Members and guests are invited to join us for the annual Christmas Dinner and Lecture.

Wednesday 4 December. Note a new venue: The Pickled Pear at The University Club, 38a Dobson Road, UTAS, located opposite the Engineering Faculty – ample parking, disability parking and access.

The formalities and meal commence at 6.00 pm, but please arrive earlier for a convivial drink and chat.

Please fill in and return the acceptance form to admin@rst.org.au before 13 November. Download the acceptance form using this link. Cost is $75 per person.

The lecture to be given by Dr Hanne Nielsen, Senior Lecturer in Antarctic Law and Governance, UTAS, is entitled:

“Antarctica and Popular Culture”

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Dr Hanne Nielsen is known for her research on representations of Antarctica in culture and the arts, particularly in literature and media. She has a background in Antarctic Studies and has explored how Antarctica is depicted in various narratives, focusing on the intersection of polar history, gender, and cultural studies.

Dr Nielsen has also been an advocate for women in Antarctic research, highlighting the roles of women in polar expeditions and science. Her work contributes to understanding how perceptions of Antarctica have shaped public and scientific discourses, especially in relation to environmental change and geopolitics.

Join us for an exciting PhD Showcase, where emerging experts will present their research and innovative ideas. This event highlights the work of future leaders in academia, offering cutting-edge insights into a wide range of fields. All RST members, their guests, and the public are welcome.

Where: Geology Lecture Theatre, UTAS, Sandy Bay Campus on Sunday 6 October 2024.

Time: 3.30pm for pre-lecture drinks, 4pm for the lecture.

To assist with organization, please use this link to ensure a seat.

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Our 2023 PhD medallist, Dr Tobias Stål will start proceedings and be followed by postdoctoral Antarctic scholar, Dr Katie Marx, discuss her current research projects.

Dr Tobias Stål – Deep Antarctica-Exploring Earth Under the Ice

Tobias Stål is a geophysicist with backgrounds in geology, art, and engineering. He is currently a research fellow at the Australian Centre for Excellence in Antarctic Science at the University of Tasmania. He focuses on innovative approaches to understanding our planet using computational methods and information theory.

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The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to its September 2024 Public Lecture by guest speaker Dr Matthew Cracknell. All RST members, their guests, and the public are welcome.

Where: Geology Lecture Theatre, UTAS, Sandy Bay Campus on Sunday 1 September, 2024 for the talk.

Time: 3.30pm for pre-lecture drinks, 4pm for the lecture.

Join us for an enlightening journey into the world of Artificial Intelligence, where innovation meets possibility. As Artificial Intelligence (AI) rapidly transforms industries, from healthcare to finance, and even creative arts, understanding its potential is more critical than ever. This talk will explore how AI is reshaping our world, driving progress, and challenging us to think differently about the future. Dr Matthew Cracknell aims to shed light on the profound impact of AI on both society and the scientific community. As AI continues to advance at an unprecedented pace, understanding its implications becomes increasingly crucial.

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Don’t miss this opportunity to dive into the cutting-edge of technology and discover the advancements and ethical considerations surrounding AI and our world. Click here to register.

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Dr Matthew Cracknell is a Senior Lecturer in Geodata Analytics for the Discipline of Earth Sciences and the Centre for Ore Deposit and Earth Sciences (CODES) at UTas. Prior to his current position, he held many short-term research and teaching positions at CODES, the Antarctic Climate & Ecosystems Cooperative Research Centre (ACE CRC) and the School of Humanities, University of Tasmania. He also currently leads the CODES Research Program for Geophysics and computational geosciences.

Matthew received a BSc (Hons) in geophysics in 2009 and a PhD in Computational Geophysics in 2014, both from UTas. Before entering academia he was employed as a consultant geoscientist and GIS analyst for a variety of public and private bodies.

The Royal Society of Tasmania invites you to its August 2024 Public Lecture by guest speaker Heather Sculthorpe, CEO of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre. All RST members, their guests, and the public are welcome.

Where: Piyura kitina/Risdon Cove Aboriginal Land on Sunday 4 August, 2024 for the talk.

The event begins at 3.30pm with refreshments and an introduction to piyura kitina.

The talk by Heather Sculthorpe, CEO of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre, will begin at 4:00pm..

Heather Sculthorpe is the outgoing long-term CEO of the Tasmanian Aboriginal Centre (TAC). She has an Arts degree and an Honours degree in Law from the University of Tasmania; a graduate Diploma of Environmental Management and is a Graduate of the Australian Institute of Company Directors. She has been involved in the campaigns of the TAC since the 1970s and has unique perspectives on the challenges facing the organisation and community today.

Our guest speaker for June is international consultant and geology expert John K Davidson who will speak on Tasmania and Revival of Continental Drift.

This free lecture concerns the history of human recognition of the movement of the Earth’s continents, now referred to as ‘continental drift’. It focusses on the last 4,000 years of recorded recognition of the Drift processes, the last one millionth of the age of the Earth.

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The lecture is scheduled for Sunday 2 June 2024.

Please join us for the occasion. Drinks in the foyer of the Earth Sciences Building UTAS from 3.30pm, with the lecture to follow in the Geology Lecture Theatre beginning at 4pm.

Please click this link to register your attendance. Details of the venue are provided in the link. Members and guests are welcome to this free lecture.

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John says of his talk that “the Earth was formed over four billion years ago and has evolved by three principal evolutions, Continental Drift as the ‘boats’, Plants and Animals as the ‘passengers’ that travelled through the Climatic Zones and evolved under the influence of glaciations.”

Most geologists assign the discovery of Continental Drift to Alfred Wegener in the early twentieth century, but the Minoans could ‘map’ the stars and sail from Crete to the mouths of the Nile River, 4,000 years ago.

The first mapped, movement of continents is seen in the reproduction of Eratosthenes’ of c.220BCE, followed by Ortelius’ 1596 map, then via geological and botanical advances and retreats until Professor S W Carey’s cartographically accurate map presented in Hobart in 1956, which put Continental Drift beyond doubt.

The major steps on this path from the Ancient Greeks to ‘get the Drift’ include a disproportionate number of visitors to Tasmania including the botanist Labillardiere in 1793, Charles Darwin the geologist in 1831, Joseph Dalton Hooker the botanist from 1839 and then ‘the locals’, the most recent being a lecture two months ago to the Royal Society by Dr Keith Corbett.

From this firmer historical basis, John will propose a pulsing Earth with a low but significant rate of expansion, contrary to the current paradigm of Plate Tectonics, an interpretation of Carey’s 1956, New Global Tectonics.

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John Davidson graduated at the end of 1969 with a first class Honours Degree in Geology. He joined Esso Australia in Sydney the following January and attended Exxon’s structural geology course in 1972 during which he was asked to invite Professor Carey to Houston and to accompany him to the second global conference on Continental Drift at Princeton. Prof. Carey introduced him to Lewis Weeks who used data Carey sketched for him when Carey held John Rogers’ Chair at Yale in 1960. It was an opportunity to meet Weeks and other earliest adopters of Prof’s 1956 Hobart Symposium.

 In 1974-75 John conducted Exxon’s corporate 3-week structural geology twice a year in the field from West Texas to the Canadian Rockies. He  had four years in London and a year as project leader of Exmouth Plateau where he had the Scarborough gas field drilled. He left Exxon in 1980 and commenced a 40 year career of worldwide consulting on the detailed application of his undergraduate structural geology studies under Prof. Carey. He conducted a North Sea based oil exploration course in the field, within the section William Smith introduced in 1815. 

Keith Corbett, educated at the University of Tasmania, has spent most of his working life in the mountains of Tasmania. In a distinguished career of over 60 years as a field geologist Keith was awarded the WH Twelvetrees Medal for contributions to Tasmanian geology in 2010, and a Medal of the Order of Australia in 2023.

In this “Child of Gondwana” lecture Keith describes the geological makeup of Tasmania, explaining how the unique geology of the island state came to be created. Tasmania has a wonderful diversity of rocks and is a veritable textbook of geological time and Keith’s lecture will assist our understanding and appreciation of our deep history.

The ICC has issued arrest warrants for Vladimir Putin and others in relation to alleged war crimes in Ukraine and is undertaking an ongoing investigation into the situation in Palestine, including in Gaza. Prof McCormack explains how the ICC has jurisdiction in Ukraine despite the fact that neither Russia nor Ukraine are States Parties to the Rome Statute and in Palestine, despite the fact that Israel is now a State Party. He discusses the likely role of the ICC in relation to the war in Ukraine and in Gaza including the prospects for bringing Vladimir Putin to trial in The Hague.

Tim McCormack is Professor of International Law at the University of Tasmania and the Special Adviser on War Crimes to the Prosecutor of the International Criminal Court in The Hague. He has held prestigious positions including as the Charles H Stockton Distinguished Scholar-in-Residence at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island (2015–16) and James Barr Ames Visiting Professor at Harvard Law School (2016 and 2020).