The curious history of the ABC and Australia’s national broadcasting transmission infrastructure

In this presentation Chris Wilson will introduce some of his current research examining the relationship between Australia’s Public Service Broadcasters and media infrastructures – what Parks and Starosielski describe in Signal Traffic (2015) as “situated sociotechnical systems that are designed and configured to support the distribution of audio-visual signal traffic”. Chris will outline the history of the dis-integration of public service media content production from the terrestrial broadcasting transmission infrastructure that carriers this content to audiences. The story is a curious one, incorporating broadcasting lessons from the Weimar Republic and the expansionist aims of the ABC’s Double J youth radio service in the 1970s, the rise of an engineering public servant as a public figure in the 1920s and concerns about the demise of Peppa Pig in the 2010s. But, it is more than simply a historical curiosity. For the ABC’s lack of control over fundamental media infrastructures continues to impact on its independence and effective operation.

Chris Wilson is a Research Fellow with DERC’s Technology, Communication and Policy Lab. His research focuses on media and communications infrastructure provision, its underlying policy determinants and downstream impact on cultural production and consumption. He is currently the principal analyst on the Australian Digital Inclusion Index project and is also completing research on the history of Australian public service broadcasting transmission infrastructures and the impact of radio spectrum access liberalisation in the 1990s on the rise of electronic dance music (EDM) radio in Australia.

You are warmly invited to the Australian launch of Teaching Gender: Feminist Pedagogy and Responsibility in Times of Political Crisis, co-edited by visiting DERC researcher Beatriz Revelles-Benavente and Ana M. Gonzalez Ramos. DERC’s Acting Director Anna Hickey-Moody will introduce the book, and copies will be for sale on the night. Drinks and snacks provided, all welcome!

Teaching Gender: Feminist Pedagogy and Responsibility in Times of Political Crisis addresses the neoliberalisation of the university, what this means in real terms, and strategic pedagogical responses to teaching within this context across disciplines and region.

Inspired by bell hooks’ “transgressive school” and Donna Haraway’s “responsibility”, this collection promotes a politics of care within the classroom through new forms of organisational practices. It engages with the challenges and possibilities of teaching students about women and gender by examining the multiple pedagogical, theoretical, and political dimensions of feminist learning.

The book revisits how we can reconfigure a feminist politics of responsibility that is able to respond to or engage with contemporary crises. It also conceptualises crisis and explains how it is transforming contemporary societies and affecting individual vulnerabilities and institutional structures. Finally, it offers practical cases from different European locations, in which crisis and responsibility have served to reformulate contemporary feminist pedagogies, altering curriculums, reframing institutions, and affecting the process of teaching and learning.

Please note: books sales will be cash only, copies available for $30.