Black Lives Matter: 2020 Social Sciences Week Forum

When: 10 Sep 2020, 5 to 6pm

Venue: Online Webinar

Summary: A panel of University of Tasmania scholars considers the positive change that could result from the #BlackLivesMatter movement.

Presenter(s):

• Nicole L Asquith, Professor of Policing and Emergency Management
• Joselynn Baltra-Gonzalez, Lecturer, Social Work
• Jacob Prehn, Indigenous Fellow
• Moderated by Maggie Walter, Distinguished Professor, Sociology

Queries: Email  /  +61 3 6226 2521

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The #BlackLivesMatter movement was founded in 2013 following the death of Trayvon Martin in the US. The group aims to eradicate white supremacy and end state and vigilante violence against Black communities. In the years since it has become a global movement, no more evident than in the worldwide protests in 2020 after the death of George Floyd in Minneapolis.

How is #BlackLivesMatter relevant to Australia, and to Tasmania? What are the daily threats faced by our Black communities? And how can the movement lead to positive change?

We have brought together a panel of University of Tasmania scholars to consider several dimensions of the #BlackLivesMatter movement. The panel will discuss Indigenous incarceration and police attitudes towards minority groups; the issues facing Indigenous communities around the globe; and the various Australian contexts the movement speaks to.

About the Panel

Professor Nicole L Asquith

Nicole is the Professor of Policing and Emergency Management and Director of the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies. Her work focusses on the vulnerable people and the criminal justice system, especially in relation to policing practices. Before returning to the University of Tasmania, Nicole was the Associate Professor of Policing and Criminal Justice at Western Sydney University, and Senior Lecturer at Deakin University. In addition to her academic roles at UTAS, Nicole is the Co-Director of the Vulnerability, Resilience & Policing Research Consortium, Secretary of the Australian Hate Crime Network, and Co-convenor of the LGBTIQ Domestic and Family Violence Interagency. Along with Dr Isabelle Bartkowiak-Théron, Nicole has published widely on policing encounters with vulnerable people, including three books: Policing Vulnerability (Federation Press), Policing Encounters with Vulnerability (Palgrave), and Policing Practices and Vulnerable People (Palgrave).

Dr Joselynn Baltra-Gonzalez

Jos is a lecturer of social work at the University of Tasmania. Originally from Chile, she came to Australia as a refugee and has dedicated her professional life to working with people of refugee background. Her work and research passions relate to decolonising social work, transformative disruptive social innovation, sustainability, post-sustainability and the Deep Adaptation agenda. She is amongst a group of Indigenous and First Nations scholars across the globe that conducts research with a decolonisation agenda and with a focus on learning from Southern knowledges. She is involved in community-based projects aimed at building capacity for decolonisation, exploring how 21^st century social work can play a key role in regenerative practices that enable the sustainable interbeing of Humans and Nature. She serves the community via focused interdisciplinary collaborations, facilitating cross-institutional and cross-cultural projects.

Jacob Prehn

Jacob Prehn is an Indigenous Fellow at the School of Social Sciences in the discipline of Social Work. He is an Early Career Researcher and currently a PhD candidate exploring the question: What are the effects of Bush Adventure Therapy on the health and wellbeing of Aboriginal men in Southern Tasmania? Jacob’s research field is social work and sociology and his research goals are to create equity for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. His publications comprise quantitative and qualitative datasets, exploring a range of topics. These including Aboriginal men, children, families and the positive role of culture. He is also interested in Indigenous data sovereignty and Indigenous methodologies. Previously, Jacob was employed by the Office of the Pro Vice-Chancellor of Aboriginal Research and Leadership at the University of Tasmania, with projects including How do Indigenous children grow up strong in education?’ He is a former acting-CEO of the National Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Health Workers Association (NATSHIWA) and has worked in Aboriginal health since 2010. He is also a qualified Social Worker and Aboriginal Health Worker.

Moderated by Distinguished Professor Maggie Walter

Professor Maggie Walter is palawa from the larger Tasmanian Aboriginal Briggs family and Distinguished Professor of Sociology at the University of Tasmania. Until this year, she was also Pro Vice-Chancellor (Aboriginal Research and Leadership). Maggie has been a Steering Committee member of the Longitudinal Study of Indigenous Children since 2004, shedding light for the first time on the reality of the lives of these children and their families. She has written extensively, authoring several books, and numerous chapters and journal articles, in the fields of Indigenous statistics, social policy and family. In 2009 she was elected as the inaugural secretary of the newly formed Native American and Indigenous Studies Association, which fosters and supports international collaboration with leading Indigenous scholars from the United States, Canada, New Zealand and Australia. Maggie serves on numerous national committees and boards related to improving the evidence base of Indigenous social policy. In 2018 she was awarded a Fulbright Indigenous Scholarship to lead an international study comparing data on educational outcomes of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander and Native American children for the first time. She is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

This forum is presented in partnership with The Australian Sociological Association for Social Sciences Week (2020).