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Humanities at UNE The arts, communication, history, politics, society ... our courses and research are about being human.

15/10/2026

Look who's just landed in Armidale! 🛩 David Zinn, world-renowned chalk art extraordinaire, is on campus and in town over the coming week as a visiting artist hosted by the UNE Museum of Antiquities.

See him in action on campus or at the opening night of the Armidale Creative Streets Festival, or stay tuned to find out what inspires him and what he creates!

How can academic research become more useful, more used, and more grounded in preparing regional, rural and remote Austr...
12/10/2026

How can academic research become more useful, more used, and more grounded in preparing regional, rural and remote Australia for challenging and disruptive futures?

Join us at the Smart Region UNE SMART Region Incubator (or online) this Friday for this half-day event featuring a fantastic panel of researchers, practitioners, and community voices that will include:

• UNE alum Air Vice-Marshal (Retired) John Blackburn AO, who argues Australia is dangerously underprepared for complex, cascading risks (attending online)
• UNE academics from sociology, human geography, and health
• A strategic policy fellow from the Australian Strategic Policy Institute

The event is hosted by The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and UNE Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (HASS), and will be held in person at the UNE SMART Region Incubator and online.

Register here: https://tinyurl.com/TASA-ReadyOrNot

"Don’t tell the Vice-Chancellor, but I would do it even if no one paid me ... When history and cartooning come together,...
09/10/2026

"Don’t tell the Vice-Chancellor, but I would do it even if no one paid me ... When history and cartooning come together, it’s just the best thing."

Richard Scully has spent his career exploring how a few strokes of a cartoonist's pen can capture the mood of a nation, from colonial Australia to modern political scandals.

As a boy, he devoured Astérix, Tintin and Disney comics, and got into trouble at school for caricaturing his friends and teachers.

Today, as UNE's Professor of Modern History, he gets to indulge his fascination with cartoons professionally.

His story, via our link in comments.

✈️🎌Sharing learning and memoriesThe Japanese exchange program is an important aspect of Japanese Language and Culture St...
27/09/2026

✈️🎌Sharing learning and memories

The Japanese exchange program is an important aspect of Japanese Language and Culture Studies at UNE.

As part of the program, Japanese university students Mihiro Nagae (Meiji University) and Kaho Oto (Doshisha University) have had the interesting experience of studying aspects of their culture through an Australian point of view, while on exchange at UNE.

Completing LANG306 (Japanese Popular Culture), the students, now about to return to their university lives in Japan, attended tutorials that included discussions on JPop and Kpop (AKB48), gender roles as perceived in anime, as well as critiques of the Japanese Defence force’s use of anime or manga themes in their advertising.

This inclusion of Japanese students in the classes has also offered first year UNE Japanese Language and Culture students like Jazmin and Lily (pictured), the opportunity to make friends from Japan and try out their conversational skills in Japanese.

📷 (L-R) Ryo Kawahata (Hitotsubashi University), Mizuki Komori (Kagoshima University), first year Japanese student Jazmin Cooke, Mihiro Nagae (Meiji University), first year Japanese student Lily Gully and Kaho Oto (Doshisha University) gathered to talk about how they found their year at UNE. Mizuki, Mihiro and Kaho are all preparing soon to return to their university lives in Japan.

UNE linguistics and law experts are supporting calls to review the conviction of NSW man Stephen Jamieson, who has been ...
18/09/2026

UNE linguistics and law experts are supporting calls to review the conviction of NSW man Stephen Jamieson, who has been serving a life sentence since 1988.

New evidence and forensic linguistic analysis raise serious questions about whether a police typed confession accurately reflected what was said in interview, and whether linguistic misattribution played a role in a possible miscarriage of justice.

UNE academics Adjunct Professor Diana Eades, Dr Sally Dixon, Dr Cindy Schneider and Dr Laura Smith Khan have joined a memorandum signed by 43 eminent legal and academic experts calling for the case to be reviewed. There is also untested DNA evidence that could help resolve the questions raised.

Read the story and sign the petition by 29 September: https://www.une.edu.au/about-une/news-and-events/news/2026/09/une-linguistics-and-law-experts-join-call-to-review-criminal-case/_nocache

Knowing how you learn can be the key to unlocking what you learn, as Rebecca Skehan’s journey proves. Bec put her dream ...
16/09/2026

Knowing how you learn can be the key to unlocking what you learn, as Rebecca Skehan’s journey proves.

Bec put her dream of becoming an archaeologist or historian on the back-burner for decades, when she struggled through school.

“I kind of spent most of my teens just wondering why I didn’t get things the way other people got things. I saw myself as someone who simply couldn’t study and I resigned myself to a different path.”

Bec took up a hairdressing apprenticeship and followed a family legacy into creative pursuits: fine art, graphic design, and developing a thriving vintage reproduction fashion line.

But when her vintage fashion line folded, she was left wondering what to do next.

“It was the catalyst I needed to finally pursue the path I thought was always out of reach. Despite my serious self-doubts, my husband really encouraged me to just do what I loved – for me, that meant history.” Through a bit of trial-and-error, she found UNE.

Though she’d always gravitated to ancient history, she fell in love with medieval and early modern European history during her first UNE units, and her path forward was set.

But the biggest change was finally obtaining a diagnosis for her neurodivergence. The penny dropped as she had been seeking educational support for her youngest daughter.

“I went 40 years of my life without having the vocabulary to understand how my brain interpreted and understood information. Suddenly, I had the clarity I needed to advocate for myself.”

That, she says, changed everything. Studying part-time and with the right support, she has excelled at UNE.

“The support I found at the Student Accessibility and Wellbeing Office was a game-changer. I found there were some incredible academic staff who were willing to work to my strengths and abilities. I found mentors who inspired me to think critically and push beyond what I thought I could achieve.”

In her final year, Bec even stepped into the role of a PASS (Peer Assisted Study Sessions) Leader, helping other students navigate challenging units.

“I am a testament that with the right support and a whole lot of perseverance, anyone can achieve their goals.”

14/09/2026

Composer, pianist and UNE Music Associate Professor, Paul Smith, is part of a growing community of artists and composers celebrating the toy piano – the kind from a toy shop – in their work.

“I love working with toy pianos because they are portable, which is a novelty for a pianist. And because they don't have the same formal and traditional history as the piano, they are more readily used for experimentation and discovering new sounds and aesthetics because it's mostly new musical territory,” he says.

Making a serious career of the much maligned primary school instrument, the recorder, UNE Music's Associate Professor Alana Blackburn relishes the challenge to show off the capabilities of the instrument.

While the Concerning Hobbits score by Howard Shore does include some recorders in the woodwind section, here Alana showcases it’s beauty as a principal instrument.

“If a modern orchestra includes the recorder, the composer often writes very skilfully so that the instrument can be heard. It’s most often used to evoke fantasy, and childlike memories, so it relates nicely to Hobbits and Hobbiton,” she says.

Can African countries in constant conflict for 50 years ever find peace?This is the reality for countries such as the De...
02/09/2026

Can African countries in constant conflict for 50 years ever find peace?

This is the reality for countries such as the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC) and South Sudan. But where it’s tempting to think that perhaps nothing can be done, Sam Onapa, for one, remains positive.

Sam, a UNE Peace Studies graduate and adjunct lecturer in peacebuilding, believes a profound policy change in the democratic governance model could lead to more peaceful outcomes across Africa.

“African culture is about sharing and compromise, whereas in liberal democratic processes, it’s a competition where the outcome is that the winner takes all,” Sam says.

“We can’t keep trying to implement a model that doesn’t suit the cultural environment.”

Ending violence through dialogue is Sam’s passion. And he's seen it work well at the grassroots level.

“With dialogue, everybody is on an equal level and brings to the table what they need and what they want,” he says. “It invites empathy.”

“Why can’t there be a process where the political parties sit down and decide through consensus who is the best to lead in various ways and share power?”

Sam will pursue this idea in a new book, which he plans to promote widely to those who can make a difference – from governments to academic institutions and to multilateral agencies.

Read more about Sam’s vision at the link in the comments.

📚 UNE Reads: Connecting Campus to CommunityFor 📖 Book Week, we took the opportunity to share our 💚 love of books as a UN...
31/08/2026

📚 UNE Reads: Connecting Campus to Community

For 📖 Book Week, we took the opportunity to share our 💚 love of books as a UNE community with children across the Tamworth Region.

Our academics and staff along with United Way Australia parent ambassador, Emily Press, visited early childhood centres and schools throughout the week to share stories and learning.

We 📚 read books, 🎻 shared music, ran 🎨play-based activities and most importantly, had a lot of fun. UNE Reads was the first event of our new Connecting Campus to Community initiative at UNE Tamworth, which is about creating contextually relevant experiences to meet the needs of the children and educators in the Tamworth community.

For this event, we partnered with the CBCA National (Children's Book Council of Australia), United Way Australia and Tamworth City Library, with a focus on enhancing and developing literacy for the children in our community.

👶 In early childhood centres, we conducted a 🖼 picture walk and 🎭 dramatic reading of one of the books from Dolly Parton's Imagination Library program Imagination Library Australia Following this, children participated in hands-on experiences related to ideas and language featuring in the text. We left educators with a copy of the book and a pack of resources with further play-based learning experiences that springboard from this text. Thanks to Emily Press, Somayeh Ba Akhlagh and Beth Boland for facilitating these experiences!

🧒 At schools, each group of children had a unique experience, with UNE connected authors and literacy experts 📖 reading books, helping to create🐉mythical creatures for stories and learning about 🐢 turtles through dramatic play. Thanks to Sophie Masson, Deb Bower, Liz Hale, Nicole Kennedy and Beth Boland for visiting schools with such enthusiasm.

We love getting to know and supporting our local early childhood centres and schools. Thank you to all who let us come to read and share with the children. We can’t wait to visit again!

We look forward to further activities Connecting Campus to Community in 2027.

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