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2006 ANNUAL THEME

REMEMBERING LIVES: BIOGRAPHY, MEMORY, AND COMMEMORATION

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The Centre’s 2006 theme is REMEMBERING LIVES: BIOGRAPHY, MEMORY, AND COMMEMORATION.

REMEMBERING LIVES, the HRC’s theme for 2006, aims to encourage debate about the various ways in which human lives may be recalled and commemorated: through biography, portraiture, monuments, memorials, memoirs, and other forms of verbal and visual testimony (including those involving new technological media).

Applicants are advised that the 2006 is the final year in which the HRC will arrange its activities in relation to an Annual Theme. From 2007 the HRC will adopt a new structure of RESEARCH PLATFORMS, each designed to run for a period of three to five years, or without specified limit. Each Platform will represent an area of considerable academic appeal and potential for growth, likely to excite international interest and attract graduate students as well as Visiting Fellows. They are ‘platforms’ in as much as they can be built on over time in a variety of ways: through conferences, seminars, workshops, graduate programs, specialized research projects, and intensive courses. It is likely that about five Research Platforms will be maintained simultaneously within the Centre from 2007. Efforts will be made to ensure that these programs intersect and influence each other in a variety of ways.

Remembering Lives will be constitute one of the HRC initial Research Platforms, and will continue for a period of years within the Centre. What this means is that applicants who are attracted to this theme but unable to apply in 2006 will have another chance to participate in the theme in future years, when a rather smaller pool of Visiting Fellowships of rather longer duration is likely to be available.

The HRC has had a remarkable response to its initial call for proposals relating to this theme, and is currently drawing up a program of activitoes for 2006 and subsequent years. The following conferences have already been planned for 2006:

14-16 February 2006: Testimony and Witness. Conveners: Rosanne Kennedy and Simone Gigliotti.

14-16 March 2006: Edward Said: Debating the Legacy of a Public Intellectual (Symposium). Conveners: Dr Debjani Ganguly and Dr Ned Curthoys

25-26 May 2006: BREAKING THE NEWS: The Humanities Writing Project. Convener: Professor Ian Donaldson

12-14 July 2006: The centre will also be involved in the organization of a non-thematic conference on Shakespeare and Political Thought. Conveners: Conal Condren, David Armitage and Andrew Fitzmaurice.

26-28 July 2006: Transnational Lives/Biography Across Boundaries. Conveners: Desley Deacon, Penny Russell, Angela Woollacott.

12-14 September 2006: Biography and Technology. Convener: Paul Pickering.

Those interested in a foretaste of the 2006 theme are invited to consult the announcement elsewhere on this website concerning the HRC conference on Commemoration, Monuments and Public Memory, which was held in Canberra 2 to 4 August 2005.

List of 2006 HRC Conferences