The 'Voice' In Context: Constitutional Reform and Historical Legacies

Please join the Menzies Australia Institute and the Britain Australia Society for a special educative event ahead of the Australian Referendum on the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Voice to Parliament.

Our panel of speakers will feature leading academics and experts in conversation on the history of referenda in Australia, the legacies of other 'voices' around the world, and the impact of constitutional reform on Australian politics and policy.

Chaired by the Director of the Menzies Australia Institute, Dr Agnieszka Sobocinska, the panel discussion will feature a Q&A with the audience. The event will not advocate a particular perspective on the Referendum, but seek to place the Voice in its historical and political context as Australians prepare to vote in the first referendum in more than 20 years.

The evening will conclude with a drinks reception. We hope you can join us.

Panelists

Dr Crystal McKinnon

Crystal is an Amangu Yamatji historian, critical Indigenous studies scholar and community organiser. She is an Associate Professor of History, Law and Justice in the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne. Her work explores Indigenous sovereignty, justice and law, and Indigenous social movements, resistance, and protest. She is a member of the executive of the recently awarded Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence: Indigenous Futures, the first to be awarded to an all-Indigenous team. She also was recently awarded an ARC DECRA fellowship.

Crystal is the co-editor of Aboriginal History journal and her most recent work is published in The Cambridge World History of Genocide (2023), Sovereignty: A Global Perspective - British Academy (2022), Biography (2022), and Decolonization of Criminology and Justice (2023). She has previously worked in the Aboriginal community organisation and the community legal centre sectors, including at Victorian Aboriginal Legal Service (VALS) and Elizabeth Morgan House Aboriginal Women’s Service.

She is a co-founder and board of director of Pay the Rent and is currently also a director on the boards of VALS, the Aboriginal History Archive at Victoria University, and Koori Pride Victoria. She is an organiser with WAR (Vic) and she sits on the steering committees of the Law and Advocacy Centre for Women and the Dhadjowa Foundation.

Dr Anne Macduff

Anne is a researcher and senior lecturer at the ANU College of Law. Drawing upon a range of critical theories, Anne Macduff has a particular interest in exploring law and questions of identity, including race, gender, sexuality, and their intersectionality.

Recently, Anne's scholarship critically engages with contemporary Australian citizenship laws and how they shape understandings and the live experiences of national identity, belonging, and social cohesion. Her visit to King’s College London has been generously supported by the Australian Studies Institute Fellowship Program.

Dr Sarah Keenan

Raised on Giabal (GLABAL) and Jarowair (JAROWAHR) land in Toowoomba, ‘Australia’, Sarah is a Reader at Birkbeck Law School where she co-founded the Centre for Research on Race and Law. Her work sits at the intersection of legal and political thought, geography, feminist theory and postcolonial studies, and she is particularly interested in property.

Ethan Taylor

Ethan Taylor is a Warumungu (WARRAMÓNGÓ) man who is currently studying an MPhil in Political Theory at Oxford University on a Charlie Perkins and AGL Shaw Scholarship. His research examines the notion of Indigenous sovereignty in the context of modern liberal democracies. Prior to his study in the UK, Ethan attended the University of Melbourne where he obtained a Bachelor of Arts in Philosophy.