Australian & New Zealand History of Education Society (ANZHES) Conference 2022

University of Sydney

Wednesday 7 December – Friday 9 December 2022

 

Conference convenors: Kellie Burns, Yeow Tong Chia, Jing Dang, Meenakshi Krishnaraj, Zhihang Li, Remy Low

 

Conference theme: Connections and relations

 

“We are really sorry for you people. We cry for you because you haven’t got meaning of culture in this country.” In 1995, a senior traditional lawman of the Ngarinyin people in the West Kimberley, Western Australia, addressed a gathering of white people in his County. Broadcast on ABC Radio as “An Address from David Mowaljarli To The White Inhabitants Of This Country”, he went on to say:

 

We have a gift we want to give you. We keep getting blocked from giving you that gift. We get blocked by politics and politicians. We get blocked by media, by process of law. All we want to do is come out from under all of this and give you this gift. And it’s the gift of pattern thinking. It’s the culture which is the blood of this country, of Aboriginal groups, of the ecology, of the land itself.

 

Warraimay historian Vicki Grieves, picking up on the work of Mowaljarlai, explains the affinities of this “pattern thinking” with the thought of other First Peoples in Australia, New Zealand, and North America. It entails a lived spirituality – not merely a nice idea or belief, but a way of being in the world – that “derives from a philosophy that establishes the wholistic notion of the interconnectedness of the elements of the earth and the universe, animate and inanimate, whereby people, the plants and animals, landforms and celestial bodies are interrelated”.

 

According to the philosopher David Tacey, who had received permission from the late David Mowaljarlai to explore Aboriginal Spirituality and Law, there was an element of desperation in latter’s appeal to non-Indigenous inhabitants of these lands today called Australia. Why? According to Tacey, “[Mowaljarlai] felt he was running out of time.”

 

Today, coming up to three decades since Mowaljarlai’s address, we might suppose that a part of that desperation was also because he foresaw that we were running out of time – those of us who continue to live in a world organised along relationships of domination, exploitation, neglect, and forgetting. What Mowaljarlai and other First Peoples’ insights offer is both a reminder of the fact that we are inextricably interconnected and interrelated, and a call to attend to how we have hitherto organised those interconnections and relations. In this way they deepen and advance the work of historians who have explored systems and relations of power, capital, knowledge, and so on. They also contribute to the historical work underway across the globe to retrieve forms of traditional ‘non-western’ educational thought that existed prior to European imperialism and colonialism.

 

For ANZHES 2022, we invite all scholars who are engaged in historical inquiry in education to present their work with regard to the themes of interconnectedness, relationality, and ways of being – visible or hidden, laudable or otherwise. We invite participants to consider their role and responsibilities as historically engaged education scholars in pattern thinking, especially by highlighting how certain people, processes, policies, and institutions have affected our relationships to:

 

• Our selves – professional, political, personal, bodily, etc.
• Human and/or nonhuman others
• The Earth and its inhabitants
• Institutions and communities
• Peoples and places near and far
• Generations past, present, and future

 

In keeping with the spirit of ANZHES and of the conference theme of ‘connections and relations’, we look forward to welcoming you to the 2022 ANZHES conference for a few days of collegiality, scholarly exchange, and friendship. We especially welcome the participation of postgraduate and early career scholars. We also extend our invitation to those who may not think of themselves as ‘history of education’ or ‘history education’ scholars, but whose work may speak to topics of relevance to such scholars.

 

Timeline

Abstracts due by: 12 August 2022

Outcome of abstract submissions by: 26 August 2022

Paper proposal format:   Please submit an abstract of 250-400 words, including the following: ·       Title and Author/s – including their affiliation & email address/es ·       3-5 keywords ·       Substance/argument – what the paper will deal with, and why ·       General description of research questions, objectives and theoretical framework ·       Methods/methodology/approach/mode of inquiry ·       Links to conference theme, where applicable ·       Select representative references.

Abstract submission: Please send abstracts to the conference committee by email attachment to anzhes2022@gmail.com

 

Please watch the ANZHES website for updates: https://anzhes.com/

 

There will not be a dedicated conference special issue, but presenters will be invited to submit their worked-up papers to History of Education Review for consideration after the conference: https://www.emeraldgrouppublishing.com/journal/her?id=HER