Wide Open Air Exchange

Dr Nora Yitong Qiu is an economic historian of East Asia, specialising in the Qing Empire and 20th century China. Nora is currently a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Oxford in the Faculty of History as part of a research group studying Global Correspondent Banking 1870–2000. At the time of this conversation, Nora was in China for archival research.

A conversation about preventative health and wellbeing practices with wellness leader Melissa Tenho.  Melissa is head of a corporate health hub that provides health and wellbeing services and programs for employees of a major financial institution, and the information discussed is relevant for all people regardless of vocation or employment status. It covers mindful eating and good sleep routines, the eight pillars of wellness and aiming for balance, thinking positively and living in gratitude.

Melissa is qualified as a Master of Nutrition and Dietetics and with a Bachelor of Science, Nutrition and Exercise Science.

Emeritus Professor Roxanne Doty from Arizona State University has transitioned from academic writing as a Politics and Global Studies specialist to creative writing as a published poet and novelist.

During her academic career, Professor Doty's work on anti-immigrantism and human rights and ethics informed a growing discontent with the kind of sanitised academic writing that was prominent in political science. This is the story of Roxanne Doty reclaiming a creative voice first within her academic writing and ultimately outside of academia as a published poet and novelist.

This extended podcast version includes a further discussion of autoethnography as a method in academic writing, and more on Professor Doty's approach to creative writing and her debut novel Out Stealing Water.

Emeritus Professor Roxanne Doty on how an academic can lose their distinctive voice in anonymised academic writing. This is an excerpt of a longer discussion about Roxanne Doty's turn from academic to creative writing and is intended as a preview of the next full episode of the Wide Open Air Exchange coming soon.

Professor of Environmental Politics, David Schlosberg is Director of the Sydney Environment Institute and joins the Wide Open Air Exchange this week for a discussion of global environmental governance on reflection of 50 years of World Environment Day.

It was at the United Nations 1972 Stockholm Conference on the Human Environment (pictured) that the idea for World Environment Day was proposed and the following year on 5th June 1973 that it commenced as an annual day of public outreach. Professor Schlosberg remarks on how little has changed or been accomplished with regards to the same conflicts and tensions that were evident then continuing to be present fifty years later.

This conversation also covers some of the developments with environmental movements and related discourses including reference to environmental justice which is a concept that Professor Schlosberg has been influential in defining and developing as a political and social theorist. We also hear about a more recent development in thinking about "multispecies justice" which Professor Schlosberg is engaged with in collaboration with a collective of researchers at the University of Sydney.

Playwright and dramatist Alana Valentine shares her approach to telling the stories of individuals and communities across her works including Parramatta Girls, Letters to Lindy and My Beautiful Man, and for the State Library of NSW exhibition Send for Nellie.

With 30 years of experience in the heritage sector, and as Managing Director of SHP, Sue Hodges exercises best practices in enabling the rights of Firsts Nations peoples to determine how their histories are told in the design and production of heritage interpretation. Sue is a doctoral researcher at UTS with a PhD project on the 'Economic and social value of heritage interpretation'.

In this extended podcast version, we also discuss Sue's international work and recognition as an international leader in heritage interpretation. Sue works with the International Council on Monuments and Sites (ICOMOS) as President of the Committee on Interpretation, which is a global role. Sue also shares further thoughts on History as a profession and her view on doing meaningful commercial work.

A wide-ranging conversation about gender, race, ethnicity and university queer spaces. Sara Chaturvedi is a third-year student in the Communications/BCII course at UTS majoring in Social and Political Science. Sara is a member of the UTS Ethnocultural Collective and the Queer Collective and is currently involved in student politics as the Queer Officer on campus.

Bluejuice frontman Jake Stone shares some of his vocational history with creative pursuits in music and comedy, following from a discussion of Jake's special interest in martial arts and how it relates to his experiences of school bullying.

The song excerpt opening this episode is 'Act Yr Age'. Other songs and videos discussed can be found at wideopenairexchange.com.

The comedy and music chat starts at 36:27, if you've already heard the radio broadcast about martial arts.

To coincide with International Workers’ Day, historian Professor Glenda Sluga kindly participated in a chat about internationalism with attention to how international workers associations and the International Labour Organization fits in the history of the early phase of twentieth century internationalism.