Centre for Ideas | UNSW Sydney

Past Events

17 Jul Past event

Jelani Cobb: Civil Rights in the Age of Trump

The New Yorker's Jelani Cobb delivers the annual Martin Luther King Lecture.

3 Jul Past event

Turned On: The Rise of Sex Robots

Are we going to be swiping right on robots?

20 May Past event

Factfulness: Anna Rosling Rönnlund

“A hopeful book about the potential for human progress when we work off facts rather than our inherent biases.” – Barack Obama

14 May Past event

Julia Gillard: Women & Leadership

This event is now SOLD OUT

9 May Past event

Greek to me: Adventures of the comma queen, Mary Norris

Tales of pencils, punctuation and proofreading 'The New Yorker'.

11 Mar Past event

Nancy MacLean: Democracy in Chains

How did corporations come to possess rights? How did democracy come to be defined as selfish individualism? Or money as free speech? Most people would blame Trump, but the man himself is just a distraction from the deeper and more troubling right wing agenda.

6 Mar Past event

Writing War: Kassem Eid & Mohammed Hanif

Take part in an intimate evening showcasing recent work by two extraordinary writers, who will discuss how and why they grapple with writing about the harrowing reality of war.

3 Mar Past event

Margaret Atwood

28 Feb Past event

Paul Bloom: The Pleasures of Suffering

People are hedonists, seeking pleasure and avoiding pain. This view is central to much of psychology and it fits many people’s own sense of why they do what they do. But what about our appetites for spicy foods, hot baths, horror movies, sad songs, BDSM, and hate reading?

6 Feb Past event

Tim Costello: Justice in Action

What can Australians do to make the world a better and fairer place? Delivering this year's Gandhi Oration is Chief Advocate of World Vision Australia Tim Costello.

25 Oct Past event

After the Crash: Australia in the world ten years on from the GFC

  Kevin Rudd, Ken Henry, Richard Holden and Gordon de Brouwer with Jennifer Hewett (chair).  

24 Sep Past event

Wallace Wurth Lecture: Daniel Dennett on Consciousness

  THIS EVENT IS SOLD OUT What have we learned in the last fifty years? It’s one of the complex puzzles we have tried to solve; the nature of human consciousness. Debates about free will, morality, the differences between humans and animals, and the distinction between brain and mind are staples of the explorations of consciousness by philosophers and scientists.

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