Home is where the art is

USC, Tom Palmer

April 21, 2021

Artist Jordyn Burnett's home is a world of expressionism, where portraits of the human body abound.

From bed linen to fashion: eco-designer gives fabric a second life

USC, Louise Nilsson

April 20, 2021

It all started when she fell in love with a dress. It was a vintage Laura Ashley from an American reseller, made of a floral ‘80s fabric with big puffy sleeves. Jolie Femme founder Isabelle Campbell said it was this dress which inspired her to create her own clothes. “When I received the dress...

PNG hospitals now a ‘breeding ground’ for COVID

UTS, Hugh McClure

April 13, 2021

Coronavirus cases are surging in the Pacific nation as overwhelmed hospitals are no longer able to isolate and treat patients effectively.

Democracy’s Watchdogs’ student award

Democracy's Watchdogs, Bill Birnbauer

April 6, 2021

Student prize available for investigative reporting

Standing sentinel: The vanishing giants of the Central Highlands

University of Melbourne, Amalyah Hart

April 16, 2021

The tree looms above us. The air smells and tastes like eucalyptus, sharp and full. Everyone is silent, as people often are when staring at giant things. The Kalatha Giant is a monumental mountain ash that lives in the valley after which she is named, up in the Central Highlands of Victoria near a town called Toolangi. Indigenous names pattern this landscape like topography on a map, laying meaning over place. Toolangi is aptly named after the local Taungurung word for "tall trees", and Kalatha is prodigiously tall, reaching 65 metres high and with a girth of 14 metres. It’s estimated she’s been growing for 400 years, even as the ecosystem that nourishes her has shrunk in size and density, as the shockwaves of white settlement have coursed across this landscape, upending a culture at least 60,000 years in the making. The young woman next to me, seemingly moved to rapture...

Young love puts girl behind bars: Somaliland’s juvenile justice system

Deakin University, Mona Liban

April 12, 2021

Mona Liban meets the children who are being locked up while government officials take their time trying to update Somaliland's youth detention system.

War Memorial at the centre of its own battle

University of Canberra, Laurence Kelson

December 15, 2020

When the Australian War Memorial was opened in 1941, then-Governor-General Lord Gowrie said people should come out of the memorial saying: “no more war, never again, no more war.” He believed the memorial should be a reflection on the devastating nature of war rather than a celebration of military firepower. Almost 80 years later, Lord Gowrie’s sentiment is at the heart of the debate about a proposed $500m dollar redevelopment of the AWM. The federal government has approved the plan because it wants to create space to acknowledge those who served in more recent conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan. Despite the high regard and popularity of the war memorial, the expansion has many critics. Reporter Laurence Kelson spoke with Michael McKernan, a renowned war historian and former deputy director at the AWM, about why the redevelopment is so polarising.

Being a little different

University of Canberra, Mitch Braithwaite

December 15, 2020

One of life’s challenges is being able to deal with adversity and to find solutions when things don’t turn out as we had hoped or planned. If you’re looking for the embodiment of that challenge, meet Soumil Sharma. He was born with pseudoachondroplasia, a form of dwarfism that affects one-in-100-thousand people. While the condition has side effects – Soumil stands at four-foot-three-inches – it has no impact on his intellectual capability. The 20-year-old is studying optometry and is also a competitive mountain bike rider who races against able-bodied athletes. Soumil told reporter Mitch Braithwaite, he will not let his disability get in the way of a fulfilling life.