Events
September 2019
Digital Media and Patient Activism workshop
Hosted at Monash Conference Centre, 5 September 2019
March 2018
Seminar – The importance of stakeholder involvement and media framing in global health policy debates about NCDs
Dr Shona Hilton
For the first time in history non-communicable diseases (NCDs) now pose a greater global health burden than communicable infectious diseases and the media play a crucial role in framing public and policy debates about the causes of, and solutions to, NCDs. While the literature suggests that media debates should be a key concern for those interested in understanding public health policy processes, as yet there has been only limited research in this area. In politically-contested health policy debates, stakeholders often seek to engage the media to communicate arguments to the public for or against specific policy initiatives, consistent with their underlying interests. This seminar presents the findings from a scoping review on media representations of industries that contribute to NCD risk and provides evidence from the UK health policy debates on sugar-sweetened beverage taxation and minimum unit pricing for alcohol to highlight how stakeholders’ engage with the media to shape public and political opinion. This complex inter-dependency between the strategies used by stakeholders to influence global health debates and framing of evidence in media policy debates is poorly understood yet is crucial to understand if we are to tackle how the global producers and marketers of unhealthy commodities employ the media to directly lobby the public and set the policy agenda.
8 March 2-4 pm N402, 20 Chancellors Walk, Clayton Campus
February 2018
Seminar – Personalised Medicine in the Digital Era
Barbara Prainsack, Professor for Critical Policy Analysis, University of Vienna
The idea of personalisation in medicine is not new. What has changed in recent years, however, are the types and volume of data that are used to measure and represent patients. Molecular and digital data have often replaced narrative, sensory and experiential evidence in this process. This development does not only raise new ethical and regulatory questions, but it challenges the very categories in which we have been used to pose them. For example, what does “evidence-based medicine” mean when every person is seen as a unique configuration of health and disease? What does patient autonomy mean in a context where choosing to opt out of (self-)surveillance may be formally possible but would result in the loss of access to certain services? And what is the meaning of patient empowerment in a situation where those who are the most informed and the most active are regularly giving the greatest amount of personal information into the hands of powerful corporations? With reference to my new book: “Personalized Medicine: Empowered Patients in the 21st Century? (NYU Press, 2017) I will address a number of challenges (and opportunities) that have not received sufficient attention in the debate on personalised medicine in the digital era.
When: Thu 22 Feb 2018 14:00 – 16:00 (2-4pm)
Where: Elizabeth Burchill Seminar Room Arts-E561 Seminar CL_20Chn (map)
November 2017
Seminar – Chemsex: a case for gay analysis
Associate Professor Kane Race presents work from his new book The Gay Science: intimate experiments with the problem of HIV. The paper problematises the conceptualisation of chemsex by investigating its emergence, parameters, presumptions and particular exclusions. Reading the recent documentary Chemsex (2015, dir. Fairman & Gogarty) and related discourses from the UK, Race suggests that chemsex discourse demonstrates that (i) normative morality needs it monsters, and (ii) it has recently been trying its best to make monsters out of sexually-active gay drug users.
Elizabeth Burchill Room E561, 20 Chancellors Walk, Clayton Campus
October 2017
Roundtable – Regulating Reproductive Frontiers
In this workshop, questions about the legitimacy of regulating reproduction are addressed through considering cutting edge technologies in the field of reproductive medicine, such as IVF, PGD and PGS, prenatal screening, mitochondrial replacement therapy, and the donation of reproductive tissues. This workshop takes an interdisciplinary approach to these issues, and involves scholars from across the fields of philosophy, bioethics, and law.
Confirmed speakers: Prof. Bonnie Steinbock (Albany); Dr Karinne Ludlow (Monash); Assoc. Prof Ainsley Newson (Sydney); Prof. Anita Stuhmcke (UTS); Dr Michelle Taylor-Sands (Melb); Dr Ryan Tonkens (Monash).
Room S8.01 & S8.02, Building S, Caulfield Campus, Monash University
Monday 30 October, 9:40am-4:30pm.
September 2017
Nexus Symposium – Pandemic narratives: Plague, condoms and immunopolitics
This session brings together three distinguished speakers (see attached flyer for abstracts and presenter bios):
- Professor John Henderson – Death in Florence: Narrating plague in early modern Tuscany
- Dr Patrick Spedding – Profilaxis and Poetry: Tracing the history and use of condoms in satiric poetry of the early eighteenth century
- Associate Professor Mark Davis – Immunopolitics in pandemic narratives
Elizabeth Burchill Room E561, 20 Chancellors Walk, Clayton Campus
Thursday 28 September 2017, 1-4pm
August 2017
Seminar – HIV biopolitical materialities after effective treatment and prevention
A recent news article (Australian Broadcasting Corporation, 10 July 2016) carried the headline, “AIDS epidemic no longer a public health issue in Australia, scientists say.” The ABC Online article made reference to the “miraculous” change in AIDS due to HIV antiretrovirals (ARVs) and depicted the pharmaceutical treatment as a “game changer allowing someone to live a long and healthy life.” Not explored is just who is this “someone,” a story-telling approach which glosses over questions of treatment access and the variability in individual responses to ARVs. Is the “someone” of a pharmaceutically-managed HIV pandemic idealised and normalised: a person with HIV infection and without AIDS, but otherwise undifferentiated? While our current situation might be the end of AIDS as a biomedical problem for many, the biopolitical challenges of HIV have taken on new form and force in the lives of people affected by the pandemic. In this seminar, scholars working on HIV in the United States, South Africa, and Australia share perspectives on HIV policy making and together address the question of what kinds of biopolitics and material possibilities come into being in end of AIDS discourse.
PRESENTERS: Bronwen Lichtenstein is professor of sociology in the Department of Criminology and Criminal Justice at The University of Alabama, USA. With the support of grant funding from the Alabama Department of Public Health and the Elton John AIDS Foundation, Dr Lichtenstein has formed a community-based partnership to provide HIV education to correctional officers, HIV services to probationers and parolees, and training for undergraduate students to facilitate testing in high impact areas. Professor Bronwen is a Distinguished Visiting Scholar in the Health and Biofutures Focus Program.
Dr Kiran Pienaar is a Research Fellow in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. Her research focusses on the biopolitics of health and medicine (with a particular interest in ontologies of disease); gender, sexuality and the body; and social studies of drug consumption.
Clayton Campus, Monash University, Menzies Building, Room N402
June 2017
International Residential – Citizens’ use of digital media to connect with healthcare: exploring the socio-ethical and regulatory implications
Interdisciplinary three-day workshop exploring the diverse socio-ethical and regulatory implications of citizens’ growing use of digital media. Convened by Professor Alan Petersen, and with participation from range of scholars including Professor Andrea Whittaker and Associate Professor Mark Davis.
Brocher Foundation, Hermance, Switzerland, 22–24 June 2017
Symposium – Valuing Donation: Re-evaluating tissue, blood and reproductive donations from live donors in Australia
Join us for a public talk focussing on the anthropological, ethical, service and regulatory aspects of live tissue donations. Speakers:
- Associate Professor David Ranson, Medical Director of the Donor Tissue Bank of Victoria
- Professor Jenni Millbank, Distinguished Professor of Law, UTS
- Louise Johnson, CEO, Victorian Assisted Reproduction Treatment Authority
- Iolanda Rodino, Chair of the Counselling Committee with the Reproductive Technology Council of Perth
- Dr Katherine Carroll, Research Fellow, ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences
- Susan Ireland, Manager Blood, Organ & Tissue Programs, SA Department for Health and Ageing
State Library of Victoria, Village Roadshow Theatrette, 328 Swanston Street, Melbourne.
Thursday 8 June, 12-2pm
May 2017
Symposium – Sexual and Reproductive Health
Lecture Theatre S12, 16 Rainforest Walk, Monash University, Clayton campus
Friday 5 May 2017, 9:30 am-12:50pm
April 2017
Book Launch – Stem Cell Tourism and the Political Economy of Hope
Join the authors Alan Petersen, Megan Munsie, Claire Tanner, Casimir McGregor and Jane Brophy, and their guests in celebrating the launch of Stem Cell Tourism and the Political Economy of Hope. The event will be launched by Professor Jane Kaye of the University of Melbourne.
Kathleen Syme Library and Community Centre, 251 Faraday Street, Carlton, 18 April, 5:30-7pm
Seminar – Can and should ageing be ‘treated’?: Making sense of the rise of the anti-ageing treatment market
Join Professor Alan Peterson for his upcoming National Ageing Research Institute Weekly NARI talk.
The paper will examine some of the ‘anti-ageing treatments’ currently advertised. It will critically scrutinize advertised claims regarding the potential to prevent, delay, reverse or mask the effects of ageing, drawing attention to the frequent absence of evidence for the efficacy, safety and quality of ‘treatments’. It will also discuss the context for the emergence of this market and the implications for how ageing is viewed.
NARI Seminar Room, Building 9, 34-54 Poplar Road, Parkville
Tuesday 11 April 2017, 12pm – 1pm
August 2016
Workshop – Unintended consequences: scholarly publishing and the lay reader
Workshop conducted as part of the Unintended Consequences Research Project, convened by Dr Rachel Nowak, The Brain Dialogue, Professor Alan Petersen, and Dr Elizabeth Paton.
Collins Street, Melbourne, Monash University, 28 August 2016
http://www.cibf.edu.au/unintended-consequences-research-project
Roundtable – Reproductive choice and the value of disability
Roundtable event hosted by Monash Faculty of Arts and Centre for Human Bioethics. Invited speakers included: Professor Rosemarie Garland-Thomson (Emory); Professor Robert Sparrow (Monash); Professor Julian Savulescu (Oxford and Monash); Associate Professor Catherine Mills (Monash); Professor Isabel Karpin (UTS); Professor Jackie Leach Scully (Newcastle, UK); Associate Professor Ainsley Newson (Sydney).
Faculty of Arts and Centre for Human Bioethics, Monash University, 17 August 2016.
May 2016
International Roundtable – Public trust in expert knowledge: ethics, narrative and engagement
An interdisciplinary roundtable event convened by Associate Professor Mark Davis (Monash University), Dr Maria Vaccarella (University of Bristol), and Dr Silvia Camporesi (King’s College London), and with the participation of Professor Alan Petersen, Dr Kate Seear, Dr Zareh Gazarian, Dr Narelle Warren, Dr Julian Millie, and Associate Professor Catherine Mills).
School of Social Sciences, Monash University, 24 May 2016