Stepping Stones in the Indian Ocean: New Archaeological Evidence for Trade and Interaction in the Comoros Archipelago, East Africa
Lecture/seminar
New archaeological evidence from the Comoros Archipelago reveals its pivotal role as a maritime crossroads linking East Africa, Madagascar, and the wider Indian Ocean. In this public lecture, Associate Professor Alison Crowther will unveil recent discoveries that are rewriting our understanding of…
Care Circuits: Yolŋu, kidney disease and the work of policy translation
Lecture/seminar
An epidemic of end-stage kidney disease in remote Australian First Nations communities calls attention to the care practices that enable patients’ blood to flow through dialysis machines in order for it to continue to flow through their bodies. The care practices of patients, their families, health…
Reconstructing locomotion in the human lineage: integrating new morphological and biomechanical approaches
Seminar
At some point in our evolutionary history, we transitioned from being an ape-like arboreal species to becoming a committed terrestrial biped. However, the mode and timing of this change is not well understood, and it is becoming increasingly evident that fossil human ancestors were highly varied in…
“Fighting not sinking”: How emotions impact Pacific diplomacy, geopolitics and climate security
Lecture/seminar
Emotions impact Pacific diplomacy, causing ripples and rifts in regional geopolitics and climate security. Islands, and atolls in particular, are often constructed by Western science as locations of vulnerability. Sinking islands have become a fatalistic visage that looms over Pacific islands in…
Credit as care and financial frontier. An ethnography of predatory inclusion under Brazil’s ‘fintech revolution’
Lecture/seminar
In Brazil, the COVID-19 pandemic sparked a rise in poverty and accelerated the already ignited ‘fintech revolution,’ pushing a policy agenda of financial inclusion that has been transforming Brazilian society for more than a decade. In the aftermath of the pandemic, indebtedness was at a record…
Exploring Indigenous histories and cross-cultural collecting encounters in German art, archival and material culture collections: The Agnes S Schulz and Frobenius Expedition to Arnhem Land, Australia 1954-1995
Seminar
In June 1954, Agnes Susanne Schulz, a member of the Frobenius Institute in Frankfurt am Main, Germany, travelled to the Northern Territory, where, over a period of nearly two years, she recorded rock art, cultural knowledge and practices, and collected material culture of local Aboriginal peoples…
Small apes, small brains—big lessons for human evolution
Seminar
The brain and inner ear ducts are critical for an animal’s survival yet (almost) never fossilise. To learn how these neural and sensory structures have changed over human evolution, we can look to endocranial casts of the skull and bony labyrinth that surround them. In this talk, I’ll discuss…