Join us for these events at MCH
Food Sovereignty in Havana: Local Results and Global Challenges by Professor Adrian H. Hearn
Friday 31 October at 6.00pm
Manning Clark House – 11 Tasmania Cir, Forrest, ACT
This presentation examines experiences of food sovereignty through an Australian project in Havana with the Antonio Nuñez Jiménez foundation and the Ifá Iranlowo Afro-Cuban community. The project’s coordinator, Adrian Hearn, will explain the challenges of cooperating with Cuba in the context of the U.S. embargo and the island’s deepening ties to China. Adrian will also describe how collaborating with community farmers in Havana has inspired a similar project in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.
Adrian Hearn is an anthropologist who researches the cultural challenges and opportunities arising from international relations. He is a Professor of Latin American Studies at the University of Melbourne and was the 2024 faculty-in-residence at Havana’s Casa de las Américas and Consortium of Advanced Studies Abroad (CASA).
There will be a Q&A session following the presentation, then light refreshments.
MCH members $15; Concession (Gov’t support and full-time students) $15: Non-members $20
Tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/DFTCL
Brand new speakers program: The Meaning of Life and Other Inconveniences - Philosophy in every day life. In conversations with Professor Nicole Anderson.
Nicole Anderson engages in conversation with a number of leading international and national philosophical thinkers and intellectuals on the meaning of life. Covering topics as diverse as technology, music, religion, animals, psychology, life and death, the series explores fundamental questions about what it means to be alive, and what gives us meaning.
The series will kick off in October 2025 with an inaugural discussion with Professor David Wills around questions of what constitutes the meanings of life and death. This will be followed by a conversation with Mark Swivel in November 2025 on the rules that might provide foundations to build meaning and purpose, and in December we will explore with Michael McCann the consequences of climate change and the technologies that might contribute to mitigating it.
Series Host:
Professor Nicole Anderson
Nicole Anderson is Professor at Macquarie University, Sydney; affiliate (adjunct) faculty at Arizona State University; and Honorary Professor at the University of Canberra. She has published over 50 articles and books on animals, ethics, culture, democracy, and philosophy, all of which have been informed by her scholarship on French Philosopher Jacques Derrida. In regards to the latter she has published Derrida: Ethics Under Erasure, and is currently writing a second book on Derrida and animals (forthcoming 2026). She is the founding editor of the Derrida Today Journal (based on the work of Jacques Derrida), published by Edinburgh University Press, and which has been running since 2007. Aligned with the journal is the Derrida Today International Conferences (http://derridatoday.com ), of which Nicole is the founding Executive Director. The conferences have been held in Britain, UK, USA, Europe and Australia, and provides a forum for academics from around the world to discuss and apply the thinking of Derrida to contemporary world events and issues.
Nicole has also co-produced with Julian Knowles a podcast series with PBS called the ‘Futures of Democracy’ (https://futuresofdemocracy.com/ ), which has been ranked number 5 out of 10 for 3 years in a row 2022 – 2025 for best Political Podcasts in Arizona, USA by Feedspot: 10 Best Arizona Political Podcasts You Must Follow in 2025. She has won a prestigious Australian Research Council Linkage Grant with John Potts, and as part of the grant co-curated a six month exhibition at the NSW Art Gallery, Sydney, on the philanthropist John Kaldor’s extensive art collection.
See below to register into the first event: Where to find life once the meaning of it has been called into question with Professor David Wills at Brown University.
Where to Find Life Once the Meaning of It Has Been Called into Question (in conversation with Nicole Anderson)
Date: 24th October 2025
David Wills is Professor of French and Francophone Studies at Brown University in the USA. He received his Doctorate from the Universite Paris III Sorbonne Nouvelle. He is author of books on the originary technicity of the human (Prosthesis, Dorsality, Inanimation, Killing Times), as well as writings on painting and film. He has written extensively on, and is well-known for being a major translator and interpreter of, the work of French philosopher Jacques Derrida. Wills is a member of the Editorial Board of the Bibliothèque Derrida at Éditions du Seuil, and is a founding member of the Derrida Seminars Translation Project. He has published some 80 book chapters and journal articles.
There will be a Q&A session following the presentation, then light refreshments.
MCH members $15: Concession (Gov’t support and full-time students) $15: Non-members $20
Tickets: https://www.trybooking.com/DFTDC