School of Historical and Philosophical Studies - Research Publications
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ItemCybernetic Funeral Systems(IEEE, 2021-01-01)Using Postphenomenology (one of many methods informed by Wiener's cybernetics) as an analytical approach, this paper examines three examples of robot participation in, and mediation of, funerals. The analysis of robot mediation of funerals challenges the idea that death rituals are exclusively human performances and experiences, and instead repositions them as cybernetic systems of entanglement and impact. The paper begins with an introduction to the relevance of postphenomenological theory, then moves to the case of CARL, a robot that enables remote participation in funeral ceremonies. We argue that the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation and its variants are both engaging and alienating, through revealing-concealing, magnification-reduction and a more generalised enabling-constraining. Technological mediation is also evident in the case of Pepper, a robot that has officiated at funerals as a Buddhist monk. We describe similarities and differences in the way CARL and Pepper manifest the [Human-Robot-Funeral] relation. The final example is AIBO, a companion robot that becomes the locus of a funeral ritual. This offers a radical case that directly challenges humans' self-proclaimed exceptional ontology.
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ItemNo Preview AvailableA Post-Colonial Horrea Piperataria(ASCS, 2022)Rome’s Horrea Piperataria – or ‘Pepper Warehouse’ – receives little more than a passing mention in our discussions of the Imperial Forum. Given the minimal archaeological and textual record, this is not surprising. Within a century of its Domitianic construction, the horrea had all but burned to the ground. When the Basilica of Maxentius was constructed in the early fourth century, the horrea disappeared from view entirely. It would seem that Rome’s emporium of herbs and spices from across the Empire has little to tell us. But is that the whole story? Recent excavations beneath the Basilica have uncovered new details about the warehouse’s internal space. If we consider the visual literacy of Rome’s population, we can situate the horrea within an architectural typology and begin to uncover its presence within the city. And adopting a post-colonial lens both reconstructs the social experience of this site and interrogates its post-classical scholarly reception. Many locations across the Roman world possess an equally fragmentary record. Yet many also enjoy considerably more attention in the literature than the Horrea Piperataria. This paper will reveal the horrea as a site of multicultural exchange and social identity in a diverse ancient city. In this process, it will also question whether eurocentrism incorrectly shaped – or rather diminished – our view of the Horrea Piperataria as being of minimal importance in the imperial power landscape.
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ItemDeveloping Museum to Museum Cultural Engagement Between Australia and Timor Leste(Swinburne Press, 2022-01-12)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableModelling decay in stone heritage using Machine Learning(National Gallery, University College London and Imperial College London, 2022)
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ItemNo Preview AvailableJames Stirling, first governor of Western Australia and imperial investor(Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery Project in collaboration with National Centre for Biography, 2021-03-18)Admiral James Stirling arrived on Noongar land in 1829 to proclaim it the British colony of Western Australia. Officially, he represented the British government. Unofficially, he represented the commercial interests of his family, a collection of British naval officers, East India Company administrators and directors, imperial merchants, shipping magnates, their wives and their descendants. Stirling pursued the colony as an investment opportunity, first with the Colonial Office and then through land selections, the manipulation of market conditions and private capital-raising schemes. This pursuit was shaped by three, interrelated social phenomena. Firstly, numerous strands of his family had become wealthy through transatlantic and Caribbean slavery. Secondly, British government incentives for establishing a colony on the western side of Australia strengthened at the same time as it was shifting away from the ‘slave colonies’ and certain forms of unfree labour. And third, this shift placed pressure on the Stirling family to secure new income streams to maintain affluence and power. This seminar will explore these dynamics and ask: in what ways does the intergenerational biographical method expand and enliven, or alternatively risk reducing, our understanding of the legacies of British slavery in the Australian settler colonies?
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ItemNo Preview AvailableNational Biographies and Transnational Lives: legacies of British slavery across the empire(Western Australian Legacies of British Slavery Project in collaboration with National Centre for Biography, 2021-04-01)Britain’s involvement in the slave trade and slavery affected the lives and fortunes of many nineteenth-century immigrants to the Australian colonies. Some transferred capital directly from plantation economies to newly burgeoning settler colonial societies; for others, the connections were more diffuse. As historians have shown, the Australian colonies provided individual immigrants with an opportunity to refashion their existing reputations or even create them afresh. At the same time, collective colonial and settler identities were asserted in cultural, social, economic and political fora. This seminar explores dictionaries of biography as sites for the mutual constitution of individual and national (or colonial) identities. Alongside a consideration of how slavery and the slavery business feature in the Australian Dictionary of Biography and the Biographical Dictionary of Western Australians, it explores how Britain and its other settler colonies remembered, forgot, or suppressed, the legacies of British slavery in their national biographical dictionaries.
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ItemPGAV Factsheet: Integrating climate change into disaster preparedness planning(University of Melbourne, 2021)This Fact Sheet will assist galleries to plan for and respond to the impacts of climate change. It provides a 5 step approach to prepare for the increased likelihood of disasters that have not previously posed a serious threat, and a useful table to assist galleries to mitigate the impacts of climate change on their operations and collections.
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ItemEliciting group judgements about replicability: A technical implementation of the IDEA Protocol(Hawaii International Conference on System Sciences, 2021-01-01)In recent years there has been increased interest in replicating prior research. One of the biggest challenges to assessing replicability is the cost in resources and time that it takes to repeat studies. Thus there is an impetus to develop rapid elicitation protocols that can, in a practical manner, estimate the likelihood that research findings will successfully replicate. We employ a novel implementation of the IDEA ('Investigate', 'Discuss', 'Estimate' and 'Aggregate) protocol, realised through the repliCATS platform. The repliCATS platform is designed to scalably elicit expert opinion about replicability of social and behavioural science research. The IDEA protocol provides a structured methodology for eliciting judgements and reasoning from groups. This paper describes the repliCATS platform as a multi-user cloud-based software platform featuring (1) a technical implementation of the IDEA protocol for eliciting expert opinion on research replicability, (2) capture of consent and demographic data, (3) on-line training on replication concepts, and (4) exporting of completed judgements. The platform has, to date, evaluated 3432 social and behavioural science research claims from 637 participants.
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ItemThe Ethics of Multiplayer Game Design and Community Management(ACM, 2021-05)Game industry professionals are frequently implementing new methods of addressing ethical issues related to in-game toxicity and disruptive player behaviours associated with online multiplayer games. However, academic work on these behaviours tends to focus on the perspectives of players rather than the industry. To fully understand the ethics of multiplayer games and promote ethical design, we must examine the challenges facing those designing multiplayer games through an ethical lens. To this end, this paper presents a reflexive thematic analysis of 21 in-depth interviews with games industry professionals on their ethical views and experiences in game design and community management. We identify a number of tensions involved in making ethics-related design decisions for divided player communities alongside current game design practices that are concerned with functionality, revenue and entertainment. We then put forward a set of design considerations for integrating ethics into multiplayer game design.