Paul West, chef and host of River Cottage Australia, shares his passion for locally grown and sustainable produce with founder and editor of HerCanberra Amanda Whitley.

Dr Gerard Vaughan AM, Director of the National Gallery of Australia, launches Hegel’s Owl: The Life of Bernard Smith, which reveals the unique character of an exceptional man. Beginning life as a ward of the state, Smith went on to become a pre-eminent figure of Australian art history.

About the Author:

Dr Sheridan Palmer is an art historian and curator and honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne. Her previous books include Dean Bowen: Argy-Bargy (Macmillan, 2009) and Centre of the Periphery: Three European Art Historians in Melbourne (Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2008).

In association with the Power Institute Foundation for Art and Visual Culture

Dr Anne Summers AO and Dr Béatrice Bijon discuss the suffrage movement in Australia and early twentieth century women's suffrage material held in the collection of the National Library of Australia.

Dr Anne Summers AO is a best-selling author, journalist and thought-leader with a long career in politics, the media, business and the non-government sector in Australia, Europe and the United States. She is author of eight books, including the classic Damned Whores and God’s Police, first published in 1975. A new edition was published on International Women’s Day 2016.

Dr Béatrice Bijon is an Adjunct Fellow with the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at Western Sydney University. Her edited publications include In-Between Two Worlds: Narratives by Female Explorers and Travellers 1850–1945 and The Production of Strangeness in Postcolonial Literatures. She was a Harold White Fellow at the National Library of Australia in 2011. A publication resulting from the fellowship, a documentary history of British and American women’s suffrage campaigns, will appear in France later in 2016.

The future is almost within reach, but the portents are challenging; rarely has the future seemed so difficult a prospect. One of the sternest challenges we face is to imagine the future before it arrives and then attempt to shape it. Will the buzzwords ‘innovation’ and ‘agility’ come to mean anything more than increased efficiency and wealth for the few?

Coinciding with the 500th anniversary of Thomas More's Utopia, Griffith Review founding editor Julianne Schultz launches Griffith Review 52: Imagining the Future. Professor Schultz is joined by co-editor Brendan Gleeson of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne, and distinguished writers and Griffith Review contributors Jane Gleeson-White and Libby Robin, in a conversation around themes arising from our urgent need to address the world ahead.

In association with the Griffith Review

Even historical documents can have quirky and complicated pasts. Archivist Michael Piggott investigates the provenance of the manuscripts collected by Sir John Ferguson, focusing on the back stories prior to their acquisition by the National Library.

Michael Piggott is a National Library of Australia Fellow.

Associate Professor Michelle Arrow

The 1970s were a time of profound social and political transformation when women’s and gay liberation movements sought to reshape the public meaning of private experience. Through three case studies (early campaigns for homosexual rights, the emergence of domestic violence as a key issue for women’s liberationists and the 1975 Royal Commission on Human Relationships), Michelle Arrow will seek to demonstrate the ways that ‘the personal is political’ reshaped Australian political culture in the 1970s.

Michelle Arrow is Associate Professor of History at Macquarie University. Her most recent book is Friday on Our Minds: Popular Culture in Australia since 1945.

Associate Professor Arrow’s Fellowship is supported by Library Patrons and Supporters.

Dream of the Red Chamber, also called The Story of the Stone, is one of China's greatest literary works. Professor John Minford discusses the background of this novel, written by Cao Xueqin during the High Qing of the 18th century.

Prof. Minford is a sinologist and literary translator, primarily known for his translations of Chinese classiscs such as 'The Story of the Stone', 'The Art of War' and 'I Ching'. He graduated from the University of Oxford with First Class Honours in Chinese Studies, and later studied for his PhD at the Australian National University. Since 2006, he has been Professor of Chinese at the School of History and Language in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.

Supported by the Australian Centre on China in the World

Entrepreneur, corporate advisor and opinion-leader Jason Yatsen-Li explores China’s different personalities, and how these help explain its seemingly contradictory actions in the South China Sea, climate change stance, stock market gyrations, a revolution in cross-border ecommerce and the massive One Belt One Road strategy.

Jason Yatsen-Li is one of Australia’s leading and most innovative corporate advisors. Jason is currently Chairman of Vantage Group Asia, a commercial group with offices in Sydney, Beijing and Shanghai and interests in mining & resources, technology and financial services businesses in Asia. Jason is currently a Director of the George Institute for Global Health, Beijing-based research and policy firm China Policy and a Governing Member of the Smith Family. Jason was also past Vice Chair of the Australia-China Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, as well as formerly a director of the Sydney Institute, the National Centre for Volunteering and the New South Wales Government’s Sydney Metropolitan Strategy Group.

Prior to founding his advisory firm—Yatsen Associates—Jason was Head of China Strategy and Head of Sustainability for Insurance Australia Group, Australasia's largest general insurance company. Before that, he was an M & A lawyer with Davis Polk & Wardwell in New York and Corrs Chambers Westgarth in Australia. Jason has also worked for the United Nations and is the former Vice Chairman of the Australia-China Chamber of Commerce in Beijing. Jason speaks fluent English, Mandarin, Cantonese and German. In 2009 he was appointed a Young Global Leader by the World Economic Forum in Davos and currently serves of the World Economic Forum’s Global Agenda Council for China.

National Bonsai and Penjing Curator Leigh Taafe teaches the tools of the trade and the principles of the bonsai and penjing practice.

Architectural historian Dr Zeny Edwards explores the vision of Chinese influence in Australia as seen through the eyes of architect, artist and author William Hardy Wilson.