Social Change Symposium November 2023
20 - 24 November 2023
20 - 24 November 2023
The drive towards open research practices is increasing at a fast pace. From open access publishing, to developing and using open source tools, to sharing data for future use, while ensuring transparency and reflexivity, researchers are encouraged to embed openness in research practice. Beyond sharing with academic colleagues, can open research practices also foster engagement with community, government, and others outside of academe? Can being “open” in our research work facilitate adoption of innovations and lead to societal impact? What role can technology play in fostering open engagement with non-academic partners? How can we align open research practices with translation and commercialisation outcomes? This symposium explores these questions, and more, as we examine what an open future means for societal impact work.
Monday 20 November, 4:30pm, Green Brain, Storey Hall, RMIT City Campus
Keynote presentation by Dr Dallas Rogers, Head of Urbanism in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.
Wednesday 22 November, 4:30pm, Council Chamber, Building 1, RMIT City Campus
Keynote presentation by Dr Cameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University.
Monday 20 November, 2:20pm, Cinema Theatre, Building 80, RMIT City Campus
This presentation will explore the boundaries of children’s online games and consider some of the implications for paratextual play at the intersection of mobile games and streaming practices.
Tuesday 21 November, 9:00am, Green Brain, Storey Hall, RMIT City Campus
In this hand-on podcasting workshop you’ll learn about some of the key technical, storytelling and production steps involved in making a podcast. No audio experience necessary.
Tuesday 21 November, 1:15pm, Cinema Theatre, Building 80, RMIT City Campus
This roundtable discussion will bring together industry leaders with research experts to discuss the challenge of “discoverability” of local and age-appropriate content in the era of streaming.
Tuesday 21 November, 4:30pm, Green Brain, Storey Hall, RMIT City Campus
Discover how RMIT's new Centre for Organisations and Social Change can support organisations to drive a business agenda that promotes transformative social change.
Wednesday 22 November, 1:00pm, Seminar Rooms 3 & 4, Storey Hall, RMIT City Campus
In this interactive workshop Michelle Matheson and Jo Gillespie from RMIT's Library Research Services team will help you to update, connect and optimise your online research profile.
Thursday 23 November, 9:00am, Megaflex 3, Building 8, RMIT City Campus
This workshop will provide practical strategies for HASS researchers who are eager to adopt more ‘open’ approaches to the work that they are doing, but unsure of where they should start.
Throughout the symposium, Higher Degree by Research (HDR) candidates from across all disciplines in the College of Design and Social Context will present their milestones. Session details for HDR presentations are available via the program below. Please note that information for milestone presenters, chairs and referees is available through the RMIT SharePoint site for HDR Milestone Presentations (RMIT login required).
Presentation by Dr Ingrid Richardson, Professor of Digital Media, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University.
This talk will explore the increasingly porous boundaries of children’s online games and consider some of the implications for paratextual play at the intersection of mobile games and streaming practices. Videogames are integrally part of broader digital cultures across a complex network of social media, streaming and content-sharing platforms including Discord, Twitch, YouTube, and a range of online chat and in-game forums. These playful media ecologies constellate around popular games, enacted and “stitched together” through online affinity spaces. For pre-teen and tween children, the positive effects of paratextual or “extrinsic” play on and through streaming platforms are significant, as they become sites for rich sociality, creative and social capital, identity performance, community and belonging. Yet there are also significant risks involved, as these spaces are often occupied by adults and provide unmoderated exposure or access to age-inappropriate content and behaviour. Using the examples of Minecraft and Fortnite, Dr Richardson will argue that the risks and enablements are deeply entangled in children’s play practices, and pervaded by broader critical issues relating to web literacy and online toxicity.
Keynote presentation by Dr Dallas Rogers, Head of Urbanism in the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney.
New digital tools are increasing the speeds, formats and breadth of the research and communication mediums available to researchers. Affordable high-quality microphones and digital audio editing on laptops allow researchers to collaborate in new ways. Podcasting allows us to push at the boundaries of what a research method and a research community might be. Podcasting, like radio, is a potentially powerful digital tool for engaging with a broad range of public, policy, student and professional audiences. Each stage of the podcast and radio production process is an opportunity to ethically intervene into social and political worlds. In this talk, Dr Rogers will discuss three media projects in order to: critically consider why we might initiate a podcast or radio project; interrogate how we are expressing ourselves as academics; question the ethics of academic podcast and radio production; explore to whom we are disseminating content; and ask about the impression we believe we are making.
4:30pm - 5:30pm keynote, followed by a networking reception.
Presentations may be given in-person, online or in hybrid mode. Refer to the location column for details.
In this hand-on podcasting workshop you’ll learn about some of the key technical, storytelling and production steps involved in making a podcast. We’ll start at the beginning of the podcast process and work through each step. As we make our podcast, we’ll talk about initiating a podcast as an academic. We’ll consider the politics of expression and of dissemination. Finally, we’ll get into the politics of impression too.
No audio experience is necessary to be a part of this fun two hours of podcast making and conversation.
This roundtable discussion will bring together industry leaders with research experts to discuss the challenge of “discoverability” of local and age-appropriate content in the era of streaming.
The panel will discuss scholarly and industry perspectives around how children use streaming services, and how best to ensure local and age-appropriate content is accessible and identifiable for children on streaming platforms.
Discover how the Centre for Organisations and Social Change (COSC) can support organisations to drive a business agenda that promotes transformative social change.
The event will feature an introduction from RMIT’s ADVC Research and Innovation Professor Swee Mak, Director of the Social Change Enabling Impact Platform Professor Lisa Given, and COSC Co-Directors Associate Professors Lauren Gurrieri and Lena Wang.
This will be followed by a panel discussion, moderated by RMIT’s College of Business and Law’s ADVC Research and Innovation Professor Tracy Taylor, where you’ll hear from our research theme leaders about how they’re providing industry-focused insights and leadership towards creating inclusive and equitable organisations.
Presentations may be given in-person, online or in hybrid mode. Refer to the location column for details.
What impression do your many online research profiles (ORCiD, Scopus, Web of Science, Google Scholar, LinkedIn) give potential thesis examiners, peer-reviewers, collaborators, publishers, funders and employers? Do they help a wider audience find your open access publications? When it comes to research profiles, it is easy to set and forget. In this interactive workshop, Michelle Matheson and Jo Gillespie from RMIT's Library Research Services team will help you to update, connect and optimise these tools to increase the visibility of you and your research.
Keynote presentation by Dr Cameron Neylon, Professor of Research Communication at the Centre for Culture and Technology at Curtin University.
The Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative is a project that was born of frustration. We wanted to help senior leaders in our university to look beyond league tables and citation counts as indicators of the ‘quality’ and ‘value’ of research, and to start new conversations about why openness and diversity matter.
In this talk, Dr Neylon will introduce the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative: a Humanities-led project that is engaging with the possibilities of both big and small data about the communities that make and use research. She will discuss what the data can tell us about the ways in which open research practices support social impact, and the practical strategies that the Initiative is using to maximise the visibility, accessibility and usefulness of its work for diverse communities beyond the university.
4:30pm - 5:30pm keynote, followed by a networking reception.
Presentations may be given in-person, online or in hybrid mode. Refer to the location column for details.
Life as an Australian academic can be tough. Funding for research is hard to find, a ‘typical’ career path doesn’t exist, and the rules for what seems to count as ‘high quality’ or ‘high impact’ research keep changing. Individual researchers are often left feeling exhausted and unsure of how to make the system work for them.
This two-hour workshop will provide practical strategies for Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS) researchers who are eager to adopt more ‘open’ approaches to the work that they are doing, but unsure of where they should start, or how such approaches will fit with established research evaluation practices.
Presentations may be given in-person, online or in hybrid mode. Refer to the location column for details.
Presentations may be given in-person, online or in hybrid mode. Refer to the location column for details.
| Time | Candidate Name | Presentation Title | Location |
| 10:30 – 12:00 | Alexandra Gerrans (2MR) | Pelagic, Chthonic, Metabolic: Writing Body and (Ex)change | 22.03.02 and Teams (online) |
| 11:00 – 12:30 | Holly Charles Ireland (3MR) | The Racial Logics of Molwa Law: Yorta Yorta v The State of Victoria | Teams (online) |
| 12:30 – 2:00 | Hugh Stanford (3MR) | Conceptualising, Mapping and Analysing the Social-Ecological Value of Informal Green Spaces | 22.03.02 and Teams (online) |
| 2:30 – 4:00 | Alston Furtado (3MR) | Circular Business Model for End-of-life Electric Vehicle Lithium Batteries in Australia | 22.03.02 and Teams (online) |
This symposium is a collaboration between the College of Design and Social Context and the Social Change Enabling Impact Platform.
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Luwaytini' by Mark Cleaver, Palawa.
Acknowledgement of Country
RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business.