UNSW students and staff shine at the 2022 Festival of Dangerous Ideas

Over two packed days in September, the Festival of Dangerous Ideas (FODI) returned live and in person, offering a huge program of events.

FODI, Australia's original disruptive festival, provides an unfiltered platform for thinkers, artists and experts from both Australia and around the world to have critical conversations that inspire debate and challenge thinking. Hosted at Carriageworks, the theme for 2022 was ‘All Consuming’, and as a principal partner, UNSW Sydney was proud to not only curate sessions but also help showcase a wonderful line-up of our own UNSW speakers.

Thanks to the partnership fostered by the Centre for Ideas, UNSW academics and students had the opportunity to present their own dangerous ideas and research to audiences. Topics included the dominance of the internet to child abuse prevention and more.

For the first time, five UNSW students – Aaron Eger, Cheyenne Bardos, Felicity-Tram Tu, Jack Hamilton and Isabelle Volpe – brought their unique perspectives to a range of critical challenges in ‘Fresh Blood.’

UNSW academics Adam Bayes, Kate Faasse, Tema Milstein, Felix Aplin and Lucas Lixinski, challenged a sold-out audience with bold ideas on exploring whether ‘magic’ mushrooms could become medical mushrooms, and how we can build better brains.

Emma A Jane and Michael Salter were panellists on ‘Harmful Thoughts’, and examined if more can be done to pre-emptively prevent child sexual abusers from ever offending.  

Professor Don Weatherburn joined the panel ‘The Crime Paradox’ and explored why, despite the decline in crime over the past few decades, the number of people in prison has increased alarmingly, and how in the world of popular culture, the topic of crime is pervasive and ubiquitous.

Kaldor Centre’s Sangeetha Pillai joined the ‘Expendable Australians’ panel, which raised the question ‘if an Australian passport doesn’t protect you, what are you owed by your government?’ 

UNSW’s Toby Walsh joined New York Times columnist Kevin Roose in ‘Caught in a Web’ discussing where does the internet stop, and our human selves begin

In a special on-campus event for UNSW students, staff and alumni, Facebook whistleblower Frances Haugen and UNSW’s Lyria Bennett Moses discussed how to redress social media to bring out the best in humanity.

Congratulations to all UNSW students and staff involved.