Call for Expressions of Interest – 56th Annual Symposium

The Humanities and Creative Practice

13-14 November 2025

Audiences for creative practice formats, from art to gaming – have never been greater. Cities, cultural institutions and business are embracing new approaches and utilising the new insights and formats created through the increasing interaction of the humanities with creative practices.

Many areas of cultural production from design to animation to film need to be reconsidered as a part of the inter-disciplinary approach of both the humanities and creative practice. Humanities and creative practices both interrogate and activate histories and narratives and generate new experiences and environments. In so doing, we create a richer, more diverse and speculative physical, mental and spiritual world.

About 8% of Australians engage in the wider cultural workforce, contributing $111.7 billion to the Australian economy annually. Illustrating this, the Academy’s 56th Symposium, Humanities and Creative Practice, will be hosted by UTS within ‘Tech Central’, an inner-city corridor and cluster of education, museums including The Powerhouse, sole traders, start-ups, scale ups, and small and large enterprise supported by NSW Government.

Convened by Distinguished Professor Peter McNeil, and supported by a diverse steering committee, the 2025 AAH Symposium, The Humanities and Creative Practice, will foreground the diversity and vital role of creative practice connecting with a wide range of the Humanities in Australian social, cultural, and economic life. It will feature keynote lectures from exciting and emerging leaders, and discussion panels ranging from cancel culture to First Nations design. As Justin O’Connor notes, culture should not be reduced to an instrumental commodity, but rather, rethought within a wider social contract of ‘democratic citizenship’. And the ‘creative city’ cannot simply be S. Sassen’s ‘urban glamour zone’.

Panels will consider and explore themes including:

• Technology, industry, and the humanities/creative and communication arts: Breaking the STEM/HASS divide through inter-disciplinarity 
• Creative thought and compassionate action 
• The new museology and viewing publics 
• HASS-STEM conversations: Health, wellness and science meet creative design  
• Place based Cultural Knowledge: Local, national and international perspectives 
• Indigenous Knowledge Frameworks 
• Research, records, responsibilities 
• Design, performance and cultural resilience 
• Public histories and new media: Tribute session to the late Prof. Ross Gibson FAHA 
• Difficult art and cancel culture.
• Philanthropy, fund raising, start-ups and the creative economy. 

We are now seeking expressions of interest from Fellows who wish to contribute by presenting a paper or a session at the Symposium. We also encourage you to nominate other researchers who you believe would bring an important perspective to the Symposium.

Places are limited, and the Symposium Committee will be looking to select presenters and sessions from a range of disciplines and career stages to ensure a breadth of new perspectives.

This is a Symposium for a wide audience, from Fellows and scholars from across the higher education sector, to bureaucrats, journalists, leaders and stakeholders interested in creative practice and the creative industry.

Please complete the form below by Friday 28 February 2025 or contact the Academy at events@humanities.org.au for further information. Outcomes will be notified by early June 2025.