Sydney Ideas

A panel of the University of Sydney experts and practitioners discuss the possible benefits and risks of mindfulness, and how it has been used in education and workplace to produce resilient students and healthy employees.

Speakers:

Professor Gwynnyth Llewellyn, Chair, Healthy Sydney University

Professor Nick Glozier, Brain and Mind Centre

Associate Professor Rae Cooper, Sydney Business School

Professor Jane Burns, Faculty of Health Sciences

Ms Jane Cox, consultant and leadership coach

Dr Benjamin Veness, medical registrar, Sydney alumnus and Churchill Fellow

Co-hosted by Sydney Ideas and Healthy Sydney University, a university-wide initiative that brings staff and students together to promote the health and wellbeing of our University community.

More event information http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/can_mindfulness_save_the_world_forum.shtml

Is mindfulness all about the individual practice? What is the role of community when it come to the issues of well-being? How could institutions such as universities enhance emotional well-being of its employees and students? Dr Benjamin Veness, the University of Sydney alumnus and Churchill Fellow offers some solutions.

Is there a degree of suffering and degradation beyond which a man or a woman ceases to be a human being? A point beyond which our spirit dies and only pure physiology survives? And to what extent, if any, may literary culture be capable of preserving the integrity of our humanity?

These are some of the questions that this lecture proposes to consider with reference to two places where extreme suffering is inflicted – the fictional hell imagined by Dante in his Inferno, and the real hell experienced by Primo Levi at Auschwitz and described in If This Is A Man.

SPEAKER:

Professor Lino Pertile, Carl A. Pescosolido Professor of Romance Languages and Literatures, Harvard University

What is happening in the US election campaign and where does the support for this ‘populist’ political movement come from?

On the day after the second Presidential debate, a diverse panel of academics, students and election observers discussed changes in new media platforms, youth politics and activism, and the impact they are all having on the traditional election campaign processes.

Don Watson and fellow Quarterly Essayist James Brown discuss the strangest election campaign the US has ever seen.

Don Watson and fellow Quarterly Essayist James Brown discuss the strangest election campaign the US has ever seen.

Approaching death is an opportunity for individuals and those who care for them to reduce unnecessary suffering and achieve something more human and humane. Sadly, few dying people or their carers achieve these ends. What can we do differently ?

In this exclusive Sydney Ideas event, Dr Bruce (BJ) Miller, a TED speaker and hospice and palliative medicine physician, reveals how The Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco is redesigning palliative care to bring compassion and imagination to the care of the dying.

His presentation was followed by an expert panel discussion and opportunities to ask questions.

Approaching death is an opportunity for individuals and those who care for them to reduce unnecessary suffering and achieve something more human and humane. Sadly, few dying people or their carers achieve these ends. What can we do differently ?

In this exclusive Sydney Ideas event, Dr Bruce (BJ) Miller, a TED speaker and hospice and palliative medicine physician, reveals how The Zen Hospice Project in San Francisco is redesigning palliative care to bring compassion and imagination to the care of the dying.

His presentation was followed by an expert panel discussion and opportunities to ask questions.

The twentieth century saw the emergence of a number of authoritarian regimes – China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the USSR – that have both challenged the global order and persisted in the face of massive external pressure and catastrophic economic downturns.

Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis, Lucan Way (University of Toronto) argues that the threat and resilience of such regimes can be traced to their origins in violent revolutionary conflict. A history of violent revolutionary struggle encourages external aggression but also inoculates regimes against major causes of authoritarian breakdown such as military coups and mass protest.

More info: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/professor_lucan_way.shtml

The twentieth century saw the emergence of a number of authoritarian regimes – China, Cuba, Iran, North Korea, the USSR – that have both challenged the global order and persisted in the face of massive external pressure and catastrophic economic downturns.

Drawing on in-depth case studies and statistical analysis, Lucan Way (University of Toronto) argues that the threat and resilience of such regimes can be traced to their origins in violent revolutionary conflict. A history of violent revolutionary struggle encourages external aggression but also inoculates regimes against major causes of authoritarian breakdown such as military coups and mass protest.

More info: http://sydney.edu.au/sydney_ideas/lectures/2016/professor_lucan_way.shtml