'Thoughts on the Beyond' Public Lecture Series

Professor Terry Flew

Professor of Digital Communication and Culture, Media and Communications, School of Art, Communication & English, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, University of Sydney

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Event details

20 August 2025, 12pm AEST (check your local time)

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Summary

In this presentation, Professor Flew will consider ways in which the rapidly growing use of Artificial Intelligence (AI)  is transforming how we think about communications as both a social practice and as an academic field.

He will give particular attention to three issues:

• The changing status of machines as communications actors and not simply platforms for human communication;
• The implications for trust from a growing reliance upon automated information and decision-making systems;
• and how global communications as a field of study may be challenged by the changing relationship between data and geopolitics.

Professor Gillian Oliver

Department of Human Centred Computing, Monash University, Australia

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Event details

19 November 2025, 3pm AEDT (check your local time)

Summary

Over the past 50 years the educational landscape for the information professions in Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand has changed dramatically, but not always in the ways in which might have been expected. In this talk I will reflect on those changes, with particular emphasis on archival science and recordkeeping education, and consider our current situation. Our challenge is to ensure that graduates have the knowledge, skills and expertise to address the complexities of managing information not only in today’s networked environment, but the confidence and ability to adapt to an unknown and unpredictable future

Professor Emerita Dianne Oberg

University of Alberta, Library and
Information Science, Canada

Summary

The 2024 IFLA Information Futures Summit focused on the theme of partnerships:

• partnering with each other
• partnering with communities
• partnering with external stakeholders.

Faculty members in teacher librarianship at the Charles Sturt School of Information and Communication Studies (Australia) and faculty members at the University of Alberta (Canada) have been collaborating with each other, as partners and friends, for over thirty years.

The resulting information transfer and transformation has enriched and enhanced teacher librarianship in both countries in:

• the theory and practice of teacher librarianship
• the delivery of school library education
• research into the role of principal in information literate school communities.

This talk describes the synergistic nature of that relationship and explores what it takes to build and maintain such a relationship.

Lecture recording

Distinguished Professor Gary Marchionini

University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
School of Information and Library
Science, USA

Summary

Library and Information Science is a dynamic field that continues to evolve as information continues to grow in importance and abundance to individuals and society. This talk will examine some of the trends in LIS over the past century and focus on the opportunities and challenges the field faces today and in the near future.

• Recognition of the many contributions of librarians and information scientists to humanity’s progress and trend trends such as the broadening of our field in both theory and practice
• attention to the human-information technology triad
• new conceptions of information and information interaction, globalisation and the field’s identity
• changes in educational practice will be considered.

Lecture recording