Five Words That Shaped Australia

La Trobe's award-winning novelist and academic Ilka Tampke joins Stella Prize-winning author and creative writing lecturer Dr Carrie Tiffany to celebrate the launch of Ilka's latest novel, How to Love the World. Together they discuss motherhood and mythology, forests and family life, nature, healing, and the dark heart of memory. Recorded 27th May, 2026.

What if we could change our future by rewriting our pasts? In this session I was privileged to host a discussion with author Amitav Ghosh and researcher Luke Kemp, to navigate the present means to understand the past. In The Nutmeg’s Curse: Parables for a Planet in Crisis and Wild Fictions, Amitav considers human history through our relationship with the environment, while Luke retells the collapse of empires to find solutions for our current existential crises in Goliath’s Curse: The History and Future of Societal Collapse. Recorded 22nd May, 2026.

Author and creative writing lecturer Dr Catherine Padmore talks with two of La Trobe's researchers and writers: novelist Dr Christine Balint and literary scholar Dr Claire Knowles. Together they explore the challenges, discoveries, and joys of writing about real historical women — figures who achieved extraordinary things, but whose stories required careful investigation and reimagining to be told for a modern audience. Recorded 28th April, 2025.

In this important and engaging conversation Professor Julie Andrews discusses her new book, Where Are All the Community? Aboriginal Melbourne Revisited, published by La Trobe University Press, an imprint of Black Inc. Professor Andrews is in conversation with Professor of History at La Trobe University, Kat Ellinghaus. Recorded 25th March, 2025.

La Trobe University lecturers Sarah James from Sociology and Juliane Roemhild from English discuss the practise of shared reading, a group experience in which a facilitator can guide a discussion using a written text, to bond a group and enhance a therapeutic discussion.

In 2024 acclaimed Australian writer and La Trobe University Adjunct Research Fellow Christos Tsiolkas was one of the judges of the Melbourne Prize for Literature Writers Prize. This prize is awarded to an essay demonstrating outstanding originality, literary merit, and creative freshness. The prize was won by Dr Carrie Tiffany, lecturer in English and Creative Writing at La Trobe University, with Dr Judith Bishop, Tracey Banivanua Mar Fellow in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences at La Trobe University, winning the civic choice award. In this discussion Christos, Judith and Carrie discuss the essay form. Can the essay be fresh? What makes a great essay and, why do they write them? They discuss Carrie’s essay – ‘Seven Snakes,’ published in Meanjin, Judith’s essay, ‘History repeats (A tale of artificial noses),’ published on the Melbourne Prize website and Christos’ most recent essay, ‘Politics is Not Religion,’ published in The Monthly.

Award-winning science journalist and former Vice-Chancellor’s Fellow at La Trobe University, Elizabeth Finkel, discusses her latest book, Prove It: A Scientific Guide for the Post-Truth Era, with science educator and La Trobe’s own Douglas Bair. They delve into the role and function of the scientific method in a post-truth era, exploring how evidence-based theories underpin our legal, academic, and political institutions, and public conversations. Recorded 19th August, 2025.

Dr Alexis Harley and Dr Tom Ford like to yabber – that’s a Wurundjeri Woi-Wurrung word – and they are both fascinated by the etymologies and lives of the words we use. From Rose Hill’s claim on the Rosella, to the Darug word corrobboree, to the Dumb and Dumber confusion between Austria and Australia, we discover the bizarre and fascinating stories of five words that shaped our country.

Author and creative writing lecturer Catherine Padmore engages in conversation with two La Trobe postgraduate researchers and writers: Tara Calaby, whose debut novel was part of her PhD project and published to acclaim two years ago; and Louise Falconer, who recently submitted her PhD and passed with flying colours, and is on the board of Writers Victoria, supporting emerging writers. All three speakers have had great success in publishing short fiction and nonfiction in a range of media and genres and taking different paths to creating a writing life. Recorded on 25th March, 2025.

The Sandhurst Mechanics' Institute opened in 1854 and for more than fifty years held the largest book collection in Bendigo. In this lively conversation, Claire Knowles and Alexis Harley explore what the Mechanics’ Institute reveals about the history of reading and writing in the Goldfields. From handwritten marginalia to the suspiciously pristine pages of a 150-year-old book of verse, and from complex, ambitious literature to 1860s advertising jingles, this session uncovers the archival clues and newspaper records that tell us what readers and writers were up to during this formative stage of Bendigo’s history. The speakers are Claire Knowles, who has published three books on Romantic-era poetry and is the former president of the Romantic Studies Association of Australasia, joined by Alexis Harley, a lecturer at La Trobe University who researches the intersections of 19th-century literature and the history of science in colonial contexts. Recorded on 31st July, 2025.