Events

Bioethics and Healthcare Ethics 2023 Annual Lecture

We are delighted to announce the Bioethics and Healthcare Ethics annual lecture for 2023 will be presented by Professor Piret Paal on the topic “Workplace spirituality and why it matters”. Professor Paal is the Director of the Palliative Care Institute at the Paracelsus Medical University, Austria.

The event will be hosted online by the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia, on Thursday 30^th March 2023 at 7pm ASET.

To RSVP for the event, please email Dr Kate Jones.

2022 Bioethics & Healthcare Ethics (BHE) Annual Lecture

Shaken to the Core: Addressing Spiritual Struggles in the Context of Healthcare    ​.

19 May 2022 (via Zoom)

Does my life have any deeper meaning? How can I find my moral compass? What do I do when my faith is shaken to the core?

This presentation will introduce the audience to the growing body of research and practice on spiritual struggles (i.e. tensions and conflicts about sacred matters within oneself, with other people, and with the supernatural). We will see that spiritual struggles are not at all unusual, take a variety of forms, and hold important implications for health and well-being. More practically, this presentation will consider how spiritual struggles can be assessed and addressed in healthcare. We will underscore the importance of multi- disciplinary cooperation and collaboration in working with spiritual struggles.

A recording of the lecture is now available.

IES Hosts Associate Professor Michael Burdett in February 2024

The Institute for Ethics & Society is delighted to host the 2023 Notre Dame School of Virtue & Character (NDSVC), the fourth in this annual series.

Religion, Culture and Society Annual Lecture 2024

The Religion of Technology: Transhumanism and the Myth of Progress

Date: Monday 12^th February

Time: 4 – 5:30 pm

Location: Moorgate Boardroom, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale and via Zoom

Registration: rosemary.hancock@nd.edu.au

In this presentation I chart a succinct intellectual history of the myth of progress and how it has been embedded, and is still embedded, in the claims of science and technology. Furthermore, I aim to show how transhumanism depends upon and extends this rampant and robust myth and that its enthusiasts subsequently derive religious value from it. First, I begin with the claims of this myth of progress and try to arrive at some characterizing features of it. Next, I turn to the origins of this myth of progress and how it became entwined with the claims of technoscience leading to its prominence in the 19th century. I then turn to the first part of the 20th century when this myth is seriously questioned, and the entire edifice of the Modern project begins to crumble at its base. From here I focus on more recent technoscientific utopias that culminate in transhumanism and show a propensity in taking up this myth once again. Finally, I give several comments on the religious dimensions of transhumanism and assert that the myth of progress is one of its core doctrines.

Sci-Fi Book Club: Relating to Artificial Intelligence in Klara and the Sun

Date: Tuesday 13^th February 2024

Time: 10:30 am – 12 pm (AEST)

Location: Moorgate Board Room, 10 Grafton Street, Chippendale and via Zoom

How does science fiction help us reflect on contemporary, real-world concerns? Join A/Prof. Burdett and Dr Lorrimar for a conversation about Kazuo Ishiguro's Klara and the Sun (2021), a thoughtful exploration of artificial intelligence and human relationships. We'll discuss some of the ways in which the novel prompts new or challenging perspectives on human being, personhood and the technological future, and how fiction can help our philosophical and theological engagement with such topics.

You'll get the most out of the session if you read the book in advance (or don't mind spoilers) but the discussion will be wide-ranging.

Writing Successful Interdisciplinary Grants Workshop

Date: 12^th February 2024

Time: 12 pm – 1:30 pm

Location: Moorgate Boardroom, 10 Grafton St, Chippendale and via Zoom

RSVP: rosemary.hancock@nd.edu.au

Join Drs Emily and Michael Burdett for an interactive discussion about writing successful interdisciplinary grant applications. Emily has been awarded over £1.2 million in funding from the John Templeton Foundation and Toshiba International Foundation for her research as a developmental psychologist. Michael has been awarded over £2.5 million from the John Templeton Foundation for his research in theology and religious studies. Both Drs Burdett also have significant experience reviewing grant applications and consulting for the various Templeton Foundations.

Masterclass - Research with Religious and Spiritual Communities: Insiders, Outsiders and Other Useful Fictions

Friday 16^th June, 9 am - 1 pm

Moorgate Boardroom, 10 Grafton Street, Chippendale

Join Paul Bramadat for a discussion of what is sometimes called the “insider-outsider” problem in the study of religion. The discussion will begin with his reflections on what he has learned about the problems that are assumed to be associated with

the researcher’s “positionality”. His comments will emerge from his current work on postural yoga (in which he is both insider and outsider) as well as from roughly three decades of work in ethnographic, sociological, and often “policy-relevant” research

(in which he was, by comparison, a conventional outsider). Are there reasons to protect – or abandon – this binary? What other approaches might be more helpful for the research topics contemporary scholars address? Masterclass participants will have an opportunity to share their own experiences of these dynamics in their own work, and to get feedback from Bramadat as well as others in the group.

Public Lecture: What We Talk About When We Talk About Yoga

Thursday 15^th June, 6-8 pm

Hybrid Event: Moorgate Boardroom, 10 Grafton Street, Chippendale and via Zoom.

We are pleased to host Professor Paul Bramadat from Victoria University, Canada, to deliver the Religion, Culture and Society Annual Lecture in 2023.

Without a doubt, yoga has become an integral part of western societies. It shows up in fitness clubs, social media, public schools, religious communities, hospitals, festivals, wellness retreats, university classes, and major scandals. While debates rage about which form is most “authentic,” there is a more interesting question: what its popularity tells us about tectonic shifts in the religious, spiritual, and secular landscape of our societies. Using findings from a recent major research project on yoga in North America, Professor Bramadat will reflect on the ways yoga teachers and students respond to political questions, frame yoga as a response to trauma, and demonstrate a new way to think about the body, Asia, and sexuality.

(Non) Religion, Spirituality, and Ecological Politics Workshop

31^st October 2022, 8:45 am – 4:30 pm

Moorgate Room, The University of Notre Dame Australia, 10 Grafton Street, Chippendale
Or Zoom Webinar

The workshop explores the interaction of contemporary religion, spirituality and non-religion with environmental politics and planetary wellbeing. Over seven presentations, we reflect upon the relationship of diverse religious, spiritual, and non-religious worldviews to politics of action and non-action addressing ecological crisis. In the workshop, we work with the paradigm of ‘worldview complexity’–exploring the interconnections between diverse worldviews and planetary wellbeing. The papers examine both engagement in political action, and in the political significance of stillness, slowness and ‘non-action’, often grounded in spiritual practice, in resisting the pace and pressures of neoliberalism.

Keynote Presentation: Professor Paul Bramadat (University of Victoria)

“Haunted Wilds: Religion and Spirituality in the Pacific Northwest”

Professor Paul Bramadat is Director of the Religion, Culture and Society Program at Victoria University. His paper reflects on the findings of a study into religion, irreligion, and spirituality in Cascadia – a bioregion encompassing parts of both Southwest Canada and the Northwest US – funded by Canada’s Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council.

The event is hosted by the Institute for Ethics and Society at the University of Notre Dame Australia (Sydney) in collaboration with Deakin University’s Religion, Society and Culture Network. Please contact Dr Rosemary Hancock (rosemary.hancock@nd.edu.au) to register for the event and for program details.

Researching the Nonreligious

Wednesday 6 July, 10.00am – 12.30pm
Moorgate Room (10 Grafton Street, Chippendale), The University of Notre Dame Australia, Broadway campus or join us online via Zoom

Professor Stephen Bullivant: Professorial Research Fellow in Theology and Sociology, The University of Notre Dame Australia
Professor Andrew Singleton (Respondent): Professor of Sociology and Social Research, Deakin University

None is now the religious 'default setting' in several Western countries, especially among younger generations, including Britain and (increasingly) Australia. In some more strongly religious countries - especially the USA -nonreligious populations have been rapidly growing in recent decades. Despite this, it is only really in the past fifteen years that there has been serious, sustained social-scientific study of 'nonreligion' (encompassing atheism, agnosticism, religious indifference, and other forms of secularity). In this informal talk, Professor Bullivant will explain a bit about the development of this subfield, what we've learned from it so far, and several promising areas for future research.

Stephen Bullivant is Professorial Research Fellow in Theology and Sociology at The University of Notre Dame Australia. He holds doctorates in theology (Oxford, 2009) and sociology (Warwick, 2019). Professor Bullivant is a co-Investigator on the 2021 John Templeton Foundation grant: “Explaining Atheism”, a USD $4 million, 3-year project in collaboration with colleagues at St Mary’s, Queen’s University Belfast, Kent, Coventry, and Brunel.

Andrew Singleton is Professor of Sociology and Social Research at Deakin University, Melbourne. His research has been funded by numerous grant-making bodies including as CI on an ARC Discovery (2016-18) “Australian Young People’s Perspectives on Religions and Non-religious Worldviews.” He has published widely on the religious and non-religious worldviews of youth, Spiritualism, religious identity, and religious nones.

Chaired by Rosemary Hancock
Rosie is co-convener of Institute for Ethics and Society’s Religion and Global Ethics program. She is a sociologist of religion who researches religion and spirituality in grassroots politics and movements for social change.

Register: rosemary.hancock@nd.edu.au

Scholarship at the Cathedral: Promoting Catholic Education

Tuesday 17 May 2022 @ 6:00pm-8:30pm
St Mary's Cathedral, St Mary's Rd, Sydney, 2000, NSW, Australia

This edition of Scholarship at the Cathedral will be presented by the University of Notre Dame Australia's own Vice-Chancellor, Professor Francis Campbell. Promoting Catholic Education in today’s society means proposing a view of the human person as a truth-seeker who thrives in community. Catholic educators have an opportunity to form virtuous communities where human persons can thrive because they strive to pursue the truth virtuously. The real challenge for the Catholic institution is to foster such community so that the world can witness communities of salt and light. A recording of the event, along with a Q&A is available on the Catholic Archdiocese Of Sydney YouTube Channel.