April 2024
Welcome to my April blog.
11 April 2024
It’s been a busy time over the last month. I enjoyed talking with Clare Wright at our all-staff webinar in early March. The webinar also provided an opportunity to hear more about some of the fantastic work happening across the University, including our industry engagement program and the important work of our student wellbeing and safer community team.
I visited the Mildura campus last month and spent time with staff, students, and members of our Regional Advisory Board. I’ve now visited all of the University’s regional campuses and have been incredibly impressed by the positive impact we have in communities across Victoria, particularly by strengthening the local workforce in fields like nursing, education and allied health. I also saw our impact first-hand when I had the privilege of attending my first La Trobe graduation ceremony in Albury-Wodonga on 15 March. It was a proud moment for the whole community.
I recently travelled to India for five days of meetings with alumni, industry partners, and government officials in New Delhi, Hyderabad and Bengaluru. Some of La Trobe’s most important university partners are in India, and we are building strong connections with industry stakeholders and businesses that leverage our expertise in areas including sustainable food and agriculture, health and wellbeing, technology, and bio-innovation. There are many opportunities to deepen our collaborations in India and build on the excellent work underway with local partners, including the Asian Smart Cities Research Innovation Network led by Ani Desai and associated projects that Chris Pakes is leading with Network members, including the Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur.
More than 11,000 people from the Indian subcontinent have graduated from La Trobe. With India’s national education policy setting a target of 50 per cent of young people enrolled in higher education by 2035, there are huge opportunities to build on our long history of teaching Indian students. The sheer scale of growth is staggering when you consider that India has already overtaken China as the world’s most populous country and is projected to have a population of 1.6 billion by 2035.
During the trip, it was also my pleasure to present Sumaira Khan with the second Shah Rukh Khan La Trobe University PhD Scholarship. Sumaira’s PhD project aims to improve healthcare for South Asian migrant women in Australia with an elevated risk of Type 2 diabetes.
Finally, it was terrific to spend time with Amit Malhotra and the team in our New Delhi office, who are doing a wonderful job in promoting La Trobe across the region. Our next chapter in India is looking very promising.
Meanwhile, there has been a lot of work happening across our campuses in Australia. I’d like to mention a few recent achievements and activities.
La Trobe Private Hospital launch
It was great to join with Ged Kearney, the Federal Assistant Minister for Health and Ageing, at the opening of the new La Trobe Private Hospital on 5 March. Located within the University City of the Future health precinct on our Melbourne campus, the 34-bed hospital is operated by Healthscope and provides orthopaedics, general surgery, plastic surgery, and urology services for Melbourne’s rapidly growing northern suburbs. Importantly, the facility will provide clinical placements for our Nursing, Allied Health and Health Information Management students. La Trobe has a major role to play in helping to build the health workforce of the future by working with partners like Healthscope to innovate and create more placements.
Conversations online
Many of you will know The Conversation website that publishes articles by academic scholars. It’s an excellent way for researchers to communicate their work to a wider audience. La Trobe academics published 105 articles with The Conversation in 2023, which collectively had 4.2 million readers, 66 per cent of whom were outside Australia. Publishing with The Conversation also led to follow-up TV, radio, and print interviews for more than half of our authors. 17 per cent of writers were contacted by government policy makers, 14 per cent were approached by businesses about consulting work or collaboration, and 13 per cent were invited to speak at conferences. If you’re interested in broadening your impact as a researcher, I encourage you to consider writing for The Conversation. La Trobe's Media team can provide guidance around pitching to The Conversation.
Supporting Indigenous communities
I was delighted to see that there has been a 32 per cent increase in the number of Indigenous students commencing their studies at La Trobe in 2024, with almost half of these students coming through the RISE with La Trobe Indigenous pathway program or other Indigenous recruitment initiatives. There are also more First Nations students living on campus than any time in the University’s history, following the introduction of our Indigenous Accommodation Scholarship last year.
Hearty congratulations to Michael Donovan and the team in the Office of Indigenous Strategy and Education on their work to develop these programs that support increased participation by Indigenous students. It’s also important to remember that everyone at the University has a part to play in supporting our Indigenous Strategy and the University’s ambition to continue having a positive and meaningful impact on the lives of Indigenous peoples.
Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow
It’s fantastic that the University has supported 13 academics through the Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellowship, which we established in 2018 to support researchers whose careers have been impacted by significant caring responsibilities. I’m looking forward to learning more about the project being done by this year’s Fellow, Judith Bishop, who plans to work with a team of researchers to better understand the benefits and harms of AI technologies and improve their inclusivity for culturally and linguistically diverse populations. It’s a reminder that while technologies like generative AI have the potential to revolutionise the way we do many activities, it’s important that they are developed in a way that does not perpetuate or even amplify existing biases. Judith is well placed to consider these issues, given her academic background in Linguistics and significant industry experience as a linguist and Senior Director of AI Specialists at Australian IT company Appen.
Leadership on Asia policy
It’s been a big month for Bec Strating and the team in La Trobe Asia, who provide a terrific example of the way that academic research can influence policy and practice.
In early March, La Trobe Asia partnered with the Blue Security Program and the Australian Government to present the Maritime Cooperation Forum at the 2024 ASEAN-Australia Special Summit held in Melbourne. The Forum brought together officials and non-governmental experts to discuss ways of enhancing practical maritime cooperation in the Southeast Asian region. Bec was Convenor of the Forum and opened the keynote address from Australia’s Minister for Foreign Affairs Penny Wong and the Philippines Foreign Secretary Enrique Manalo.
I’ll be introducing an event that La Trobe Asia is presenting at 6pm tonight at our City campus to mark the latest edition of the La Trobe Asia Brief. Enhancing Global and Regional Maritime Order will explore how Asian states and allies can strengthen dialogue, interactions, and coordination to support regional and maritime order. Our Dean of Humanities and Social Sciences, Nick Bisley, will Chair a discussion with Bec; Alessio Patalano from the Department of War Studies at Kings College London; and Kyoko Hatakeyama from the University of Niigata Prefecture’s Graduate School of International Studies and Regional Development.
Finally, I’m delighted that the La Trobe University Press has published a book that Bec has written with Joanne Wallis, Professor of International Security at the University of Adelaide. Girt by Sea: Re-Imagining Australia's Security addresses six maritime domains central to Australia’s interests: the north seas (the Timor, Arafura, and Coral Seas and the Torres Strait), the Western Pacific, the South China Sea, the South Pacific, the Indian Ocean, and the Southern Ocean. The book is already having a discernible influence on policy discussions in Canberra. The Melbourne launch for the book is being held at Readings in Carlton on 15 May. You can book your place here.
Art on campus
Australian literary luminary Christos Tsiolkas will be on our Melbourne campus next Wednesday to discuss his latest novel The In-Between as part of the “Launches @ the Library” series presented by Clare Wright. Christos, who is an Adjunct Research Fellow in the Department of English and Creative Writing, will be in conversation with novelist and Associate Professor in English and Creative Writing, Catherine Padmore.
The Melbourne campus library is also home to Chunxiao Qu's installation An artist doesn't need a label until 15 May. This work was first installed in 2022 at View Street in Bendigo as part of the La Trobe Art Institute’s Biannual Façade Commission. Three short poems by Qu have been transformed and upscaled from intimate observations recorded on her iPhone Notes app into illuminated signs.
The La Trobe Art Institute is also presenting Pliable Planes, an exhibition of works by 12 Australian practitioners who reimagine practices in textiles and fibre art, in Bendigo until 12 May. To celebrate the artists in Pliable Planes, a “drop in and make session” is being held on Saturday 4 May. You can spend the afternoon in the View Street gallery working on your own textile-based creative project and be inspired by the diverse works in the exhibition.
In closing
I look forward to attending our graduation ceremonies at Mildura tomorrow and Bendigo next week. And I hope you find time in the day to enjoy Victoria’s beautiful autumnal colours.
Best wishes,
Theo