DESCRIPTION

Today we know a lot about the genetic basis of disease traits. For example more than 5,000 diseases, affecting more than 250 million people globally, are caused by changes in just one gene. These include conditions like cystic fibrosis, Huntington’s disease and sickle cell anaemia.

But until recently there has been a gap between diagnosis of a genetic disease and the promise of a cure. Now gene-editing tools like CRISPR are offering new hope.

This talk will illustrate how CRISPR can be used to fix disease-causing broken genes in adult cells. Controversially, in 2018, it was used to create gene-edited twin baby girls in the CRISPR baby scandal, opening a Pandora’s Box of the potential to create inheritable genetic changes.

The complex technical, ethical and social issues involved in gene-editing in embryos will be explored in this captivating talk.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Dr Hilary Sheppard is a Senior Lecturer in Stem Cell and Developmental Biology. Her interest in understanding how cells become different to one another has led to clinical applications of gene-editing. In one project, her team are working to enhance cancer therapies using a patient’s own immune cells. In another, they are working to develop gene-edited patient-specific skin sheets for people with a fragile skin condition called epidermolysis bullosa, also known as butterfly skin.

DESCRIPTION

Ten years ago anti-vaxxers were on the fringe. They were protesting governments’ initiatives to suppress early childhood communicable diseases, such as measles. Fast forward to 2021, and the Anti-Vaccination Movement (AVM) is likely to have a whole new lease of life as governments and multinational pharmaceutical companies roll out Covid-19 vaccines.

Marketing expert Dr Michael Lee has kept a ten-year watching brief of the AVM, monitoring blogs and news articles on the internet, as well as medical and social science journals. In this riveting talk Michael will outline the key reasons behind the anti-consumption of vaccines and how this could affect the world’s Covid-19 vaccination response.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Dr Michael Lee is an Associate Professor of Marketing. He has a background in marketing and industrial and organisational psychology. He has specific expertise in brand avoidance, consumer resistance, activism, and anti-consumption, and is the Director of The International Centre of Anti-Consumption Research. He is currently supervising PhD students working on projects such as religiously-motivated boycotting and anti-consumption in emerging economies.

DESCRIPTION

What’s it like to be in a minority and sitting at the meeting room table, one of very few female, let alone brown, faces?

In this talk, highly successful Pacific academic Dr Jemaima Tiatia-Seath relates how academia can be a lonely place at the top for a brown female leader as she navigates power at “the intersection of hypervisibility, invisibility, colourism and gender”.

Touching on real-life examples, Jemaima will talk candidly about institutional racism, sexism and feminism, as seen through her eyes.

If you want to learn how to have thick-skin, strengthen resilience and navigate challenging and complex environments, then this talk is for you.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Dr Jemaima Tiatia-Seath is Co-Head of School, Te Wānanga Waipapa, School of Māori Studies and Pacific Studies. She is of Samoan descent and has a public/population health background. She was recently appointed a member to the inaugural Mental Health and Wellbeing Commission and was one of six panellists on the New Zealand Government’s 2018 Mental Health and Addiction Inquiry.

DESCRIPTION

In the last few years New Zealand courts have been asked to rule on the propriety of various types of police scenario operations – undercover stings designed to generate physical and confessional evidence against criminal suspects where ordinary police investigations have been ineffective.

From police operatives planted among criminal gangs, fake police cellmates engaging murderers in secretly recorded conversations, and the luring of criminal suspects into fabricated crime organisations, deceptive policing is an effective, but arguably controversial, law enforcement tool in New Zealand today.

This talk will examine the criminal justice system’s response to significantly inculpatory evidence generated by surreptitious policing. Using real investigative examples, court cases and hypotheticals, it will ask what limits there should be, if any, on both the police use of undercover tactics and the willingness of judges to admit deceptively obtained evidence in criminal trials.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Associate Professor Scott Optican specialises in the law of evidence, criminal procedure and the New Zealand Bill of Rights. He is a regular media commentator on criminal justice issues and has been a consultant to the New Zealand Law Commission

DESCRIPTION

Terrorism is a complex issue and a common misconception is that terrorists are monsters. But, Professor Peter O’Connor argues, unfortunately we can’t just dismiss them as monsters – they are usually intensely ordinary, they resemble us.

They are people who take part in everyday activities that most of us consider banal – like queueing at the bus stop, raising children or getting sick. They have often led extremely conventional lives but commit terrible acts.

What you deem as terrorism also depends on where you sit on the political spectrum.

Who are the terrorists on the Gaza Strip? The Israelis or the Palestinians, or both?

From the power of love shown after the Christchurch terror attacks, to why you should use the story of The Three Billy Goats Gruff to teach children about terrorism, Peter will explain the intricacies of terrorism like you’ve never heard before.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Professor Peter O’Connor is the Director of the Centre for Arts and Social Transformation in the Faculty of Education and Social Work. He is an international expert in using theatre to teach in prisons, psychiatric hospitals, trauma zones and on sensitive issues, including family violence and suicide prevention. He has developed anti-terrorism education projects in New Zealand, Australia, Canada, Singapore and the UK.

DESCRIPTION

In the 1960s, hippies danced to Grateful Dead and took LSD to alter their minds. Today, LSD and other psychedelic drugs could hold the key to reducing our rates of depression, addiction and suicide.

Since the 1950s researchers have known psychedelic drugs could have medical applications, but moral panic and the ‘war on drugs’ stopped this from getting any traction. Now scientists believe psychedelics diminish activity in the default mode network area of our brains. This is where we maintain a sense of self and engage in self-reflection, and equally where addicts or people suffering from depression may ruminate on self-defeating stories of their lives.

This talk will describe the recent renaissance of psychedelic drug research and the pathway for psychedelics to be introduced as important new medicines.

SPEAKER’S BIO

Dr Suresh Muthukumaraswamy is a Neuro-Psycho-Pharmacologist and an expert in brain imaging. He returned to New Zealand in 2015 after taking part in ground-breaking studies of psychedelics in the United Kingdom, including producing the first images of the brain on LSD. His main research interests are in understanding how therapies alter brain activity and in developing methodologies to measure these changes.