Plenary: Listening Interventions

Day 2, 30 November, 10am – 10.45am

Venue: Webster Theatre B, Robert Webster Building, School of the Arts and Media, USNW

Abstract:

The plenary panel on Listening Interventions explores key achievements and future directions for research on the ethics, practices and politics of listening, and marks 10 years since The Listening Project (2008 – 2010), funded by the Australian Research Council’s Cultural Research Network and co-convened by Tanja Dreher, Justine Lloyd, Penny O’Donnell and Cate Thill. Speakers will reflect on the turn to listening as making important contributions to political equality (Bassel, 2017) in the face of established hierarches of attention. It has generated new insights about how to foster democratic participation across a wide range of fields, including media and cultural studies, disability studies, political theory, sociology, science and technology studies – highlighting interests in listening and settler colonialism, critical theories of listening, technologies of listening and listening and the politics of difference. The panel will further point to future directions, or the challenges and opportunities for listening-oriented research in Australia and emerging international networks.

Speakers:

Tanja Dreher is ARC Future Fellow, UNSW Scientia Fellow and Associate Professor in Media at the University of New South Wales. Her research focuses on the politics of listening in the context of media and multiculturalism, Indigenous sovereignties, feminisms and anti-racism. Tanja’s current research project focuses on the politics of listening in response to community and activist media.

Justine Lloyd is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at Macquarie University, Sydney. She has published in the areas of feminist cultural history and media studies, and has a forthcoming book on intimate geographies of media (Bloomsbury Academic). She is also the editor with Jeannine Baker of a special issue of Media International Australia on the theme of ‘Gendered Labour and Media’; (November 2016). She is a joint editor of the interdisciplinary journal Space and Culture. She has been a visiting fellow at the Department of Sociology, University of Lancaster, UK, and the Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt, Germany.

Cate Thill is Dean and Professor of the School of Arts and Sciences at the University of Notre Dame Australia. Her research focuses on listening as a strategy for social justice and the rights of people with disability and Aboriginal peoples. Cate has recently published a series of chapters/articles on how claims for the intersectional rights of women and Aboriginal people with disability are heard across different policy fields.