From 2014, senior secondary Indigenous studies will be listed as an ANU nationally strategic subject. All secondary school students who successfully complete the course will receive five bonus ATAR points when they apply to study at ANU.

Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Academic) Professor Marnie Hughes-Warrington said the University was committed to raising the profile of Indigenous studies among future students.

“Not all states and territories have a senior secondary Indigenous studies subject. Students might wish to take this subject, but they have no opportunity to do so,” she said.

“This step recognises the value of learning about Indigenous experiences, culture and knowledge for university studies across all disciplines.

“I hope that, as a consequence, more states and territories will offer students the option of taking Indigenous studies. I hope, too, that it will encourage students to see this as an important part of their future, and the future of Australia.”

Director of the ANU Tjabal Higher Education Centre Anne Martin is a strong advocate of teaching Indigenous history in high schools and praised the scheme as a “great act of reconciliation”.

“Students are being encouraged to take Indigenous studies seriously; as an important area of study that is given huge credibility by the University’s support,” she said.

“I hope that this will help a new generation of students, who will eventually go on to be leaders in their fields, to have a better understanding of what the history of this country was built on.”

Indigenous ANU science student Renee Phillips, who did not have the option to take Indigenous studies in high school, hoped the scheme would encourage students to broaden their outlook.

“Many students don’t have the opportunity to engage directly with Indigenous culture but this is a great first step,” she said.

Ms Martin hoped students would gain more than just extra ATAR points from the subject.

“I think they’ll find that once they go in and start studying they’ll really embrace what they’re learning. It gives students the opportunity to ask questions about Australia’s history, the legacy of that history, where we’ve come from and where we’re going.”

Basri is considered a rising star in Indonesia’s world of finance. The 47-year-old economist, who obtained his Masters and PhD from The Australian National University (ANU), was the brains behind the nation’s recent strong investment growth.

With Basri as Investment Chief, Indonesia saw 313 trillion Rupiah (US$ 31.93 billion) in total investments in 2012, surpassing its annual target of 283 trillion Rupiah.

Basri has built a strong and diverse career across academia, business and politics. He co-founded CReco Research Institute, a Jakarta based economic consulting firm in 2010 and holds positions at the University of Indonesia and ANU. He is the author of a number of papers in international journals and actively writes for various leading newspapers and magazines in Indonesia.

In his new role, Basri faces investor concerns over slowing economic growth, and sizeable current and capital deficits.

Basri’s studies in development and economics at ANU have underpinned his career and contribution to the international community.

Dean of ANU College of Asia and the Pacific (CAP) Professor Andrew MacIntyre commended Basri’s commitment to ANU, which has continued well after his graduation.

“Along with being an outstanding student, Basri has been a wonderful partner with the Crawford School’s Indonesia Project and a frequent participant in its signature annual conference, the Indonesia Update. Basri is also a current adjunct fellow of our college,” Professor MacIntyre said.

Basri’s appointment to the cabinet by President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono brings a stronger Australian flavour to the cabinet with two fellow ANU alumni already serving.

“The heightened prominence of ANU alumni in the Indonesian Cabinet is a superb illustration of the role Australia in general, and ANU in particular, plays in offering excellent advanced training opportunities to bright young Indonesians. This fact does not go unnoticed by Indonesia’s political elite,” Professor MacIntyre said.

Natalegawa was appointed as Indonesia’s Foreign Minister in 2009 after serving as Indonesia’s permanent representative at the United Nations. Natalegawa earned a Bachelor of Science at the London School of Economics in 1984, a Master of Philosophy at Corpus Christi College, University of Cambridge in 1985 and a Doctorate of Philosophy at ANU in 1993.

Professor MacIntyre recently interviewed Dr Natalegawa about his time at ANU and his role in Indonesia’s government. View the video. http://asiapacific.anu.edu.au/alumni/alumni-stories/alumni-videos

Pangestu was appointed to the newly-created position of Minister for Tourism and Creative Economy in 2011 after serving as Trade Minister from 2004. As Trade Minister, she played a central role in deepening bilateral trade and investment between Australia and Indonesia. Pangestu was the first female Chinese Indonesian to hold a cabinet position in Indonesia.

Pangestu graduated from ANU with a Bachelor of Economics (Hons) in 1979 and a Master of Economics in 1981. In 2012, Pangestu received the Distinguished Alumni Award as part of the annual Australian Alumni Awards, which recognise alumni from Australian universities in Indonesia.

CEPAR Deputy Director Professor McDonald compared results from the 2006 and 2011 Censuses of Australia to examine the changes in employment rates for people aged 55 years and older. He looked at a number of characteristics including marital status, education level, housing status, location and English level, and will deliver his findings at a public lecture tomorrow, Friday May 24, in Canberra.

Professor McDonald said social changes, not policy intervention, have led to the shift in later-life employment.

“The labour force is moving away from more manual labour to non-manual labour. People are starting work later in life, so they are retiring later. People are also having children later, so often they hit 60 and they are still supporting their kids,” he said.

“In the past older Australian’s had been happy with owning their own house and getting the age pension, but I think the next generation wants more than that. This is brought about by the superannuation revolution and that there is a chance of getting more than the age pension.”

In the late 1990’s Professor McDonald forecast that Australia’s labour force participation rates at older ages would increase, and given the most recent increases, concludes that the Australian population is shifting in a direction that will lead to higher employment rates in the future.

Professor McDonald said it was interesting to discover universal rises across each of the characteristics he compared.

“It was surprising that there were strong increases in employment for quite disadvantaged people – people with disabilities and those with poor English skills”, he said.

“The strength of the labour market itself is also driving this. Unemployment is low and economic growth has been high, so people who want to stay working have usually been able to do so.”

Professor McDonald’s research shows a six percentage point rise in the employment rate of men aged 55-59 years and a seven per cent rise for men aged 60-64 years from 2006 to 2011. Men aged 65-69 and 70-74 years also increased by about five percentage points each.

Females experienced the highest spikes, with more than a 10 percentage point jump in the employment rate for women between the ages of 55 and 64.The rise also continued for women aged 65-69, increasing by six percentage points in the six year period.

The analysis also found that there were strong differences in employment at older ages across different occupations and industries.

“While governments are encouraging employment at older ages, it is surprising that public employment is one of the worst performers in relation to continuation of employment,” Professor McDonald said.

Professor McDonald’s lecture, Changes in employment at older ages in Australia: Trends and differentials, will be held from 2pm to 3.30pm in the Sir Roland Wilson Building, Theatre 2.02, McCoy Circuit, ANU.

Ours is an age of big data. Universities have been at the forefront of this development, showing us how to capture, analyse and make use of larger and more complex information sets at faster and faster speeds. Private-public hybrid cloud infrastructure, many core technologies, data imaging, auto software optimisation and document interpretation support systems are now a feature of research in the humanities and the sciences in a way that could not have been foreseen even a decade ago. The benefits of big data are seen in a range of outcomes, from the interpretation of damaged ancient texts and the assembly of adoption records, climate change modelling and algal bloom tracking, to the analysis of cancer imaging data and the design of energy efficient infrastructure.

Yet the benefits of big data are unevenly distributed in higher education. While there are now over a million students enrolled in Australian universities, big data work on education information is still more of a promise than reality. This is surprising given both the government and non-government funding that those students represent, and the importance of qualifications to those students and their families.

I hasten to add that this big data gap does not reflect a lack of interest or good intent on the part of education researchers. Rather, it stems from lack of access to large data sets, or from the absence of distributed research design. Many researchers work on relatively small data sets, and their results reflect differences in data provenance, tagging and handling. Moreover, while we know that student data can be extracted from a wide range of sources, ranging from library browsing records to use of swipe cards for purchases, we fall back time and again to the analysis of perceptual data captured in surveys taken after a program is finished and too soon after graduation.

This is partly why the rise of MOOCS has come as a positive revelation to the sector. In the same year that we have celebrated a data set of 100,000 responses to the new University Experience Survey, we know that similar sized or larger data sets can be achieved by tracking the activities of students in one MOOC alone. Importantly too, that data reflects the activities and perceptions of students from around the world. This makes it possible for us to check student understanding of key concepts and issues, to test whether learning sequences are presented in a clear and logical fashion, and to develop the evidence base needed to assess the efficacy of activities like one-hour lectures. At the Australian National University, it is also allowing us to test whether bilingual presentation of materials aids student success. MOOCS are helping us to realise big data higher education.

Not everyone will offer MOOCS, but they are all we need to trigger big data thinking across a wider range of higher education activities. A key priority for all of us at present, for example, is to help the federal government to set higher education reporting onto a bigger footing.

A recent report by PhillipsKPA estimates that universities spend between $800,000 and $900,000 and over 2000 working days to gather the 18 data sets requested by the Department of Industry, Innovation, Climate Change, Science, Research and Tertiary Education (DIICCSRTE). Anyone who works in a university knows exactly what this means. It seems incredible that in an age where mobile phones can scan the barcodes of publications that we are still manually entering research publication data, or that we have to report multiple times over on Indigenous or equity activities to the same department. This is small data thinking run rampant.

The solution suggested in the report is to develop a data collection and information repository for the sector. While this is a laudable idea, it will not deliver the relief from red tape sought. This is because information repositories reflect the architecture of their contexts. I would like to think of the DIICCSTRE information repository as enabling the flow and analysis of big data sets, but I fear that it will be nothing more than the digital instantiation of lots of little piles of paper. Australia will continue to have a small data higher education sector because it is accustomed to seeing reporting as filling in forms or surveys or transferring small data sets. The greatest need of the sector right now is not a repository, but an information and systems architecture roadmap and a reporting refresh. This will mean stopping ourselves from walking down the habitual paths of student survey design, manual research data input and institution-level licencing and hosting solutions. In short, big data calls for big thinking in research, education, and administration, and the time for its arrival across higher education is long overdue.

The Tuckwell Scholarship Program was established by ANU alumnus Graham Tuckwell and his wife Louise in February to support 25 undergraduate students each year for the length of an undergraduate degree. Their $50 million gift to the University was the largest ever donation to an Australian university by an Australian citizen.

Professor Hughes-Warrington said the University received an outstanding response to the call for Fellows.

“The committee congratulates all Colleges for the outstanding applications put forward, and looks forward to working with the Fellows,” she said.

Human rights law expert Professor Simon Rice, biochemist Associate Professor Susan Howitt and historian of Southeast Asia Dr Mary Kilcline Cody have been chosen to lead the inaugural cohort of undergraduate Scholars drawn from schools across Australia.

The Fellows will provide Scholars with advice and support, and play an active role in coordinating social events and seminars to bring the Tuckwell Scholar community together.

Professor Rice said he was drawn to the Tuckwell’s vision of encouraging students to fulfill their wider leadership and community service ambitions alongside their tertiary studies.

“What I like about university life is inspiring students to engage in the broader community,” he said.

“University offers so much more than a degree, and I really enjoy motivating students to pursue everything that’s possible. The Tuckwell Scholars will arrive here with a history of doing interesting and innovative things, but it’s a big step to carry that forward into tertiary studies and adult life. To an extent that’s our role: mentoring them to translate their potential into something that really makes a social contribution.”

Associate Professor Howitt said she was excited about providing one-on-one support to students and helping them identify opportunities in their chosen fields.

“This is an opportunity to develop real relationships with these students over the course of their degree,” she said.

“It’s always good to have a mentor you can go to for advice. A lot of students feel inhibited about actually going to talk to someone. Sometimes just having a chat with someone can open up so many possibilities.”

This announcement follows a large response to the call for Tuckwell Scholarship applications. More than 650 students from schools around Australia applied and 217 were invited to progress to stage two of the selection process. The recipients of the first Tuckwell Scholarships will be announced in July 2013.

Tuckwell Scholars will receive $20,000 per annum for the length of a single or double undergraduate degree, including honours and vertical degrees (degrees that combine undergraduate and graduate study, across a range of disciplines, completed in a reduced time-frame).

New research by Dr Sean Burges of the Australian National Centre of Latin American Studies on Brazil’s rise as a global power was this week published in the London-based Royal Institute of International Affairs’ journal, International Affairs.

Dr Burges’ paper explores Brazil’s foreign policies and what tactics the country used to secure diplomats on some of the world’s major decision-making tables, including the World Trade Organisation (WTO).

“Brazil’s arrival on the world stage can be credited to their many clever and capable diplomats, such as Ambassador Roberto Azevedo who was recently appointed Director General of the WTO,” he said.

Dr Burges said the Brazilian’s have carefully crafted themselves as powerful players in the world, and a relationship with Australia could greatly benefit both.

“Far from being a threat to Australia, Brazil actually stands as an ideal partner,” he said.

“Many of the issues preoccupying Australian policy makers – climate change, trade liberalisation, China – also keep decision makers in Brazil awake at night.

“Brazil currently has more gravitas than Australia as a proposer of transnational approaches to managing these issues, which is something Australia recognised in 2012 when it signed a strategic partnership agreement with Brazil.

“Watching Brazil is critical for Australian policy makers across a range of issue areas because it will help them isolate solutions that not only might work, but also could be saleable on the global stage with Brazilian help.

“Assumptions about how Brazil will react to invitations to participate in international policy discussions need to be rethought. Brazil comes to the table with impressive diplomatic capacity and well thought out policy proposals.”

Tomorrow in Canberra representatives from civil society organisations will meet with government to discuss Australia’s priorities for its 2013-2014 seat on the United Nations Security Council.

While the successful UN bid did not elicit the same excitement from the Australian public as, say, the 2000 Olympic bid, it is nonetheless a significant opportunity for Australia to influence the direction of the Security Council, and, more broadly, to promote global peace and security.  Civil society, and the general public, should therefore encourage the government to take full advantage of these opportunities.

One of the issues on the minds of everyone at tomorrow’s meeting will be what agendas Australia might pursue during its first of two one-month Presidency of the Security Council, due in September 2013.

With the Presidency, Australia assumes an important responsibility for handling the crisis management powers of the Security Council as determined by the UN Charter.  It also gives Australia the opportunity to promote broader issues of the Security Council’s work, like peacebuilding or protection of civilians.

Australia has already demonstrated a strong commitment to the ‘Women, Peace and Security’ (WPS) agenda.  This is an important, cross-cutting issue that is relevant to all areas of the Security Council’s peace and security work.  It is also one where Australia is very well positioned to make a real difference.  The agenda is a cluster of five United Nations Security Council resolutions that that have been passed between 2000 and 2010.

These resolutions highlight that women and girls experience conflict in ways that are different from men and boys by virtue of their gender, and that violations of women’s rights should be brought to justice. Second, they note that the experiences of women and girls, and females themselves, have been overlooked in processes designed to bring about peace.  Third, they draw upon evidence that peace is more likely to be sustainable when women are included alongside men in designing processes for conflict prevention, conflict resolution, peacebuilding and post-conflict reconstruction.

These points have been demonstrated in all conflict zones.  Since 1990, of the many peace agreements signed worldwide, only 16 per cent either had a woman at the negotiating table or mentioned women at all in the content of the agreement.  Furthermore, the UN has never appointed a woman to be the chief mediator of a peace process, for all the words written about women as peace-makers.

Yet research demonstrates that women face unique forms of economic insecurity during and after conflict.  For example, as a result of its recent conflicts, the Iraq Ministry of Planning estimates that there are about 900,000 widows (or female heads-of-household) in Iraq today; but less than 10 per cent of them receive government benefits.  In a patriarchal country whose reconstruction process has focused on getting men back to work, women are unlikely to find economic independence.  Many women consider their best option is to remarry, yet women outnumber men in Iraq, compounding this already problematic solution.

Similarly, the UN’s work has highlighted how women are targeted for specific kinds of gender-based violence as part of a conflict, as is the case in Syria, the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Afghanistan and the Sudan.

The UN’s ‘Stop Rape Now’ campaign has focused upon how the tactics of rape, forced pregnancy, sexual slavery and other forms of violence against women has become a routine strategy of war.  For instance, estimates suggest that between 20-50,000 women were raped as part of a broad military strategy during the 1990s conflict in the former Yugoslavia.  During the 1994 Rwandan genocide the UN Special Rapporteur estimated that the number of counts of sexual violence against women was at least 250,000, and possibly as many as 500,000.  This, and other forms of violence affects women’s mental and physical health, livelihoods, employment opportunities, education, and social security as well as having a potentially negative impact on their capacity to participate in peacebuilding processes.

UN member states have been called upon to ensure that there is a gender perspective included in its analysis and understanding of conflict; the UN has been pushed to include women in all aspects of its work.  At its most basic, this translates to a consideration of how an issue or approach affects men and women differently, and this is long overdue. The first criminal investigation team to Rwanda after the genocide failed to recognise that horrendous levels of sexual violence had occurred until a wave of babies were born, nine months later.

In order to implement this agenda both domestically and internationally, Australia has produced a National Action Plan on Women, Peace and Security, released in 2012.  The plan outlines Australia’s commitment to including women in peace negotiations, training our police and peacekeepers to understand gender issues, and increasing women’s representation in our own armed forces.

So what can Australia do in the Security Council to promote this agenda?  The short answer is plenty.  This September, Australia can promote strategies to hold existing gains on the issue and protect women’s full range of rights during military drawdowns and other transitional periods, such as we are now witnessing in Afghanistan, the Solomon Islands but also many other states.

Australia has the opportunity and ability to bring the lived experience of women to the attention of the primary security institution in the globe, and it should do so.  After all, whose security is it anyway?

Dr Susan Harris Rimmer is the Director of Studies at the Asia-Pacific College of Diplomacy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific. Dr Katrina Lee-Koo is a senior lecturer in international relations at the ANU College of Arts and Social Sciences.  They are both members of the Women, Peace and Security Academic Collective.

A version of this article was also published on The Conversation.

ANU is a place of people. Each year the campus is brought to life by thousands of eager minds who come together to gain a greater understanding of the world. But it is not only the people on campus that make ANU what it is – beyond lies a community of alumni who perpetuate the University’s mission and ideals across the world.

This year, for the first time, ANU formally recognised the integral part alumni play in the success of the University with the ANU Alumni Awards. These Awards celebrate the characteristics that define the ANU community – drive, creativity and a desire to make a lasting and positive impact on the world.

Vice-Chancellor Professor Ian Young says the Alumni Awards will be a highlight in the University’s calendar.

“The 2013 Alumni Awards mark the beginning of what will become a great tradition of this university as we celebrate the achievements of our community and of our alumni,” he says.

“This year’s winners and nominees are of the very highest calibre. They represent the very best of what makes ANU unique and we are incredibly proud of them.”

The Award’s four categories were Alumnus of the Year, Young Alumnus of the Year, International Alumnus of the Year and Student of the Year. The nominees were so impressive that two Alumnus of the Year recipients were chosen: international human rights lawyer Dr Anne Gallagher AO, and Secretary to the Treasury Dr Martin Parkinson PSM.

Gallagher, who graduated with a Masters of International Law in 1992, has built an impressive career as a lawyer, practitioner, teacher and scholar with an international reputation in human rights and criminal justice. She was Special Adviser to Mary Robinson, the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights from 1998 to 2002, and is now leading the Asia Regional Trafficking in Persons Project.

Gallagher says ANU inspired her to follow a career in international law and human rights.

“One of the most interesting things that ANU did for me was to confirm my desire for an international career…it really gave me not only the inspiration, but also the foundation for what came later.”

Since graduating from ANU with a Master of Economics 30 years ago, Parkinson’s career has been shaped by the idea that public policy can make a real difference to people’s lives.

“ANU reinforced the idea that public policy was a device that could actually improve the wellbeing of Australians,” he says.

Parkinson regularly gives back to ANU through his involvement in ANU Postgraduate Economics Forums, graduation ceremonies and the Sir Roland Wilson Foundation Board, and feels like his time at ANU didn’t really come to an end because of the relationships he still holds.

Joining Gallagher and Parkinson in the spotlight were joint Young Alumnus of the Year recipients Jennifer Robinson (BAsianStudies/LLB (Hons) ’06) and Sebastian Robertson (BComm/BEc ’09).

Robinson is best known for her work as a pro bono legal adviser to Julian Assange and WikiLeaks. However, she feels most proud of the work she began as part of her Law/Asian Studies degree – fighting for human rights in West Papua [read more on page 25].

Robertson is founder of the not-with mental health into a national campaign that has reached more than 5,000 young people. Robinson and Robertson’s desire to use their knowledge and talent to make real differences to people’s lives is also shared by the other Alumni Award winners. International Alumnus of the Year Dr Cheong Choong Kong, a celebrated businessman, was recognised for the key role he played in the establishment of the ANU Singapore Alumni Undergraduate Scholarship.

Student of the Year was awarded to two recipients: undergraduate student Katrina Marson, for her efforts in establishing and running ANU Volunteers, and postgraduate student Ray Lovett, for his work addressing alcohol and other drug use in the local Indigenous community and mentoring young people.

The calibre of this year’s nominees was so high that two additional awards were created: the Vice-Chancellor’s Special Commendation Award for Alumni Volunteer Leadership and Service to ANU, which was awarded to Adam Ford (BEc ’94) for his work as President of the ANU North America Alumni Association; and the Vice-Chancellor’s Special Commendation Award for Alumni Innovation and Entrepreneurship, presented to Danny Bishop (BE (Hons) ’99) and Chris Duffield (BEc ‘01, BInfTech ’05) for their work in revolutionising lighting control technology.

Professor Young says the lead up to the next awards has already begun.

“With such an exceptional community of alumni to celebrate, I am very excited to meet next year’s nominees.”

Nominations open on 15 August. Find out more.

Video: Watch interviews with the award winners.

From the ashes of Fukushima’s nuclear meltdown, Japanese landholders are conducting their own radiation experiments, testing crops and selling what is safe.

Far away from the hustle and bustle of Beijing, farmers and artists in rural China plan to create a ‘microstate’ based on their own vision of welfare.

And in North Korea, one of the most oppressive states in the modern world, housewives find ways to smuggle essential goods across the
border and cultivate secret private crops to sell, making essential life-saving supplies available to a desperate population.

This is the politics of survival – spontaneous grassroots movements that Professor Tessa Morris-Suzuki, a historian based in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific, calls “informal life politics”.

“Informal life politics are very local forms of action through which ordinary people work together to protect their wellbeing in the face of rapid environmental, economic and social change,” explains Morris-Suzuki.

“They take the form of action by individuals or local groups, who reject state policies – and sometimes breach the law – in order to protect their own health and livelihood from failures or threats coming from state policy or action.

“And they’re not just happening in places like China and North Korea, which have relatively authoritarian governments, but in Japan for example. After the earthquake and the nuclear accident, people in a lot of the local communities that were affected by the disaster have found that the state is not providing what they need. And they are starting to take things into their own hands.”

Morris-Suzuki is examining this emerging phenomenon, looking specifically at movements which have arisen as a result of environmental challenges and the removal of state support.

“A lot of these movements are in response to the environmental fallout of major development projects,” says Morris-Suzuki.

“Another example is situations where the state has been providing assistance to groups of people in the past, for example the elderly. But, with economic changes and liberalisation, the amount of support the state can provide is being reduced, so people have found it necessary to take that area of survival into their own hands. You certainly get that in China, where support for the elderly and people with chronic illnesses is greatly diminished.”

Morris-Suzuki says that the people instigating these changes often don’t intend to make bold, anarchistic statements.

“These movements, while a reaction to the state, are not necessarily criticisms of politics that we have thought of in the conventional way or in the European context,” she explains.

“For example, when the Cold War came to an end in Europe there were a whole range of dissident movements in Eastern Europe that led the change to the post-Cold War order.

“But I think that a lot of the grassroots movements that are coming out of East Asia are not necessarily like that. They may be quite un-political in some ways, they may not be interested in promoting widespread political debate, they’re much more hands-on and concerned with local, nitty-gritty material issues.”

And for Morris-Suzuki it is not just a matter of watching this space, but also a case of watch and learn. She believes that the West, and in
particular Australia, can learn a lot from these new political movements.

“What I am hoping we can do in this project is some re-thinking about what politics is. I think in many areas of academia in Australia and other countries, we’ve come to have a rather static idea of politics as being focused on the state, focused on parliamentary politics, parties and so on. But, if we look at these grassroots movements it makes us think about politics as something that is really part of everyday life; everybody – and I mean everybody– is engaged in politics. And we can re-think how people from the bottom of society, rather than from the top, try to create spaces of autonomy; try to create their own forms of politics in everyday life.

“And I guess that’s one of the reasons why I love looking at grassroots politics, because when you look at high politics it can often be
depressing; sometimes political leaders seem to do extraordinarily foolish things. But, when you look at grassroots movements it is surprising how much goodwill there is and how much eagerness to collaborate and eagerness to learn across the borders.”

The working class are reclaiming politics and returning it to its origins, when decisions affecting everyday life were made by the people, for the people.

Deep within the Menzies Library, just past the rare books collection, sits the University Archives, a treasure trove of history that laid out would span more than 18 kilometres.

Dig deep and you can find some real gems: photographs of a snowcovered campus, original plans for the University and even copies of ANU Reporter dating back to the 1960s.

So it was a mighty task that treasure hunter Dr Shanti Sumartojo from the ANU School of Sociology set for herself when she searched through thousands of archival items to help create a special exhibition, Thinking Spaces, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Menzies Library.

“Thinking Spaces was a combination of three things,” explains Sumartojo. “The first was a public art installation, the second was an exploration of the archival history of ANU, and the third was as a community engagement project.

“During research and production we found incredible rare books, wonderful portraits, and gorgeous moments in time, many of which were captured by ANU Reporter over the years.”

The highlight of the exhibition – which was held in March, coinciding with the Centenary of Canberra celebrations – was a series of largescale projections of footage featuring archival documentaries, photographs and films onto some of the University’s most iconic buildings. The videos provided a rare and intimate insight into past moments, memories and milestones of campus life.

In particular, Sumartojo wanted to show that a university’s contribution to intellectual life doesn’t always take place in traditional venues such as research laboratories, libraries and lecture halls, but also in social spaces.

“Thinking Spaces reflected on the different qualities – of place, of interaction and dialogue, of people and of intellectual ambition – that contribute to the making of a learning institution,” she says.

“We wanted to bring the archival material out into the fabric of the building, but at the same time, to engage the ANU community with the notion of thinking about intellectual endeavour in a spatial sense.”

The team also wanted to highlight the beauty of the campus at night, and the use of large scale projections, brought together by Sydney collaborators ESEM Projects, helped create a mysterious, almost ghostly quality.

“People told me that it was magical, or eerie,” says Sumartojo. “And that the format heightened the drama of the images.”

One of the installations included the striking Grand Designs which was projected onto the canvas of the Menzies Library.

“Because the installation was linked to the 50th birthday celebrations of the Menzies Library, the RG Menzies Building was really the cornerstone of the project, using material in the Archives and bringing it out.

“Grand Designs used footage of the official opening of the Menzies Library in 1963 and recordings of selected interviews with the University’s founding fathers, including Keith Hancock and Howard Florey, material that we sourced from the National Film and Sound Archive,” says Sumartojo.

“Across Australian universities student life on campus has also created spaces for different kinds of lifestyles and perspectives that flourish in unexpected ways.

“This freedom to explore and live differently as a student was also celebrated in Grand Designs with excerpts from a rare documentary, Good Afternoon, produced by renowned Australian film director Phillip Noyce.”

Good Afternoon captured scenes of ANU in 1971 when 10,000 young people descended onto campus for the Aquarius Arts Festival.

Digging around in the Archives, Sumartojo says some of the more interesting images were the ones that showed how quickly technology has changed over time.

“Some of our favourite images were the ones of people using technology such as computers, especially in the language labs,” she says.

“These amazing images of people sitting at flashing panels with giant headphones highlight the way technology has changed in terms of language learning – they look like they were driving space ships!”

University Librarian Roxanne Missingham says Thinking Spaces highlighted the importance of preserving mementos of university life for future generations.

“Traditionally, most of our archives have been recorded on paper. But last year we had a 40 per cent increase in the use of electronic resources, such as e-books, by students,” says Missingham.

“The question is, in a world of digital, where correspondence is conducted via email and photos can be deleted at the press of a button, how do we preserve the University’s history for the next 50 years?

“It’s our responsibility to record university life as it happens; we need to be gathering archival material in all sorts of formats, from newspaper cuttings to twitter accounts.”

While there is no doubt that the Menzies Library 100th anniversary display will look very different to the current collection, future viewers are sure to be just as captivated as those who attended Thinking Spaces.

The 50th anniversary exhibition is on display at the Menzies Library until 15 September.

View the archival footage and photos.