Winter Institute leads to new ANU collaborations

Image credit: Dr Peter Alwast

Monday 24 February 2020

Earlier this year, the Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) coordinated a delegation of ten ANU scholars to the 2020 Winter Institute at New York University (NYU) focusing on Beyond Identity Politics: Global Challenges and Humanistic Responses.

The Winter Institute is an annual collaboration between ANU, NYU/Peking University, and the University of Tokyo. The University of Bonn has also recently joined the partnership and will host the sixth annual Winter Institute in 2021.

The ANU delegation featured interdisciplinary scholars spanning humanities and the arts, social sciences, law, security, and medical science. The delegation was competitively selected and comprised PhD candidates, early career researchers and senior ANU academics.

One of the ANU delegates, Dr Peter Alwast, Head of Painting at the ANU School of Art and Design shared that "The Winter Institute is impressive in its ambition to bring quality researchers from a range of disciplines into a single conference and exchange ideas during the week… the format is unconventional but I found it to be exciting and at a very high level.”

New inter-disciplinary ANU collaborations were also formed from the trip, with scholars grateful for the opportunity to share and develop work with colleagues – many of whom they hadn’t met before on-campus. As Professor Carolyn Strange from the ANU School of history explains“One of the ironies of traveling across the world and mingling with an international array of scholars is the opportunity to spend concerted time with fellow ANU scholars whom one would not otherwise meet.”

During the Institute, Professor Strange met PhD candidate James Mortensen from the ANU National Security College and the pair have since gone on to co-publish an article for BroadAgenda, drawing on their complementary expertise: Where’s the government on domestic violence? James believes the Institute gave him the opportunity to share his work in a tight-knit, interdisciplinary setting. “I made some new friends, and the trip has already lead to new academic collaborations” he shared.

Attendees at the 2020 Winter Institute also received a preview of the latest peer-reviewed research, with Lee Anne Sim, a PhD candidate from the ANU College of Law, presenting her paper Influencing the social impact of financial systems: alternative strategies, which has just been published online in the March 2020 edition of the prestigious journal, International Affairs.

AuSI looks forward to the Winter Institute 2021.