Pictured at the launch of ADI's strategic plan, Barrister and refugee advocate Matthew Albert, Deakin University Vice-Chancellor Professor Jane den Hollander, MLC from the Western suburbs and Greens Senator Colleen Hartland, Director of the Institute, Professor Fethi Mansouri, and Deakin University Deputy Vice-Chancellor Research, Professor Lee Astheimer
Deakin University’s new Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation today launched its new five year Strategic Plan in Melbourne.
The plan outlines the Institute’s priorities for the next five years 2015 to 2020.
MLC from the Western suburbs and Greens Senator Colleen Hartland and Victorian Barrister and refugee advocate Matthew Albert were special speakers at the launch.
Ms Hartland, who grew up in Morwell, reminded the audience that unless they were of Indigenous background they came to this country as convicts, refugees, asylum seekers or migrants, something the current government would do well to remember.
“When I read the strategic plan I realised it had been written in my language, it was so easy to understand and I only had to read it once and I knew exactly what was going to be achieved,” she said.
“More importantly it speaks from the heart, it talks about the fact that we are living in troubled times, we are living in difficult times, we watch the television and we see the Syrian refugees, we see what the government is doing to boat people in this country and we know how important this work is.”
Ms Hartland said multiculturalism worked because people just got on with their lives.
“But what worries me now with the rise of the racist national groups in this country is what is going to happen to communities like mine," she said. “We’ve seen it with the protests about the mosque in Bendigo.
“That is not the Australia I want to live in.’’
Ms Hartland said she was very keen to work with the Institute because it would be able to help her come up with good solutions to lead the fight against racist organisations in a non violent and practical way.
Matthew Albert said he was struck by the profound thinking that would be done by the Institute and the way in which the world seemed to be dictating the need for the thought leadership the Institute would provide.
He told the audience a story about an incident during his work with the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees in Kenya to emphasise the need for the work the Institute would do. (listen to the story here)
“Telling people we had no food left was one of the hardest things I had to do,” he said.
“But I realised on the return journey I had more capacity to have an impact on the situation there on the other side of the world as a citizen of a rich country.
“Everything is interconnected in our world.
“Citizenship and globalisation are linked and it was never more apparent to me than at the moment, which is the reason this institute is timely and important.”
The Vice-Chancellor of Deakin University, Professor Jane den Hollander said the Institute, created from the merger of the Alfred Deakin Research Institute and the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation, would form an important, timely, significant research pillar for Deakin, Victoria and people in Australia.
The work of the Institute will advance global understanding of intercultural relations, migration, racism, religion, democracy, politics and governance and shape important agendas and inform the debate,” she said.
“If you think of just those words and what we have been watching on our televisions and on our radios and on the various blogs and sites we all read these days I think this is going to be an interesting place.
“None of those words are neutral, they all carry great potency and power and subjective and objective views with them.
“One of the great challenges we are going to have over the next while will be to be able to be firm and stand and say some of the things that I, not only as Vice-Chancellor, but as an individual, believe need to be said in Australia.”
Professor den Hollander said Australia had not had a great run.
“We’ve certainly managed to make ourselves a great pillar of concern and interest in the world and its time we started to think really clearly about what it is we mean and what we in our Institute want to say about the world in which we live.”
ADI Director and the UNESCO Chair in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice, Professor Fethi Mansouri, said the Institute’s research was interconnected and fostered researchers with a range of disciplinary expertise.
“Identity and Diversity is the area which matters to many people and touches a lot of us in terms of how we deal with increased manifestations of diversity.
“The human mobility that is taking place now is increasingly engendering these new forms of diversity and how we deal with diversity and how we understand it and how it penetrates the way we operate on a daily basis is extremely important to us,” he said.
Professor Mansouri said at a global perspective the human rights and development stream was of particular note.
“What we have seen is that the Millennium Development Goals have perhaps ignored the cultural issues that are extremely important in pursuing developmental goals across the world but particularly in Africa and parts of Asia,” he said.
Professor Mansouri said the Institute wanted to bring a balance to how development was dealt with making it sustainable but also culturally sensitive and inclusive.
Professor Mansouri said the Institute, along with the federally funded Australian Intervention Support Hub (AISH), co-headed by the Institute’s Professor Greg Barton, brought a social science perspective to the debate on security and governance.
“We are interested in what the social sciences can bring to the table in terms of understanding the processes of ideological radicalisation, the processes behind the rise of extremism not just in Muslim communities but across the spectrum, but also what societies can do by using nuanced understanding.”
Professor Mansouri said the Institute hosted the UNESCO chair in Cultural Diversity and Social Justice and hosted an enviable 20 Australian Research Council funded research projects on topics including heritage destruction, countering racism and indigeneity in Australia.
“Our orientation has been and always will be global,” he said.
“We are particularly aware that the research focus on many of these issues has come from the global north.
“The global south is being studied, being examined, being looked at but doesn’t contribute to the generation of the knowledge.
“We are hoping we can work with our research colleagues in parts of Africa and South East Asia and the Pacific and work collaboratively on producing the knowledge that relates back to them rather than us projecting the images of what we think they are doing in particular areas.
“That way we can achieve research outcomes but also empower.”
Contact: Sandra Kingston
Phone: 9244 5274