ECR Sessions
The Melbourne Centre for Cities (MC4C) is hosting a series of Early Career Researchers’ Sessions, as part of our commitment to support ECR agendas at the Centre. The sessions are programmed, organised, and led collectively by early career Centre affiliates, to reflect the skills, concerns, and experiences of the many young researchers who work at the Centre.
What exciting approaches to research are proposed by MC4C ECRs? How do these resonate across ECR experiences at Unimelb? And how can we better learn from each other?
Come find your people!
Join us on the second Thursday of each month for an afternoon of peer learning and discussion, on themes such as building research partnerships, managing controversial images, and creating a research environment where we are heard, seen, and understood.
A programme that is BY us and FOR us, which we design based on individual needs and experiences, to become a shared formulation of the plurivocal Centre for Cities ECR community.
The Sessions are open to ECRs from across Unimelb and beyond, and we welcome you to propose and lead new sessions. Create the event you would like to attend! And the Melbourne Centre for Cities will support it.
Session 1: Visual Narratives and the Politics of the Photograph
10 August, 2-4pm, (MSD Level 4, Meeting Room Hansen Yuncken, room 408)
Jeff Wall, The Destroyed Room, 1978
The session aims to explore the act of analysing photographs and asks questions about the ethics of collecting and reproducing images, focusing on the political dimensions of photography, including its use as propaganda and ideas associated with authenticity and legitimacy. The aim is to discuss the entwined relationship between the artificial and the real that has informed photography from its emergence in the late 19th century to the increasing use of AI technologies in image creation.
! When you come to the session, please bring a research image that challenged you – in its access (was it hard to locate?), production (was it difficult to make?), or distribution (is it tricky to explain or publish?)
Proposed and run by Renee Miller-Yeaman
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Session 2: Fostering Diversity and Inclusion: Towards a More Open and Inclusive Melbourne Centre for Cities
14 September, 2-4pm, (MSD Level 2, Meeting Room 201)
Collaborating beyond difference – Image CC
This session aims to provide a safe and engaging space for participants to openly discuss the importance of diversity and inclusion within the MC4C. By sharing our personal experiences and insights, we will collectively explore strategies to address the existing gaps and challenges the ECRs community faces, especially those with socio-culturally diverse backgrounds. In this session, we will delve into the current state of affairs and identify obstacles hindering the realisation of true inclusion for diverse ECRs from different socio-cultural backgrounds, sexual orientations, gender, language, age, education, and disability.
Proposed and run by Sombol Mokhles
Session 3: Cities of the future: an imaginative workshop
12 October, 2-4pm, (MSD Level 4, Meeting Room Hansen Yuncken, room 408)
Future city, Norman Foster Foundation
This session invites participants to envision the future of cities, with sustainability, inclusivity, and technology as the main driving forces. Participants will imagine the functional features of future cities, going beyond existing concepts to explore new possibilities that might emerge in the coming decades. The focus will be on sustainability, inclusivity, and technological innovation as crucial aspects in envisioning these cities. Following this exercise, we will conduct a design thinking workshop to identify how we can help achieve an urban environment that addresses the specified goals. The workshop will conclude with a short documentary that presents a provocative and kaleidoscopic vision of the future.
Bring your passion and wild ideas for creating a better future!
Proposed and run by Kebir Jemal
Session 4: Formalising Research Partnerships: Perspectives, Processes, Personalities and Politics
9 November, 2-4pm, (MSD Level 4, Meeting Room Hansen Yuncken, room 408)
Centre for Cities researchers with Night mayors
A significant part of building up an ‘industry engaged’ research career is establishing partnerships with organisations and entities beyond the university, which – if successful – progress into more formal relationships through funding agreements, MoUs, and over time set out distinct track records for you or your research team. Taking more ‘meaningful’ approaches to building research partnerships is also a key ethos of the Centre for Cities. This session will workshop some ‘real world’ and active partnerships that are of relevance to the centre, and explore both the crafting of these relationships, and the formal hurdles (and loopholes) that need to be considered at different points through this process.
Proposed and run by Alexei Trundle and Anna Edwards