem has been working with refugee and migrant communities in various roles supporting them with settlement and adjustment to life in Australia. Currently, Atem is writing a PhD thesis on the settlement of Sudanese in the Western suburbs of Sydney.

Dr Paula Abood is a community cultural development practitioner, writer and educator. She has worked with diverse communities in capacity building projects across Western Sydney for 30 years and has written for performance, radio, publications and film. In 2007, Paula completed a doctorate on race, gender and representation of Arabs in Australia. Paula has just been awarded an Australia Council’s Fellowship for Community Arts and Cultural Development.

Academic Conferences

• ‘Islamic Schooling Conference and Forum AAISC 2019 – A Focus on Social Justice’, Melbourne University, July 2019.

• The 10th Annual International Islamophobia Conference: Virtual Internment: Islamophobia, Social Technologies of Surveillance and Unequal Citizenship 15 April 2019 - 21 April 2019, Paper: “Islamophobia and Racial Australianization.”

• Macquarie University Research Theme Workshop ‘State Violence’, 3 December 2018. Paper: ‘I’m giving you the opportunity to say that you aren’t’: the war on terror and ‘radical’ politics.

• TASA’s Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism Thematic Group, ‘Migration, Social Inclusion and the Multicultural City’ symposium, 14 September 2018, Western Sydney University. Paper: Constructing the figure of the ‘at-risk’ young Muslim of Western Sydney

• TASA, Deakin University, 21 November 2018. Paper: ‘Islamophobia and Australian Muslim youth’s navigation of (un)safe spaces for political expression’

• Australian Academy of the Humanities’ Symposium Clash of Civilisations? Where are we now? 15-16 November 2018, State Library of NSW, Sydney. Panel: Talking up Strife: The rhetoric of Clash of Civilisations.

• Metropolis 2018 Conference, 2 November 2018. Panel: Australia a multicultural paradise –myths and realities.

• Attendance at XIX ISA World Congress of Sociology, Toronto, Canada, July 15-21, 2018.

Writers Festivals

• Sydney Writers Festival, 4 May 2019, ‘Finding the Lost Arabs

Over the past two decades, media representations of Arab–Australians have been dominated by news headlines about gangs, drugs, sexual assaults and terrorist conspiracies. In this urgent public dialogue, four of Australia’s most exciting Arab–Australian authors, Michael Mohammed Ahmad, Omar Sakr, Sarah Ayoub and Randa Abdel-Fattah, discuss the role that literature plays in reshaping our understanding of contemporary Middle Eastern identity. Presented with Sweatshop: Western Sydney Literacy Movement. [https://www.swf.org.au/festivals/festival-2019/finding-the-lost-arabs/]

• Melbourne Writers Festival, August 2019
• Bendigo Writers Festival September 2019
• Brisbane Writers Festival September 2019