Corners, squares and urban identities: perceptions, attitudes and values

In February 2000, the new Victorian Labor Government announced that they were removing the western shard from Lab Architecture Studio's winning Melbourne Federation Square design. then under construction. The specific 'contested terrain' at the intersection of Flinders Street and Swanston Street Walk. Melbourne, allows the exploration of the politics of place construction over time, through an examination of Young and Jackson's Hotel [1861]. St Paul's Cathedral [1886). Flinders Street Station [1912]. the Westin Hotel [1999) and Federation Square. This site brings together architectural and social history, questions public space and identity, and looks at Melburnian's perceptions, attitudes and values. It further demonstrates that the fragmentation of the professions, and fragmentary histories. lead to the preservation of 'bits' of architecture and the destruction of the urban/landscape context, jeopardizing the Identity of place.

Cultural orienteering: a map for Anthony Browne`s into the forest

Bullen and Parsons identify Anthony Browne's picture book Into the Forest as a re-gendered retelling of 'Little Red Riding Hood' that expresses recent assumptions about childhood, risk and the resources children need to survive in today's world. In Browne's version, the forest is the terrain in which a young male protagonist imaginatively explores his anxiety about his father's unexplained absence.

Dreaming dreaming

These notes explore some of the background, the influences and pre-occupations at play in the construction of my short film Traum A Dream (Australia 6 minutes 2003) that was shown at the 2004 Double Dialogues Conference. This exercise thus places me in that terrain, that double dialogue between theory and practice. As both artist and commentator it also threatens to catch me hovering in that no-man’s land between the written word about the art and the artefact itself, judging my own folly.

Freedom and slavery: constructions of ideologies in illicit drugs treatment

Freedom, autonomy, enslavement and coercion have a multitude of meanings which are determined by the writer’s discipline background and intent, even more so in the area of illicit drugs’ policy and treatment. This paper proposes to begin to untangle the multiplicity of meanings which are attached to two contrasting forms of illicit drugs treatment, harm minimisation and abstinence-based treatments. Both treatment regimes lay claim to the high moral ground in this regard - freedom and autonomy are explicit terms used in the rhetoric of both. How this can best be understood and what sociologists can contribute to the debates about illicit drug treatments is the terrain this paper traverses. It does this by laying out the different meanings of the terms in social theory and then by trying to understand the ‘truth’ claims of treatment proponents and using a Foucauldian perspective to critique these claims.

Bilateral haptic teleoperation of an articulated track mobile robot

Teleoperation has been used in many applications, allowing a human operator to remotely control a robotic system in order to perform a particular task. Recently haptic teleoperation has focused mainly on improving performance in remote manipulation tasks, however the haptic approach offers similar advantages for teleoperative control of the motion of a mobile robot. This paper describes a prototype system designed to facilitate haptic teleoperation of an all-terrain, articulated track mobile robot. This system utilizes a multi-modal user interface intended to improve operator immersion, reduce operator overload and improve teleoperative task performance. The system architecture facilitates implementation of an application-specific haptic augmentation algorithm in order to improve operator performance in challenging real-world tasks. The contributions of this work can be categorized as the custom mobile platform, teleoperator interface and haptic augmentation strategy.

A haptically enabled low-cost reconnaissance platform for law enforcement

Traditionally, the control system of a modern teleoperated mobile robot consists of one or more two-dimensional joysticks placed on a control interface. While this simplistic interface allows an operator to remotely drive the platform, feedback is limited to visual information supplied by on-board cameras. Significant advances in the field of haptics have the potential to meaningfully enhance situational awareness of a remote robot. The focus of this research is the augmentation of Deakin University's OzBot trade MkIV mobile platform to include haptic control methodologies. Utilising the platform's inertial measurement unit, a remote operator has the ability to gain knowledge of the vehicle's operating performance and terrain while supplying a finer level of control to the drive motors. Our development of a generic multi-platform ActiveX allows the easy implementation of haptic force feedback to many computer based robot controllers. Furthermore, development of communication protocols has progressed with Joint Architecture for Unmanned Systems (JAUS) compliance in mind. The haptic force control algorithms are presented along with results highlighting the benefits of haptic operator feedback on the MklV OzBot trade chassis.

Reconstruction of megalake Chad using shuttle radar topographic mission data

In the 2,500,000 km² Lake Chad Basin in central Africa, the 2000 Shuttle Radar Topographic Mission (SRTM) data have been used to supplement the existing topographic data. SRTM data produce much sharper images of the region's topography and provide new insights into debates about the nature and extent of late Quaternary Lake Chad. This paper shows that the accuracy of SRTM30, the recently released 30 arc seconds topographic data from SRTM, largely surpasses that of previous global Digital Elevation Models (DEMs) available in the region. Using a GIS we identified from SRTM30 elevation data key features in the landscape topography providing further evidence for the existence of a Megalake Chad. The SRTM30 data corroborate the presence of two ancient shorelines associated with stillstands of the paleolake at the elevation of the Mayo Kebbi and Bahr el Ghazal spillovers. We found a general flattening of the topography in the region covered by Megalake Chad which is most likely the result of wave-cut action. The SRTM30 data show that the remains of the highest paleoshoreline have a constant elevation of 325 ± 5 m amsl. At its maximum extent, Megalake Chad had an area of about 340 000 km² (only 8% less than the present-day world's largest lake, the Caspian Sea). The SRTM30 data also revealed ancient drainage networks in the Sahara that lead to Megalake Chad. We compiled available 14C dates to constrain Holocene Megalake Chad events. The results presented in this paper have significant consequences for improving our knowledge of regional paleohydrology and continental climate change. This study is also the first step for a GIS-based reconstruction of late Quaternary paleohydrology in tropical Africa.

Simulating autonomous robot teams with Microsoft robotics studio

This paper presents an application of Microsoft Robotics Studio (MSRS) in which a team of six four wheel drive, ground based robots explore and map simulated terrain. The user has the ability to modify the terrain and assign destination objectives to the team while the simulation is running. The terrain is initially generated using a gray scale image, in which the intensity of each pixel in the image gives an altitude datum. The robots start with no knowledge of their surroundings, and map the terrain as they attempt to reach user-defined target objectives. The mapping process simulates the use of common sensory hardware to determine datum points, including provision for field of view, detection range, and measurement accuracy. If traversal of a mapped area is indicated by the users’ targeting commands, path planning heuristics developed for MSRS by the author in earlier work are used to determine an efficient series of waypoints to reach the objective. Mutability of terrain is also explored- the user is able to modify the terrain without stopping the simulation. This forces the robots to adapt to changing environmental conditions, and permits analysis of the robustness of mapping algorithms used when faced with a changing world.

Predictive distribution models and their application in wildlife conservation

Wildlife managers are often faced with the difficult task of determining the distribution of species, and their preferred habitats, at large spatial scales. This task is even more challenging when the species of concern is in low abundance and/or the terrain is largely inaccessible. Spatially explicit distribution models, derived from multivariate statistical analyses and implemented in a geographic information system (GIS), can be used to predict the distributions of species and their habitats, thus making them a useful conservation tool. We present two such models: one for a dasyurid, the Swamp Antechinus (Antechinus minimus), and the other for a ground-dwelling bird, the Rufous Bristlebird (Dasyornis broadbenti), both of which are rare species occurring in the coastal heathlands of south-western Victoria. Models were generated using generalized linear modelling (GLM) techniques with species presence or absence as the independent variable and a series of landscape variables derived from GIS layers and high-resolution imagery as the predictors. The most parsimonious model, based on the Akaike Information Criterion, for each species then was extrapolated spatially in a GIS. Probability of species presence was used as an index of habitat suitability. Because habitat fragmentation is thought to be one of the major threats to these species, an assessment of the spatial distribution of suitable habitat across the landscape is vital in prescribing management actions to prevent further habitat fragmentation.

Folate fortification : a case study of public health policy-making

Introducing Evidence Based Health Policy: Problems and Possibilities, Section 1: What is the Problem?, 1: Competing Rationalities: Evidence based Health Policy, 2: Beyond Two Communities, Section 2: What does Evidence Mean?, 3: Evidence based Medicine - The Medical Profession and Health Policy, 4: Mind The Gap: Assessing the Quality of Evidence for Public Health Problems, 5: Health Policy and Normative Analysis: Ethics, Evidence and Politics, 6: What is New in Health Information? Evidence for Health Consumers and Policy Making, 7: From Evidence based Medicine to Evidence based Public Health, Section 3: Policy Case Studies, 8: The Viagra Affair: Evidence as the Terrain for Competing Partners, 9: Folate Fortification: A Case Study of Public Health Policy-Making in a Food Regulation Setting, 10: The Supply and Safety of Blood and Blood Products - Evidence, Risk and Policy, 11: The Development of Nurse Practitioner Policy, 12: Creating Healthy Public Policy for Oral Health: How was the Evidence Used?, 13: Regulation of Traditional Chinese Medicine in Victoria, 14: The Victorian Primary Health Care Reforms: A Case Study of Evidence-based Policy Making, 15: Evidence-based Practice in the Australian Drug Policy Community, 16: Challenging the Evidence - Women's Health Policy in Australia, 17: Evidence and Aboriginal Health Policy, 18: The Limits to Technical Rationality in the Health Inequalities Policy Process, 19: Evidence-based policy: A Technocratic Wish in a Political World, Section 4: Is the transfer of evidence into policy possible?, 20: The Community Model of Research Transfer, 21: Getting Research Transfer into Policy and Practice in Maternity Care, 22: Improving the Research and Policy Partnership: An Agenda for Research Transfer and Governance, 23: Framing and Taming 'Wicked' Problems

A new environmental design : sustainable place making in postcolonial Australia

This paper seeks to expand on environmental design understood in purely
instrumentalist terms. It argues that current environmental emergencies in Austlalia and elsewhere are requiring alternative strategies of response, and proposes the terrain of poetic w'ork as offering new insights in the field of sustainability practice. lt draws upon two place-making projects to advance a theory of environmental design that is poetically guided.

Student support : bridging the gap between students and the university

Bangladesh introduced open and distance learning as a means of providing education for people in isolated and remote locations through the establishment of the Bangladesh Open University (BOU). The broad aim of the BOU is to provide flexible and needs-based education to those unable or not wishing to enter conventional educational institutions. The BOU is presently the only university in Bangladesh to provide mass education and also to provide continuing education and professional and technical education to support the existing educational system. The BOU has a mission that encompasses secondary and higher levels of education. BOU operates its programs through a centralised academic and administrative staff, and regional and local offices throughout Bangladesh that organise local tutorials and distribute information and materials. BOU has adult students in all parts of the country, and most of the students live in rural areas. They need support that is appropriate to their local circumstances. Using an interpretive approach, this research examines the support needs of students studying for the Secondary School Certificate and the Bachelor of Education, assesses the effectiveness of current support services and explores alternatives to the current system. The underlying assumption is that support needs to be appropriate to the country’s culture and circumstances, and useful and feasible from the perspectives of students, staff, administrators and senior university officials. To investigate the appropriate support for distance education students, this research was conducted in four sample regions. Two were selected from areas of sparse population where the terrain makes transport difficult and two from areas that are more densely populated and where transport is easier. A questionnaire survey and focus groups were conducted with students, focus groups with local staff and interviews with Regional Directors within the four sample regions. Interviews were also undertaken with central University senior staff to get their perspectives on current and future policies for student support.

Hyphenated Australia : putting intercultural identity on the conceptual map

Interculturality and intercultural identity is a local effect of the global movement and mixing of people, and those of intercultural identities constitute the fastest growing sector of the Australian population. In an age of globalisation and diversification, what does identity mean for those situated in-between governing notions of racial/ethnic formations, and how is intercultural identity experienced? For those informed by (at least) two cultures, what does multiculturalism, ethnicity and 'Australianness' mean, and where are these individuals positioned in relation to these structures? These questions have critical implications for the Australian nation. Within Australian discourses, interculturality and intercultural identity, in particular, has historically been excluded, rendered invisible. This dissertation is, therefore, one of facilitating visibility. Using the hyphens as a conceptual tool, I argue that in this age of accelerating globalisation the hyphens both makes visible and is made visible by interculturality. The hyphens is that grey and fluid site of intersection between structures of identity and is characterised by liminality - contestation, uncertainty, fundamentally ambivalence. Experiences of liminality, however, dissolve in any given time, opening up new terrain for creativity. Some of these emerging and creative forms of identity, as instigated by interculturality, are explored. Based on interviews with 20 daughters (and their mothers) from intercultural unions, this dissertation places intercultural identity on the Australian conceptual map and analyses the unique position occupied by those with an intercultural identity in their relationship with governing discursive formations of race/ethnicity, embodiment, nation and culture. In essence, the dissertation is concerned with examining the ways in which discursive identity structures intersect with subjective experience, and with the ways in which those with an intercultural identity negotiate those structures and their social relations. This examination raises the fundamental question: is the modernist notion of the material realities of individual lives reconcilable with the poststructural notion of identity as always located in discourse. This modernist/postmodernist tension permeates the dissertation.

Practising gender : the production of identity by school children

The thesis utilises ‘practice theory’ to argue that the self is not only an effect of social practices but also a technique for action and develops an alternative way of explicating and conceptualising the constitution of the self within the micro-practices of routine, everyday life. This is in contrast to a general tendency within ‘practice theory’, ‘constructionist’ and ‘discursive’ approaches towards a determinist conception of the self. The thesis explores this conceptual framework in fieldwork focussed on formation and production of gender-identity among young school children and offers a new perspective of gender-identity in the classroom. The thesis provides a fourfold contribution: (1) It provides insights into how in the classroom, children take up (conventional) gender differentiated conduct and dispositions in order to forge both their identity and the establishment of a social order based on gender. This gender order is not simply imposed on them by teachers but is actively constructed by the children. The thesis provides insights into how the children in the classroom seize and appropriate the practices of gender for their own ends. These ends, I argue, are the construction of their gender-identity, and the establishment and maintenance of a ‘matrix of intelligibility’. (2) It offers a close-up illustration of how gender construction is negotiated and contested between girls and boys. This is characterised as largely a struggle for enablement — the power to be and to do — rather than as a struggle of one gender over another. (3) It develops an analysis of classrooms as productive sites, as ‘complex strategical situations’ in which the participating agents — the teachers and students—deploy and utilise available resources in their ongoing construction of the world. This suggests that that the social world is not as unitary and totalising as ‘constraint perspectives’ within practice theory often imply. (4) It proposes methodological perspectives and strategies for researching empirically the day-to-day production of gender and for capturing that complex and often elusive process ‘in flight’. It shows the value of an ‘ascending analysis’, one that does not foreclose findings on the basis of a pre-existing theoretical position, and the rich potential of ‘flashpoints’ as a way of illuminating ongoing and often ‘unremarkable’ and therefore unnoticed practices of gender production. The theoretical terrain explored a range of theorists on the self not usually brought together, including Butler, Rose, Foucault, Giddens and Garfinkel and Schatzki. These theorists share in common the perspective that social practices rather than the agent or social totality are the ontological basis of the social world. It is argued that the self is constituted in its enactment and the thesis pursues Foucault’s (2002) question of how the self participates in its own subjectification. The empirical focus of the thesis examined the activities of children at school for insights into how they participated in the making of their gender-identity. The research addressed the questions: (1) To what extent do children construct their gender-identity and what kinds of encouragement do they receive for this? (2) To what extent did the children seem to be appropriating gender practices and inciting the making of gender-identity in the classroom? (3) To what extent can the classroom be viewed as a site of gender contestation and borderwork? Using the concept of ‘flashpoints’, — significant or poignant moments in the classroom — classroom activities were observed to catch gender-identity production ‘in flight’ and to describe how the children seize upon moments to make gender salient. Year Three children in five classrooms in two Victorian schools were observed during English communication and literacy lessons. Individual interviews with teachers in the participating schools and group interviews with the children from the classrooms were undertaken to amplify the observations. Much of the children’s behaviour can be interpreted as their efforts to make gender salient in social interactions. Gender-identity production and gender ‘border work’ (Thorne, 1993) and contestation appeared to be a major activity and preoccupation of the children, even in the face of teacher’s attempts to encourage a gender-neutral environment The children were often more active than the teachers in imposing the ‘gender agenda’ identified by Evans (1988). Overall, this thesis contributes to the development of the theory of subjectivity and identity formation. Social practices are not imposed and individuals seize upon social practices to further their own ends. It is through these routine, everyday activities that social practices are reproduced. The study provides an avenue for understanding the actions of children and the operation of gender power and border work within the classroom.

Crossing Bowen Street : mapping interventions in the classed subject

Synopsis: Crossing Bowen Street Crossing Bowen Street is an extended novel set in Melbourne, Australia. The protagonist, Meg Flanagan, is accepted to teachers' college. Meg is 24 years old and has worked, and lived out of home, since 17. Having completed her year 12 studies part time while working, she has applied to the Melbourne State College for a Bachelor of Education. Melbourne State College is subsequently 'amalgamated'A into Philip University, the original 19th century sandstone institution which borders MSC. Meg has worked as a medical secretary prior to commencing her studies. An only child, she is the first member of her family to go to university, indeed to finish high school. Tertiary study is exciting for Meg and the novel explores the psychic journey as well as the intellectual one, as Meg experiences challenges to the possibilities for her life and the trajectory along which she once assumed it would flow. The narrative is told through episodic and epistolary forms, with particular periods in Meg's cultural and academic life forming the focus, picking up the integral elements of her journey and examining the psychic context and action. Characters in the undergraduate chapters of the novel are somewhat transient, although very important to Meg's rapidly developing, changing sense of herself. The constant 'trying out' of ways of being and even lifestyles sees Meg losing old 'friendships' and making new, even temporary, ones all the time. This allows the opportunity for Meg to explore her feelings about connecting to others and the nature of her relationships. The Meg reflected back to her by others is of constant interest to her, particularly as she is frequently reminded that others see a very different Meg than she does. The novel commences at the outset of Meg's tertiary career, as she initially articulates the extent of her aspiration, of her sense of the possibility of her own life. Each vignette deals, chronologically, with an aspect of Meg's expanding sense of possibility, socially, emotionally, intellectually. Certain vignettes explore her relations with friends and acquaintances in the course, which in turn provide A In 1988, Federal Labor Minister for Education John Dawkins, devised a plan to end the streaming of Australian tertiary institutions and created what is called the Unified National System. This meant that colleges of advanced education and institutes of technology were either created universities in their own right, or more commonly, merged with an appropriate existing university. This process allows a fascinating insight into the class dimensions of hierarchies and stratifications. The need of universities and their members for status has been profoundly underscored. the background and context for her sexual relationships. That aspect of her developing subjectivity provides a marked contrast, which Meg uses as leverage, when set against her sense of herself as a scholar and her growing notion of entitlement, which allows her to 'choose', where previously she believed she had no choice; the choice is a scholarly career. Within all this, Meg discovers and is deeply empowered by certain political left, and feminist, discourses within the university community. She is equally dismayed and alienated by other feminist practices; her growing engagement with her own agency sees her quickly abandoning feminist subject positions previously dear to her, which served a particular purpose and are now superseded. This notion of feeling betrayed by the promise of a value system (or rather, its practitioners) will recur throughout the action of the novel, as Meg moves into an academic role, first as doctoral student and then as academic, seeking to live her values as practice and to remain true to what her trajectory has taught her. This is crystallised in the novel as the role played by the place she came from, and how that informs, and complicates, who she becomes. The novel seeks to explore the fundamental contradictions in doing so, through Meg's increasing awareness that the academy is not the harmonious, class aware institution she has idealised, but a world driven by status and hierarchies. This realisation must be reconciled in the light of Meg's anxieties about her working-class background. Meg's doctoral training at an elite university underscores her developing sense of what constitutes excellence and the role played by highly influential conservative institutions in maintaining social arrangements. As her academic career unfolds, the holding of a Cambridge PhD allows Meg opportunities to make change as certain privileges are afforded her by virtue of her Cambridge status. Yet it is this very notion that she seeks to challenge. Her growing passion for the State University of Victoria, an institution developed for the education of working-class people, informs her activism within the academy. Why are excellence and equity polarised? Why does the institution matter more than the scholarship? Why is so much practice within universities contrary to the values scholars often claim? These questions are explored through the dynamics of academic working life as student and later as a teacher at a university with an explicit equity agenda. The Start of the End (2003): The action commences on a late Friday after at SUV, when the Department of Communication & Cultural Studies has just been advised of Meg's promotion to Associate Professor. This vignette sees the initial soiree and celebrations and allows Meg to reflect on her experience. As her colleagues and friends are congratulating her, a particular student comes looking for Meg. It is clear that Angela Watson needs course advice particularly from Meg. Their discussion seems a straightforward one on the face of it, but it underscores many things; that Meg has come the full circle in her academic life, and what it is that her journey has really been about. The route to professorial appointment is considered, as is the source of Meg's greatest professional joy and fulfillment; is it scholarship, followed by leadership, in her discipline? It is knowing she has continued to speak and act to change the life chances of all students, wherever possible? Or is it the subtle distilling of both of these, along with the knowledge which emerges from the nexus of teaching and research. That scholarship, new knowledge, surely must be taking us somewhere specific in relation to others? The more we know, the more we can do...to what end? From this reflection, we see the action of the novel unfold. We return to this scene at the end of the novel, as Meg considers the trajectory of her life and its themes in her work. The novel ends as she is faced with the next challenge. Arrival (1989): Acceptance sees Meg as she is attempting to transform her life and create a new one. She has just been advised of her admission to an undergraduate Bachelor of Education program, at the major Melbourne teachers' college. Meg shares her rented home with her high school best friend, Anna, and her fiance, Jason, who appears to be superfluous in her life. Meg is aware he is a partner for who she used to be. We see Meg in her job as a medical secretary and this allows the mapping of Meg's sense of her own world, as she travels between home and work. This first stage of seeking her aspiration- to be an English teacher-evolves. As Meg considers the meaning of what she is about to do and how she knows it is right. This involves a consideration of what work means in our lives and how this is different for jobs according to how they are classed. Her relationship with the life she has known, the person she has been, is changing and this change is represented through her relationship with Jason. Meg's first day at teachers' college demonstrates that she is in a constant, often painful, dialogue with herself. The difficulties she encounters in making sense of the relation between her two 'lives' are thrown into sharp relief. The preparation for college sees Meg interrogating herself about how she can be different. Her initial experiences at the College resonate with her highest expectations of the life that awaits her, of the multiple possibilities currently being authored for her. Her first attendance at classes offers the opportunity to try out some of those possibilities, to test them against those she meets and to map the ways she could discover to 'be'. There is much tension and fear, but also endless excitement and these conflicting emotional states parallel and marble each other. It is on this day that she meets Jennifer Wren, her first real friend at university, who offers so many challenges to Meg. Their friendship involves a constant exhausting shift of subject positions, which Meg is able to look back on with affection in years to come. Going Bowling (1989): within a few weeks of commencing at university, Meg is socializing with some of her new friends, having neatly segmented her home and college lives. Meg has already realised that her friendships fall into separate groups; her friendship with Jennifer and the people Jennifer knows does not find its way into this group. They meet in the city to go bowling and have a meal. While Meg really enjoys these new people, already tensions are developing in relations between the group. Their unofficial leader, Rosemary Marshall, has a tendency to seek control and already resistance is showing. Rosemary particularly does not like Jennifer. Meg is enjoying her flirtation with Pete Danville, whom she has assumed to be gay. His very flattering attention has already developed Meg's confidence and stoked her ego, which has eroded in her stagnating relationship with Jason. Rosie has developed a crush on Pete and seems to take the flirtation with Meg personally. Dynamics in the group become slightly uncomfortable but Meg has grown quickly fond of her new friends, especially flamboyant Marina, another whom Rosemary seems to dislike. The discussions which occur during their evening deepen both the relationships and the tensions between them and draw lines which will determine the outcome of their various friendships. The Ball (1990): In the third year of her degree, much has happened to Meg. She is married to Jason, although she omits him from much of her psychic (and practical) life. Meg and her friends attend the Faculty's annual formal dinner dance. Meg has so far managed to balance the competitiveness which occurs between all of them, both academically and personally. The negotiation of her respective friendships with Jennifer and Marina requires a great deal of diplomacy; the subtext in this is very disturbing to Meg. What exactly is the conflict about? She can't be sure why they don't like each other; it could be Marina's smoking, or Jennifer's confidence to spare, but these things also annoy her, yet she does not fight with either girl as they do with each other. Rose has always insisted that the problem is Jennifer's private school background, but Marina went to a catholic girls' school, so what could the difference be? The ball is initially a happy occasion; the girls dress up and they dance and drink champagne together with the boys. But dynamics operating beneath the surface force their way up. Rosie is ready to force Pete to confront her continuing crush on him; Pete confronts Meg about their ongoing flirtation. Meg gives in and admits to herself for the first time that she does want to be with Pete. He is grown up and exciting and strong. He offers her something she has never had with Jason. Married less than a year, she pushes her husband out of her thoughts. The events of the ball force Meg to confront the differences between all her friends and the discomfort this affords everyone. Rosie's continued need for control over the group is acknowledged. Future Present (1991): Meg lives in Carlton with Pete. This is the busiest year thus far in her academic career and the financial, academic and emotional pressure is showing. This vignette gives us the range of Meg's academic activities and the way her life has fallen since the events at the ball eight months earlier. We see Meg grappling with her own evaluation of the changes in her 'way of being'; trying on different ways of living that she has idealised and finding them just as wanting as the last. Meg faces some key existential questions in this vignette and seeks answers which she finally discovers only she can give. Her relationship with Pete, the values and goals they share (and don't share) are thrown into sharp relief and provide a touchstone for the clearer determination of Meg's aspiration and future. Her relationship with various female friends is also revisited and this offers insight into Meg's constant checking of herself against idealised female templates. There is a crisis of identity and strength which constitutes an important fork in Meg's road. Beyond (1992): Beyond sees Meg determinedly seeking ways she can progress towards her goal, while still constantly checking against herself that postgraduate study (let alone a scholarly life) is available to her. We accompany Meg as she seeks and locates the academic path she wants; this is the backdrop for her further psychic exploration of the women who intimidate yet fascinate her, particularly Heloise Waul, who is a significant influence through Meg's postgraduate career. The sites in which Meg's personal struggles manifest are highlighted in this vignette, particularly in terms of dress and cultural pursuit. The conversations between Meg and Heloise also allow an exploration of the feminist politics of that milieu and the class tensions which operate tacitly within those politics. Bound to the Caucus (1992); Meg has now nearly completed her undergraduate degree and has been active for some time in university life and student politics. Her feminist and socialist education is well advanced. Bound to the Caucus shows us Meg in her student politics world for the first time, where the segue of her activism and academic life have taken her. Meg has found female friends who understand that part of her which struggles with inadequacy, although at this point in the novel this common struggle is not well understood or articulated. It is in this vignette that Meg admits her growing attraction for a Liberal student activist, Stuart Noble; this proscribed liaison raises many questions about values and aspiration, as well as the dominant sexual politics of the time and place. Bound to the Caucus also offers insight into the student activism occurring at universities like Philip in the early 1990s. Divergence (1993): Set in 1993, Meg is now in the early weeks of her honours program, although she has been at work on her thesis on the poet William Blake for some months. Living unhappily in a share household near the University, her relationship with Stuart Noble continues to develop, reaching a crisis point in this period. These events occur in the context of Meg's activist career in the Student Left, particularly as she encounters issues of identity around her class, feminism and difference amongst Left women. While Meg fights these battles passionately in an intense milieu, she considers them emotionally in terms of her changing sense of herself. Meg is increasingly aware that the personal impact of her class is changing for her. Additionally, she explores her relation with a 'boyfriend' of right wing political affiliation; Meg comes to recognise that this relationship is undermining her sense of herself in a way that her relationships with women in the left previously did. Honour Roll (1993): Meg is now undertaking honours and this vignette opens with Meg seeing the honours coordinator, Professor Michaela Moore, who approximates all those apparently middle-class traits to which Meg has such a push-pull relation. We see the return of a chapter of the honours thesis, discussion of the content and the constantly shifting subject positions these experiences offer Meg. This vignette also directly introduces Agnes. Mia and Agnes meet Meg after her supervision and this conversation allows very distinct if tacit class themes to develop. Meg has warmed quickly to Agnes, who is unlike anyone she has known; they have much in common in relation to their work and this binds them. Mia continually presents a viewpoint which irritates Meg, in relation to entitlement: to academic life, to funding, even to questioning how these things are enabled. Honour Roll allows us to see Meg's flourishing theoretical and intellectual life and its role in assisting her emotionally as she re-frames the same conundrums that previously constituted obstacles. The Cusp (1993): Meg's developing friendship with Agnes offers her enormous insights into difference and her developing sense of self and aspiration. While the girls come from diametrical backgrounds, they are united by their passion for their research and scholarly work. Meg is increasingly self-conscious through their discussions in terms of how she has seen herself and allowed herself to dream and seek. Cusp is set at the end of the honours year, prior to the release of results. Meg and Agnes explore their feelings about academia and this leads to discussions of purpose and the role of class within that. This vignette also documents Meg's growing social confidence and those aspects of herself which have become so sure to her, that she no longer considers them at all. Whom (1996): [Not included in this abridged edition]. Set at Cambridge, two thirds into Meg's doctorate, Whom shows Meg in the mental space which will take her back to Melbourne and the State University of Victoria. Having risen to the challenge of doctoral study, she is confronted now by deeper demons, and the need to explore and challenge them in the ambivalent context of Cambridge, which so excites her still, but which has proved empty of the profoundly held higher ideals she expected to see reflected. Set in the midst of Meg's doctoral study, this vignette is dramatically abridged in the submission novel. The importance of Whom lies in its concern with Meg's rapidly shifting sense of herself and her own scholarly subjectivity and the changes to these that the culture of Cambridge has wrought. By the second year of her PhD Meg is crystal clear about her goals and decides to spend the long break at home, rather than travelling, because she wishes to 'touch base' with her future. The action described segues into that in Courting the Enemy. Whom describes Meg's ambivalent and contradictory but passionate feelings about Cambridge. Whom demonstrates Meg's increasing anger at the status and privilege to which her education now automatically admits her, and her need to find some sort of stasis and safety in her emotional life. In this vignette, Meg meets her life partner, Jeremy McCallum (I have intentionally reduced the attention in the novel to Meg's romantic life as she matures into her career). Courting the Enemy (late 1990s): By this time, Meg is a senior lecturer in English at the State University of Victoria, which was established in the nineteenth century as the Worker's College. This vignette starts with Meg's attendance at a University Committee which is considering a transformation in relation to equity in admissions policy. Meg was drawn to SUV because of its transparent and determined commitment to educate the children of working-class people. An attack on the equity admission policy of her university galvanizes Meg and some of her colleagues. The action of the vignette considers the role of the scholar, and of such an institution as SUV, in the light of daily academic life. This vignette is primary in its demonstration of the themes of the novel. In the unabridged version, I took the opportunity to illustrate some of the vast range of administrative, intellectual and even physical demands on a senior scholar in the routine of academic life. In placing Meg in this context, I sought to highlight how a scholar of her values and commitment makes sense of the constantly shifting terrain of her working world and how this continually informs her practice. This vignette is also significant for its retrospective description of Meg's employment at SUV some years earlier. Locus: (1995). This piece of writing stands apart from the rest of the novel. I wished to write in a reflective voice, which might be from Meg's journal, were it not in the (omniscient) third person, in order to consider the headspace and meaning-making which occurs as Meg settles into Cambridge, and the lifestyle her situation allows her. Locus is a deeper engagement with Meg's sense of her identity. It considers the impact on her of the physical journeys she must make to match those of her psyche. These are thoughts too personal for a letter, even to Anna. Meg is exploring her ever shifting self and the growth in her self-belief allows her to explore what is rage; that she was bounded by illusions about her worth. Locus seeks to allow some context for Meg's anger at the role Cambridge plays. I seek to create the space in which Meg's dawning self understanding will lead her to her next, driven, purpose. Letters: throughout the novel letters are used to reveal and inform Meg's relationship with her family. This is an intentional device to distance the birth family in an attempt to blur and muddy an assessment of Meg's class through traditional measures. The letters between Meg and Aunty Jean particularly reveal much of the classed emotional antecedents of Meg's life. There are also letters exchanged with Meg's high school best friend, Anna, who has moved to the country and a very different lifestyle. Meg writes to Anna often, using the acceptance she feels in the friendship and her sense that Anna understands her, to touchstone her own emotional growth. Formal letters from institutions ring changes in settings and mark significant points in the geographical and academic trajectory of the character. All the letters serve to introduce time and event changes consistent with the episodic style of the narrative.