 Now we'll jump straight into our first keynote with Dr. Aiden as he speaks about higher education on the brink of transformation. Aiden is a lecturer in academic development with the University of South Australia. He completed his PhD with Flinders University titled Student Advocism in Higher Education. The possibility of politics of students' role in hegemonic university change. He is an active researcher in higher education including an active student participation and students as partners. And programmatic approaches to Aboriginal content and kettigogies, multi and transdisciplinary education and structural transformation of education systems. All yours Aiden, go for it. Thanks very much Sadef and very sorry for that mouthful of a bio for me as well as a mouthful of a thesis title. It's been two seconds and hopefully my screen share will pop up for you and I'm just going to move that chat a little bit just so that I can keep an eye on if there's any questions as we go. All right, thank you very much and so great to see many new faces today. I've been a long time participant in student voice events as a student. And so now it's a real privilege to come back as a on the other side of things as an academic to sort of see this ongoing legacy of this awesome thinking and working that you will do in your various roles. And so my session today is called rethink or revolutionize. I'm going to be a little bit radical and I'm going to try not to be too theoretical at you know this early in the morning but please forgive me if you know if things sort of move into that space and predisposed to thinking a little bit radically and a little bit theoretically, but hopefully they'll be useful lessons for your practice. However, I'd like to acknowledge that I'm speaking to you today from the lands of the Ghana people of the Adelaide Plains, lands which were never seeded. I'd like to pay my respect to those that walked before elders past and present and acknowledge their ongoing connection to country, tradition, community, knowledge, lands, seas and sky. And of course I'd like to expect to extend my respects to any First Nations colleagues with us here today. Australia always was and always will be Aboriginal land. And I think importantly as well as I sort of start to get into this space I'd like to acknowledge the Ghana people particularly as custodians of knowledge and traditional ways of thinking, working and doing across the Adelaide region. And of course, different Aboriginal groups and Torres Islander groups around Australia as sort of phenomenal holders of knowledge and shares and transmitters and thinkers and learners and teachers. I think that's a really important space for us to think about. Changing tack a little bit. So I wanted to start with a quote and I assume many people will have seen this, this quote from Doris Lessing before. It's a it's an interesting one that sort of provokes your thinking around what what is it that an education does and this is sort of in the context of quite a broad sense of what an education is can be and does. Yeah, I'll just read to you. You're in the process of being indoctrinated. We have not yet evolved a system of education that is not a system of indoctrination. We're sorry, but it's the best we can do. What you're being taught here is an amalgam of current prejudice and choices of particular culture. The slightest look at history will show how impermanent these must be. I'm not there because I think that this this quote sort of gives us a bit of a frame for understanding what the work of a higher education institution is and what our roles collectively might be within that as students and staff of higher education institutions both universities and tapes. And I want to go a little bit meta with this. I want to talk about what our institutions are. And I think I want to really emphasize something that particularly in my context so I work across the University of South Australia in a range of different contexts and different academics talking to different students and really trying to understand the way that our systems and processes work and how education is happening and whether students are actually having an active say in that. And so our institutions these things that we often refer to in this sort of, you know, a separate thing from us there's something else, you know, we say the institution said or the institution has decided. And we talk about it as if it's its own thing its own agency with its own autonomy. And I think actually sometimes we forget that institutions are comprised of people. Some of those people exhibit agency, and others, maybe not so much. What do I mean by agency. I mean people like you who joined this conference today, who are talking about different ways of working from inside their institution, or perhaps maybe a bit more activist, forming rallies and protests and doing other kinds of, you know, letter writing and all kinds of different things. So there's a range of different ways that we kind of exercise what we do. And it can also be captured really simply so agency really simply could be the choice of not submitting your assignment on time and knowing that there might be a penalty for that but really you'll probably be okay in the end. Others are really rule bound and really locked into a way of thinking where they kind of feel as though they need to respond or they've been historically conditioned to respond to the rules, legislations, regulations, requirements and so on. And this is really disproportionate. So particularly for white Western Anglo people in Australia. There's a lot more room to be a gentile to bend the rules to stretch and change how we respond to things for others that complicity is just a way of life a way of getting by without being punished effectively. Through institutions we enact different ways of learning working and doing so institutions are responsible for some good stuff as well. It's not just that they condition our thinking into these certain ways and that that's all terrible. They actually help us think in new ways and work in new ways together. History conditions, some of those ways that we think about our institutions so they set some boundaries around us. So history kind of tells us through structures like laws or policies about what we can or perhaps should do and what we shouldn't do. Unfortunately, many of those boundaries are often sexist, ableist, classist and so on. And structurally, our institutions be they tapes, be they universities, they're established as an act or a function of state and territory parliament, or in the case of tapes often federal parliament. In this instance, what we have is an institution which is fundamentally political so the universities were in Australia particularly historically set up as a space to educate people who would then go on to be politicians, CEOs, you know, in legislative positions, lawyers, doctors, nurses, you know, all those kind of professional roles. And so in that there's a politics of preserving a particular way of working and thinking. So universities and tapes as an educational apparatus, so two really big functions. And I think these two, there's many more that these two are of importance for us this this morning. The first is that they sustain an educated and skilled intellectual middle class typically who are capable of a great deal of things, but often through education actually dissuaded from doing some of those great things, but others go on to do many amazing things. And the continuation of often colonial often class often hierarchical often gendered often ableist structures which form the roots of our Western civilization. I don't want to get too too too radical just yet so bear with me. So for better, though, often for worse our education institutions reproduce certain knowledge systems, ways of behaving priorities and social order through our education system so be that school be that university be that tape be that other kinds of education like corporate education training providers and things like that, and even community education. They also have kind of two functions, often one is preparing for like a professional interaction some kind of job or some kind of outcome, but also preparing for a particular culture and to culture a particular way of work in us. This is all built simultaneously on in Australia, a history of colonization and exploitation, and broadly on a maintenance of the status quo, because for white predominantly middle and upper class people, wealthy people and so on, the system works. And so universities are, for some of it, pretty complicit in reproducing some of these narratives, but also lifting a lot of people to be able to have a say in those narratives. I think powerful education is in this space of enabling people to come in, understand what a university is doing but then go on to be able to sort of influence change and make things better for more people. And there's an awesome power in that. But we have been in a bit of a place of status and particularly over the last few years with COVID. We've seen a real sort of status and not a lot of social change, particularly in our higher education institutions. And representatives, activists partners and so on are often dismissed. If you try and advance a radical message, like somewhat like you might argue I'm doing right now. No, no, you're not really thinking you're not really understanding this institution or this structure or why we do these things in this way, you're just being a radical you know you'll grow out of it, you know by the time you're 50 you'll think differently about things personally had that straight from a vice chancellor in the past. So I think we've got a lot of problems in higher ed and these are just a random few splattering of articles that we've seen a lot of issues in our higher education institutions across these last three years but across the last 1020 30 years. And it doesn't kind of feel like there's a lot going on to fight and change it right now. And there's little pockets of people doing amazing work in all these spaces and I would imagine most of the people in this conference today have either come up against issues that they are chipping away at changing or have changed, or know of some serious issues that are going on. We've seen things like massive restructuring cuts to courses climbing fees changes to the funding model that punish students for failing first year courses for example, all kinds of different problems have come up. I don't just want to be doom and gloom. So let me now do what I said that I wouldn't do and get into a little bit of theory just for a second. In the 1910 and 1920s. There was this guy called Antonio Gramsci, and he was an Italian theorist and social scientist of a kind. He had, like me I think probably some quite radical ideas, except that he was facing very serious fascism in Italy during that time, and leading up to World War One, and then subsequently World War Two. So one of the ideas that he had about making life better for people through education, he was put in prison by his government. So I'm one step up on Gramsci at the moment because I'm not yet in prison, which is a nice benefit. But he wrote a lot of amazing and compelling theory, basically on the back of scraps of pieces of paper and then handing them out the window to friends that they would go and compile his works later on so he was working under some very trying conditions, but he was working in things that are really interesting for us, I think, generally as a society to think about. He said that we can really actually think about our social order in two major groups. So he has said it and this is of course not one way of thinking. Not only one it's just one sort of piece of the puzzle there's many different conceptions that are really similar to this, but the ultimately there is one sort of group of people who have the power in society. He called this political society or at least the English translation of Italian writing calls this political society. I think it might be better to sort of conceptualize this as those with power. And then everybody else was in civil society. I kind of like that as a friend, you know, civilians, people who are just sort of working and living and being in the world. This is not society. This is not politicians. It's not Anthony Albertese. It's not Scott Morrison. It's people who comprise any kind of powerful institution, so CEOs, vice chancellors, business leaders, politicians, public speakers, TV personalities and so on. And there's a whole lot of people that have certain kinds of power, possibility and control and perspective in this, what grant you called political society or we could call ruling class perhaps. When you think about society in this way, you can see that there's groups of people that have a vested interest in the system working the way it does. For example, we can think about multi millionaires or multi billionaires who are elevated to a point in our society where they have amassed an enormous amount of power and control, and they want to do what they can in order to try and keep things pretty much the way that they are because it benefits them. And universities and in fact education historically has been one of the places where this has continued this has been dragged across as a as a space of reproducing that it's okay that only, you know, one or 2% of people control a lot of the decisions and how are the money, the authority, the culture of our societies. So education works then to reproduce at least some of what's happening in that political society space. And that's not all bad, but it's worth us critically reflecting on and so grant you really called for us to think about where we are where we're positioned, and what can we do what actions can we take and how can we make things better for everyone around us, not just our fellow students but also people in the rest of that civil society, you know, who else can we talk to influence, educate work with and so on. So one of the really important tools that grant you really highlights for us theoretically speaking is the tool that is education. So education itself often conveys particular values ways of thinking as I kind of flagged, but also education is really powerful when you can have a conversation with somebody and both parties walk away from that conversation feeling like they've learned something new. There's real potential for change in that and I think that's the real power of things like student partnership where together with no teachers and students and students and students and students and community and so on. There's a lot of conversations that happen and a lot of reciprocal mutual learning that can take place. So there's really important and powerful tools in education. It's about how we use them and what we do with them. So what is reproduced, she would say is not fixed, and there are really good examples of that currently out there in the world. Lots of these are quite activist, but lots of them are really gradual and small changes. So over time, what our dominant understandings are have changed, they have shifted the broad social structure any historians in the zoom call will know, you know, we've changed the way that we economically structure our societies across different groups and continents and different spaces, particularly thinking around shifts from you know feudalism where we have lords. Maybe you know everybody was sort of subservient to some kind of ruler be that a king or a prince or what have you. Towards this sort of capitalist mode which arguably did sort of diversify and broaden participation in who could have power, though, maybe not that much, but also in the big cultural and social movements across the last 100 years or so. Particularly victories of feminism so enabling women to vote being one of those big ones, increasing things like gay marriage and representation and things like that. And then contemporary movements things like Black Lives Matter and Aboriginal deaths in custody which again has had an ongoing history and is making an impact so it's not to say that because there's this political society this group of people with immense power that civil society can't make change. And in fact the change that civil society makes eventually forces those in that group on so just going back a second. There's those in group one in the political society that ruling class eventually if enough people in civil society take on a new way of working and operating those in the political society end up having to go with the flow otherwise they get chucked out. And that I think we can see a really micro level at universities and tapes that really adopted the student partnership model so rather than in a lecture like this where I talk at you for 40 minutes. We start to see a real equalling of you know students bringing perspectives and being able to teach themselves and each other, and not just have some one person control the knowledge and direct all of the learning. So these changes are not just about this radical political social change, but also about what's happening at that that micro level. And I think we've all again everybody here will have had a role in something like that if you think about you know what you've done in your life you will have had some kind of impact in one of these spaces. Of course, it's important to note that not all of these big social victories big social changes have been met with complicity, particularly from that political class you know often people are met with force so you think about protesters like thinking particularly in Sydney with black lives matter protesters during covered met with massive police presence and things like that so there's this sort of this controlling force that does tend to come up against those really what are deemed by political society to be quite radical movements. But also in academia, we can see that there's really sometimes quite narrow and restrictive control over what is taught and what gets valued you know I'm thinking particularly you know from my position in a university looking at the way that Aboriginal Aboriginal knowledges and Aboriginal content and curriculum are embedded in our programs and courses. We're moving in the right direction but it's still very narrow and traditionally higher education institutions have been very specific about wanting to have only a particular way of knowing doing and working reproduced. But again, small victories chipping away. How we act in the face of some of these big global challenges these big problems and particularly things like changes to education because I think you know I'm preaching to the choir here. We know as you know staff and students of higher education institutions that education is a really important thing. And so, particularly thinking about student protest around changes to education that either made it prohibitively expensive sought to make students have to pay to attend course cuts and changes like that creates you know immense sort of traditional activism in the form of picket protests and things like that. And the way that we respond I think can define us, but I don't think that that means that we always need to or have to go out and protest and in fact I think in some instances, protest itself has got a whole range of issues that prohibits some people from interacting and again has more immense consequences for some groups rather than others. But I do think that in this sort of. I'm going to copy a word from the far right here I'm going to say the the woke agenda. In the woke agenda. Actually, I think this progressive thinking helps us to surpass what's happening in theory, particularly in legitimized higher education spaces right so lots of these thinking around, you know. For example, giving Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people a voice in higher education curriculum. That is something that has not been well theorized except by a handful of traditionally Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander scholars, but now activist pressure has moved universities and tastes in that direction. So I think actually, I'm going to take you're not thinking you're just being radical as a compliment in this instance. What role mean for education and what role maybe could education play in all of this. Is there a room for a socially connected education, I'm calling it socially education rather socially connected rather than activist education because I think there's a more palatable way of pitching this because activism sort of yields this image of like fist in air out on the street. I don't think it needs to unless conditions are quite dire, but actually if we revision re envisioned education as a tool to create small social changes that led to more participation and more active participation for participants in higher education in society. We can get a long way without needing a protest. Also wanted to ask, well, I've got a lot of questions this morning, is disciplinary thinking really helping in our global world, you know, we often we sign up to do for example, a Bachelor of Science, a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Health Science and so on. And we are sort of in these sort of disciplinary silos. And I kind of wonder if you know the way that we sort of think about this, or even particularly trajectory towards careers, is that helping us have a broad base. I don't have an answer to that and that's not to say that having a, you know, a graduate outcome at the end that some kind of work is a problem I think that it absolutely isn't, but it's something that we can all collectively think about other reproduced narratives about the social order and higher and how can we change them if they're not just, you know, more questions. And really, who is actually responsible for making these changes, you know, who can do this and I know, you know, obviously the major response here is, you know, politicians should be making broad social change and in a university context you know a Vice Chancellor at a TAFE a director. And so the kinds of people should be in the position where they're creating things that are better for in some arguments the customers that they serve in perhaps better arguments the students that are partners that they serve and work with. But also I think that we all can play a role and I certainly see sort of myself as as one of the people who is responsible for creating and supporting this change and and hopefully you know as students you are as well. So for transforming learning and teaching, which I think anybody who's working in a representative role is working in a partnership role and so on, they're doing absolutely for fixing problems in society. Maybe that's a broad elite, maybe that's something we need more social enterprise to support us with for transforming the reproduction which serves a ruling elite. Sorry, getting a little bit more radical again, but also thinking about you know, what's the role of an education institution in society and does that need to change you know are the things that are happening broadly if we look around us, are they being best served by the way we currently do an education, and really actually then who has capacity to fix these problems. I think we're in in a particularly challenging time right now and I know personally I've really faced some, you know like I kind of feel this like immense weight of all of these things that are going on in the world you know between covert economic trouble climate change and so on. You know there's a lot of pressure. And I think you know trying to put all of our eggs in an education basket maybe isn't the answer. The UN SDG is the sustainable development goals are really interesting ones will look at for some of the major issues that are going on in the world, but also worth acknowledging that the UN itself is partially responsible for some of this cultural imperialism. But it's like we can, we can sort of see, you know the pandemic's done a lot of damage in terms of progress and economic equity and things like that. So there's an assertion job losses, even though there's an assertion that economic recovery is underway I think that really everybody particularly students, you know, you tell me but you know there are real pressures of the economy on younger people particularly, and those who aren't from that established middle class or a ruling class background. So this education, particularly if we think about countries that are not in that sort of first world bracket has really gone backwards because of covert and I was listening to a podcast this morning where they were talking about how you know for disadvantaged students even in Australia, during remote learning during covert were, you know, every two months of learning that they did remotely, they lost a month of their education whereas for students with a more stable financial background, you know they actually advanced further during their remote learning because their parents were more involved. It's not learning. Okay. So, we've got all these problems. And I'm sorry, I'm into a lot of the rings nerd. We've got all these problems. But what about a second breakfast. So what can we actually do here. And I think one of the major issues to cultural change and I'm sorry this is going to send very Marxist is the means of production or reproduction so who actually is controlling the tools, the knowledge the curriculum. I think as student reps and as student partners, there's been a real shift. And that started in the 1960s with a lot of student activism, and it kind of narrowed down and disappeared a little bit through the 90s. And we're back with a real vengeance, particularly thinking about student partnership spaces where students are perhaps more able to negotiate curriculum, rather than just playing by the book. But I think if we step up a level more broadly those tools, those powerful tools of what an education is does and can do. We can actually take away from higher ed. It's like, once you start to be able to teach something. I'm going to stop this because that's probably bad. Once we start to be able to take some of those tools of learning and teaching and apply them in other spaces. We can really start to communicate impact ourselves. I know that's a really kind of neoliberal term but it's like actually we can have an immense change in our communities by borrowing the learning and teaching that we do by being either representatives or being partners or being engaged in political and civic discourses. It's really important for those of us in privileged positions and I think arguably everybody in higher education to varying degrees is in a position of privilege. It's up to us to be able to to repurpose what we've learned what we know how we work together and share that with other people who maybe aren't quite so advantaged. But I also really want to get at who acts and who gets to act and I'm going to again sorry theory revisit Gramsci for just a second. It noted that wall again while he was in prison that a great number of people weren't acting when they had the power to and they might in conversation be able to engage in dialogue. You know perhaps like we are now about some of those social problems about some of the big, big challenges that were going on in his time. They were really serious problems like people were being executed because they didn't agree with the ruling the ruling order in our time. It's a little bit less direct, but people weren't weren't actually taking their values the things that they believed in and actually taking a stand for them. But he also acknowledged implicitly that there were problems in that in that people who came from the backgrounds that were most likely to notice that inequality and disadvantage were the most likely to be persecuted for speaking out. But I think of an example. When I was serving on academic board at my university. I remember having one of the members of academic board was a professor who taught me. And he was really, he was very quiet like quite radical almost like I'm being with you now in this thinking and would really engage in these high quality discussions in tutorials. And then a series of changes came through to cut courses to look at the university's response to job ready graduates for example, and to look at changing the structures for arts education. He totally made the case for those changes like he was like yeah this is going to be really good it's going to push students into stem. And it's like but you have all these radical ideas you're you're an arts, you're an arts and social sciences educator, and you've just made this complete opposite case to what you would perhaps teach me. But hopefully, many of us who have served in those representative positions might be able to go, I can think of a time where somebody who really should have, you know, done something differently who really should have acted hasn't. I think that this is a really big problem for us but it's something that we can again it's something we can chip away at so I think it's you know it's just a just throwing out more problems. So the cognitive overload slide I know I'm really I'm really bad with slides just put way too much on here, but my break this down. So just to recap a framework so far has been we've thought about responsibility like who can act who gets to act why do people act on things you know what gets them to think and work in certain ways. There's problems for implicit consent from those that are probably in the most secure position so those that are in those sort of more ruling positions or have more power. There's challenges for the role of education as a space of reproduction, but also there's some benefits in education spaces to really challenge and change how we think and work. There's new conceptions of the role of activism, which are often from marginalized groups and activism itself is often marginalized as a tool. And then there's a real passage where all of these things come together and often they come together in a higher education context. We've also sort of talked around or talked through that COVID-19 has brought us a lot more challenges you know higher education has taken this opportunity to really push itself into being more of a business model. We've seen job ready graduates legislation come through we've seen employment for students and staff becoming more precarious educational narrative moved away from engagement it moved away from that discussion of partnership representation active participation and back into this really dated view of education as a quality instrument so thinking about you know does does does your education do this yes no rather than you know what's the conversation to unpack there. Equity and access to services work education all kinds of things suffered and I know again preaching to the converted. Globally fascist and authoritarian power rows imperialist imperialist and racist tendencies amplified governance and decision making became more difficult for us to access not just in in higher education but also you know more broadly. By you know being locked in our homes or decisions were made about us without us. Radicalism has I would argue continued to suffer and then this continued attacks on the sort of mainstays of student organization and student power in the forms of changes to or propose changes to student services amenities fees and you know dismissals of student organizations, guilds and unions and things like that too. So doom and gloom but I want to try and put a more positive spin moving forward and I know that some of these questions will carry forward across this this two days. And so you know, I think that this is going to be a hopefully not too much of a sad start to what's going to be a really energizing two days. We're thinking higher education to stimulate active participation in learning and in governance, I think is the key role of how we think about an envision education moving forward students and staff working together in spaces like representation in spaces like partnership really start to move against divisive profiteering and dogmatic systems which are not only emerging but have existed for quite a long time now. But can we actually stop some of these bigger changes. And I think one of the other big questions that I keep hearing, both from academics and from students is where's the outrage it's like we see things like course cuts, and students, your weapon arms about you know I was studying that it was really important to me, you know we see protests and we see letter writing and responses to vice chancellors and deputy vice chancellors and other leadership in universities and institutions. But academics are saying you know where's the outrage from students and it's like what's the disconnect here you know what's stopping. University staff take staff what's stopping teachers and students together communicating like what why is there a barrier there and is the barrier just this as we are now is it the screen. Or is it that you know, some for some reason we're not able to communicate with each other. We're not doing of a supposed apathy in educational contexts, but I kind of always ask when, particularly when staff ask me you know why are the students so apathetic I go well actually have you tried talking to them because I don't think that they are. But there's some kind of disconnect in this really sort of bleak landscape and I think the more that we can work together be collective, the better. A little bit more theory and then I will stop with theory I swear. There's this work that had been done historically around, you know, where did student activists go where are those traditionally quite vocal quite noisy students end up and often it was in the social sciences. And there's been sort of broad a broad attraction for you know psychology social work sociology the arts, and so on for students that were potentially more supposedly more switched on to social issues, whereas other students went into fields like engineering lawyering, doctoring these aren't real words and the professions because of their really packed curriculums didn't so much lead towards a conception of education that enabled them to really engage with those big social problems and I think that's a huge detriment because it's a big portion of the population who go through a higher education who get pushed out of those bigger conversations about decision making about thinking and so on. And so I think that this really I hope is a dated conception of the way that we think about what a higher education is and does. And can an education be different well yes absolutely. So we think about this is just one model of many hundreds of different models that helps us to think a bit differently about the way that we might approach, for example, a professional education so you know be a be your teacher be your lawyer be be your doctor. We can see that there are a range of different discourses discussions different ways of thinking going on around us, and that may be the social sciences gives us one particular lens on that, but also so does the sciences so does the medicines the health engineering, the mathematics, they all give different perspectives and actually at the nexus of all of this is the way that we teach. There's different narratives context ways of knowing learning and doing that are all around us in university education, unfortunately they just don't quite come together all the time that we are moving in that direction. But if perhaps we can bring people together to combine some of these discourses some of these narratives about you know economics and the way that the world functions that way so the business school for example you bring together the technologists the people who think about you know how do we make life better for people by using technology, we bring together some of those socio cultural ways of thinking and working and doing. And we combine that in a pedagogical approach that really values both student contributions and the contributions that came historically from all different schools of knowledge not just the western white epistemic, but all of the knowledge systems that brought us to the point we're at now. Perhaps through an education that's the way thought, we can create, I'm not going to even say this word, we can activate I'm set up, we can activate each other and create a new shared in depth again uniting on particular values. I don't think in this instance it's down to just the activists I do think there's definitely a role for activism, particularly when things are really bad and I think in spaces like, you know Aboriginal deaths in custody and black lives matter and things like that you know we really do need to push against this in a serious and sustained way. But in other instances, what we've seen because of these activist movements is only really gradual change but overall status particularly for our higher education institutions. But if we collectively and if the 37 people in this call right now and the people that watch this later, and all of the students out there, along with all of the staff out there got together and really thought about. What is it that's bringing us together to think about the world you know what is it that I as you know, a future carpenter, a future lawyer, a future social scientist. What is it that I'm really trying to achieve. If we came together and we thought this collectively and we thought the purpose of higher education we could create change in that civil society block. In that sense I think we're all in this immense position of privilege again acknowledging some more than others and some are conditioned to be able to act more than others, and some want to act more than others. Even if we don't feel like a collectively you we have the power, but really it's only together and I think there's a lot to be said for finding ways of conferencing coming together and so again you know days like today are really important for coming together and having those sharing those conversations. We're not quite there yet, and we're probably a long way off, but I think that this today is going to be a really good way to start a conversation about well how do we challenge this space how do we think about equity and diversity. How do we think about the structures of capitalism which are failing us right now. How do we think about civil society, political society how do we think about the ruling class, how do we make change. How do we transform our institutions, and even how do we just think about our curriculum. How do we go beyond our university or our TAFE context how do we engage with people out in the world that haven't got access to the educational tools that we have. I think there's a lot of power in that sort of sharing and thinking together. At the moment, higher education is protecting itself. It's got this sort of like closed walls thing going on where it's in shining corporate management practices and projects, it disempowers students and academics. It's got protocols and principles of partnership, critical education and project based learning multi disciplinary thinking and things like that, that are existing in pockets but really they're being eroded because of a political narrative about quality of producing job ready graduates and so on. And so I think as a as a sort of a collective, we can move forward, and we can find new ways of reforming our education structures, fixing things like systemic racism, which can be fixed it's just going to take a lot of work. Things like sexism, again, it's going to take a lot of work, things like ableism are going to take a lot of work, but actually active democratic and full some participation from everyone that is actually valued respected and reciprocal can lead to big change and can lead to a better society together. At the moment we haven't kind of decided collectively what the big issue is that we want to face, you know, in our higher education context. So, there's a lot to be done. And I think that there's a lot of thinking and possibility here I don't think that this is a negative space at all I think that there's a lot that we can still do. So my sort of final question I'm sorry this has been more questions and more sort of negative thinking than it has been positive and uplifting news but I think again huge space of potential. My question to you is, how, how are you going to fix it. I guess that's the question of the day. Two more things and then I promise I'm done. So, I just want to say be proud of what you know be proud of where you are and how you got to be where you are always acknowledge where you came from how you got here and what you do how you work. And don't be ashamed and don't ever be sort of, you know, downtrodden by broader narratives and things that sort of push you into a certain space a way of thinking and working. And also, never accept a face value what somebody else is telling you be that a lecturer be that, you know, anyone, anyone never just accept what they say, always think about what's the power dynamic here. Who's saying this and from what position, and why and how and what if we challenged this way of thinking. Even if we only do think gradually we all have the power collectively to really challenge the institution and to challenge society because fortunately we're all in a democratic civilization here in Australia, or at least it purports to be. And so we have a voice we have power and being a troublemaker doesn't always have to get you in trouble. And last slide. I just wanted to pull a quote from the fabulous Brie Lee, whose book who gets to be smart I strongly recommend to people but she says, people think history is carved on a tablet, but it's more akin to chalk on a blackboard. Depending on who's standing at the front of the room, the lines can be rewritten or even erased altogether. So my provocation is let's rewrite the blackboard. Let's use those educational tools, those power structures those systems that we have to create transformative social change. And if from your position of leadership. Yes, you regardless of what kind of role you serve even if you're just a student which I think is an incredibly powerful space to be in anyway. If you can work out a way to make a lasting difference for everybody if you can communicate what you know to other people if you can help even one person understand the tools and structures and systems of the world and a higher education, then you've made a positive change. And even if you just get through even if you just live your life. You have made a positive and lasting impact. And if you do happen to work out how to solve all of these problems over the next two days or the coming years, please let me know I'm really happy to work on this journey together collectively. But it takes us all together again I think this message of unity is really where I'm sort of seeing us that that's that's where we can make a real change and it's when students say something and staff listen that the institution can actually make a change. It's incredibly powerful. You're all excellent. Thank you so much for being here. Thank you for your time. And thank you for listening and I'm really sorry about all the theory and the words and all my slides. Thanks very much. Thank you so much for that amazing keynote Aiden, you shed a lot of information and a lot of interesting and thought provoking information and I'm sure that there'll be some questions for you. Now that we kickstart a quick Q&A session. If we can all turn our cameras on and raise our hands to ask questions that would be incredible you'll see a little reactions button down on your zoom session. So if you just click that and raise your hand we can ask some questions or you can also feel free to pop it into the chat and we can read it out for you. So we've got our first question by Jen. Go for it, Jen. Hi Aiden. Thanks for the keynote. It was really inspiring from the eyes. So for me, this is my second time at university. My first instance was about 20 years ago. I remember being involved in SRC's back 20 years ago where it was common to have a sitting or a protest back then. I guess you really start to see those when, as you were saying, when things are at that critical point when something's really bad and really, and I guess, in ways, I guess for the back history for those who aren't aware. I think student unionism happened about 20 or 20 years ago where it wasn't compulsory to join your union and wasn't there. So what actually happened there, a lot of funding went away from student organisations to fund services and fund advocacy and things like that. So that was one of the reasons why I was involved back then was because there was a critical time where we really lost our ability to have our voice. A lot of universities still decided to keep some sort of SRC there because they realised that there doesn't need an advocacy role. And I think it's really important for us to realise that no matter what our role is, as you say, there are ways that we can get involved in the decision making process. And I think that's critical. You don't have to be, we're all advocates in some form, but you don't have to stand up and protest or in the physical sense as such. I know some of us might be a bit uncomfortable with that because we don't know the consequences around things like if you're an international student, for example, you may not feel comfortable. I think on a soapbox because you don't know whether that's going to impact you, etc. I guess, and have you got some ways for those for us who may not feel comfortable sort of getting up on a soapbox and way to be involved? Yeah, good question and really appreciate that background as well. So thank you very much. I think, yeah, look, I think things like the sit in or even even the teaching I think is a powerful tool in that space. So, you know, having, having bring yourselves into a collective space and getting someone to talk to you or just talking to one another about what issues are actually going on is a really powerful way to sort of move things forward in a sense. So I think that's that's sort of one of those ways. You know, I think you basically answered your own question. So, yeah, no, that was awesome. Thank you very much. Thank you, Jen. We just had a question in the chat as well. What is the symbolism of calling a First Nation person aunt or uncle asks Christina. So that's a good question. I don't think a question for me necessarily. In fact, I'm not sure that I really have the authority to answer. But it is. I mean, yeah, good question. It's just that for those us of older generations being made to call unknown people when we were younger, aunt and uncle did not set up a good vibration for us. So therefore calling an Aboriginal First Nation person whatever aunt or uncle, I think for me it's inappropriate. So that's why I wanted to know why people are now calling unknown people of different ethnic backgrounds uncle or aunt. Yeah, I think there's a there's a there's sort of a there's a cultural reason in language there that is worth is worth unpacking, you know, you're absolutely right there's some implications there. I think, you know, particularly when we think about Aboriginal English as a, it's like a reappropriation of English from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Australians, you know, using English as a as a sort of a tool to communicate and change the meaning of some words and and so perhaps it's, it's one of those but again, not really sort of in a space to be able to answer sorry but yeah good. It's a good, it's a good question. Thanks. Hi, hi Aiden. This is Tivia. I'm from Homskland so I'll be bringing that tape perspective and into the discussion and I have studied Diploma of Nursing I'm doing my bachelor's at the moment. I've served in SRC for almost two years now and all through my experience in different roles what I've come across is TAFE caters to different courses for different durations. I know we are talking more in tertiary education perspective, but I've seen a lot of hesitation around bringing your raising your voice of bringing an issue in because your course is not necessarily for a longer period of time. Some might be studying there for a few weeks and some like myself would be four years. So there's a lot of hesitation around why should I raise my voice. I'm just done here for six months. And that has come across a lot of issues but we've not had been able to get students to actually come up and talk about it. Is there a way to approach it? Like I've always talked about giving them that importance, regardless of what the duration of your course is, your voice is important, but we've had that hesitation around students a lot. That's a really interesting and challenging problem. And I know like I think every student that I, so when I was a rep, every student that I ever spoke to always kind of had something, if you probed enough, like if you kind of like dug into the conversation long enough, you could kind of get them to say I faced this or I faced that. Many times they didn't sort of feel enough attachment that they wanted to sort of act or, you know, even felt that that might disadvantage them in a sense. I think that's a, it's a long standing problem. Sorry, I don't have any wisdom. But it's a good question for the day as well. I think, you know, like it's a good thing to sort of other people maybe to come together and think about. Yeah, thank you. I think Divya, if I can just say as well, the interesting thing about student voice is that often it gets associated with talking about negative things. And so sometimes when you hear, you know, we want student voice or we want to, you know, particularly if you hear anything that student voice Australia doesn't know, how can we get students involved and how can we tackle some really challenging issues and these kinds of things. Student voice doesn't necessarily have to sit in the place of giving feedback on what's wrong with the institution. Student voice can also be about participating in making something that's good better or acknowledging what's working and let's do more of it. And particularly in your context, I think it's interesting to think about it in those kinds of terms. How do we, how do we capitalise, like a better word on what's good about the TAFE model or what's good about the experience for you guys in that context as well. So I think that that's one way to kind of shift that, how you engage students in your context. 100% and like Jin brought it up and it is a good thing because I've experienced it first hand, me myself being an international student and talking to other international students. I've come across the fear of, oh, it is, it is quite ironic. It's funny that they say, oh, what if my visa is threatened in that case if I were to talk about an issue. And that's why it leads to more negative implications of, you know, being involved in the student body. I think it's a good time that we revised the model to see, to help communicate to a broader range of students. It's all about the communication and changing, tweaking those term knowledges that we use around. Very interesting discussions. Jacob, would you like to ask you a question? Sorry, I was just doing the lower hand part because I know I'm very good at leaving my hand up and then we have three questions in it. I was like, oh, did you have, sorry. Sorry about that. I guess I wanted to talk more about the, I guess the apathetic student and how that's kind of, well, it's interesting is a bit of a narrative that is being dealt around students that we're getting told that students apathetic they're not engaging with change. It's it's sometimes seen that we don't engage in such public displays of just have changed like sit-ins, teach-ins, watches, protest rallies. But I wonder what can be kind of said to the piece of students becoming a bit more transgressive in their way of engaging with disagreements or engaging with, you know, the system that is and wanting to show change in a different way. Because we've definitely seen it in our institution that students are less interested in getting up and protesting, but are more interested in kind of challenging in a more well, I guess, in a transgressive way that doesn't particularly state at the front that we're being anti-authoritative and we're being outwardly challenging, but we're trying to engage a bit of a conversation around these matters rather than challenging them at the forefront. So I wonder kind of what are other people's experiences with that and kind of what's what's your, your take on that, I guess social shift. Yeah, that's really interesting. Another great question for the day, Jacob. I think that there's, there is, again, like it's all these different permutations of what is, you know, an activist response, I suppose. And I think, yeah, and there was a comment in the chat before around that apathy sort of being almost driven as a way to divide students and from coming together collectively. I think that's a really interesting thing to think about as well. Absolutely. I kind of think, you know, for me, it's that, you know, like the students who don't engage in that sort of traditional sense, they're being more who are being more transgressive. It's like there's actually an opportunity, you know, as somebody who works with a lot of academic stuff, it's like something that I would encourage them to actually go and engage with like if there's a student who's deliberately disengaging things that are, you know, sort of challenging the norms and the ways of working, don't label them as a bad student, but actually, there's they've probably got something important to bring to the conversation, you know, there's something there that's, that's really important that you need to give some airtime to and, you know, maybe give some extra support to. So I think that there's an interesting sort of challenging space there of between the what's the activist transgression and then also what's the way that, you know, the university or the TAFE or whatever educational institution needs to adapt to be more inclusive and open to different perspectives. So yeah, another that's a really great question again. Did you have another question? I was just, it was, it's a common as well as a question as well. I just wondering, because as, as I think you were saying about how for a lot of students, we are here for the short term, we're not, we're not like the rest of the university where you've got academics and although they're there, they've been there, they might be there 10, 15, 20 years, for example. An average lifetime of a student might be three to four years at a tertiary level and TAFE might be six months or whatever, et cetera. I guess one of the things is whether we need to reframe our, is that why we're getting poor engagement? Because we feel that we're not here for long enough. So anything we raise isn't actually going to change in our lifetime at that institution, but whether we need to reframe it in such a way that our actions don't, we all say we want to see something happen now. But what we do now could impact students five years, 10 years down the track, which has a greater impact overall. And I just want to, there might be a better way to reframe things to say that we don't necessarily see the solutions overnight. If that comes across, whether that might be a better way of trying to raise engagement and to death. Yeah, but that's, I think, yeah, it comes back to that chipping away, right? Like it's like that, what, you know, how do we make gradual change over time and institute cultural shifts? Like if we see one of the issues that we have is that we're not able to get that engagement, you know, say an SSE or a, you know, representational body of some kind. You know, it's like, how can we actually set the culture up in those spaces to include more voices and, you know, bring more people in so that in the future the culture is reset such that everybody feels like they can bring their constructive criticism or their, you know, I think we could do things differently kinds of voices into the fold. So yeah, I think there's real potential in that it's just a, it is, it's a long term game rather than a right now thing. Another question in the chat, Georgia asks, you spoke about being in representative positions and individuals not wanting to put their jobs on the line. Do you believe the fear of retribution is one of the main contributing factors for decisions that cater to the majority and do you believe that this fear will ever disappear? Yes, I wholeheartedly agree with that. I think, yeah, I think there's this, there's this real fear that even people in positions of power and privilege have. And I don't think, you know, I'm not I'm not sort of explicitly saying that reps, you know, like student reps aren't calling things out because I think it's unfair to expect, particularly in certain governance positions. And I know I've talked to a lot of students about this during my PhD. You know, there's absolutely no room for a student to even literally emit a sound from their body, you know, you know, committee setting, because that's not what you're there for you know you're there to just be a smiley face nodding along. And so I think, you know, for students has a whole different raft of issues. But yeah, absolutely, you know, for staff who have sort of a somewhat vocal or at least an ideological perspective that should be helping us to push things into a better new collective direction. Yeah, I mean there is a fear of, you know, losing your job or being ostracized or what have you, but I think that's that's something that they need to learn how to do and I think it's something that student partners, student reps, student activists actually do really well. Like it's something that, you know, you have to learn as a as a student engaging with an institution, you've got to learn the language, you've got to learn the discourse, you've got to be part of those conversations. And it's like, how did you get to be a professor without learning how to do that yourself, you know, it's a really interesting thing to me to think about that. So it is about I think it's it's a skill. And it's something that I think really we've basically as universities we have failed to work on that collectively of actually letting alternative perspectives really be discussed even like we don't have to adopt new ways of working, but even let's just talk about them because that's really the promise of even if it is only why Anglo historically knowledge that we've talked about and debated. It's like, actually, the university should be a space of debate and discussion and hopefully, idealistically, of many different knowledge types and systems. But it's like, if we're not doing that, even in our decision making context, well then really, we've already become a business and it's that's really quite sad. So yeah, I don't know, sorry, long winded answer but absolutely agree. I see your question in the chat as well. Is this something that you might want to speak about as well. Hi, and thanks for the wonderful presentation. I'm just wondering whether it's, there's a divide with people not knowing that they can voice their opinion, especially to vice chancellors or provice chancellors. And also in regards to, like, being able to speak to MPs, like MPs are supposed to work for us, they're supposed to work for people, but in a lot of ways there's a divide where people don't realise that that's something, an avenue that they can take. So if awareness around that these channels are available would impact the student voice being, I guess, people being able to use their voices more clearly or knowing that they can voice opinions. Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, I think one of the things that, you know, I guess in my ideal world of a higher education, like in a program of study, you know, with a series of courses, several of those would be about, you know, how do we engage with political discourse in in our given field but also broadly, how do we apply lessons of, you know, it's like we're always talking about, you know, learning objectives or learning outcomes and, you know, how are we going to demonstrate XYZ skill. And now increasingly how are we going to authentically represent that in an industry context. It's like, what about how do we talk about this as a problem to stakeholder groups, and how do we then take that to being, you know, we're studying, you know, as you study anything that you study, as you're working through the content, you know, reading a reading or you're listening to a lecture you always hear about problems. And it's like then you go away and write an assignment about it and that assignment disappears and it's like what if, rather than that we actually decided on ways to take action on an issue that we discussed and put that into practice. I don't know that we're going to get there in a hurry, but it's something that I think again we can chip away at that you know like how do we actually engage with political systems how do we engage with university or tape systems how do we have our voices heard. But I also think there's a real role there and I'm just going to throw it a piper here on having like a student network event where you talk about what are some of those avenues for, you know, communicating your knowledge of issues in a broader and sustainable more impactful way. Just as a thought. Maybe I'll take this opportunity to throw it back to Jacob. But yeah I think that something like our student network sessions that we run so for those of you who aren't familiar we have these regular informal sessions throughout the year that our student students centered and it's an opportunity to kind of put pressure on some of these ideas and to engage with each other and I think that kind of open dialogue is really important it's not knowing or not having the intention to do anything can sometimes spark some of those ideas and I guess you know maintain that sort of dialogue is really important Jacob do you want to add to that and then ask you question. I'm going to handball. Exactly I just kind of echo if any student here is not a part of that I would highly recommend you can sign up via the SVA website it's just put in your emails and then you get added to the list you'll get notified when they are being held, highly recommend, but I do think it is good because it is a little bit of a chance to go in a well it's you're in a jury of your peers in that moment and you're kind of surrounded by like minded individuals there's sorry pipe up not many staff around us that can kind of pressure us into not saying what we mean or kind of using very coded language which is a message. So it makes it really quite a good time to be able to go hey actually I've been experiencing XYZ has anybody else experienced this brilliant what have you guys done, and it can be really that quite a kind of grassroots kind of approach to it because we're instead of being able to just chitchat with well against higher ups I kind of want certain KPAs to be met and want sorry KPIs to be met and certain stakeholders to be happy. Well students sitting around as other students it kind of breaks down those barriers. So highly recommend. I'm looking at doing one about policy and engagement with students in policy because it's a massive issue and well surprisingly to me not many people actually interested in the policy of an institution and how that affects students engagement with the institution. I think it's fascinating. I wish everyone else did but it's kind of how do you shift that. But yeah I can get on for longer like but so my question is I kind of wanted to touch on the corporatism piece of the university because I'm quite fascinated by corporatism and corporatist theory, especially when it comes to institutions of power and universities are an institution of power there institution of knowledge and I don't know who said it but very famously quoted knowledge is power. So we all you know are engaging with this institution but I wonder. Well I guess for context I sit on our university council so I work as a council member for the university so I have to think of the university in a very business context it becomes very much. How do we meet KPIs how do we ensure stakeholders are happy how do we increase revenue how do we ensure that we're managing our risks how do we comply with implicit rules from text or from the general and that kind of thinking about the university is not something that all students engage with. So I wonder if there is the ability to kind of split the university into its two factions of the corporate and the corporates out of university because you can't quite remove the business and then sticking to the quite academic and while the knowledge and the freedom space of the university because I often find that most universities quite deal with that dichotomy and haven't found the perfect middle ground. Yeah, yeah. Really it's a really interesting space. I think also there's. I like that idea actually of kind of splitting the institution I kind of think you know we've got institutions that were established as you know universities particularly were established as acts of parliament and most of them just recently done a bit of a survey of all of the universities, but most of them have throw away mentions to things like social justice, and they say things like you know ensuring equity and things like that lots of those were amendments later on. And I think that that's really interesting because I think that should drive those values even though they are a little bit throw away and things like university acts. And they should actually drive the conversation that's happening in a council setting so yeah I like absolutely you know you've got to comply with tech so you've got to apply with regulation you've got to apply with auditing and financial requirements, but at the heart of those things. I think universities are in a particular position to be able to do that in a different way than a private company is fundamentally because they are government bodies sort of, even though they're allowed to act as more of more of a corporate entity. So yes I think challenging those issues in that space is yeah it's definitely sort of almost like a side to what happens in the academic sphere but I think because they're so intrinsically connected that yeah it becomes a question for me about how do you get every student to engage with that thinking of you know the institution is being run like a corporation. It is being run by someone who's basically a CEO who's usually on over a million dollar salary and you know complies with all of these particular ways of thinking and working. And can we actually have a conversation with that person. And can we you know bring some of our again can we bring some of our academic thinking to bear in that corporate space while considering that yes it's obviously got responsibilities rights and reasons for doing what it does so yeah no great question and probably one for much longer conversation. I did and I'll leave it to this one because it's something I could talk about for hours. I really enjoyed this topic and I've spent many many what others would call long nights but I call fight fun nights reading about this but it's quite interesting because it's quite accepted along corporate spheres and it's quite the conversation I guess the cornerstone of most corporate settings that are fish rocks from the head down although that is not correct when you come to fishing. I guess it is how do you kind of change that corporate culture piece when even at like very basic governance training that we're provided as council members and maybe this is going outside of I guess the src setting but even at src settings that the src is or why not so much the student unions or anything that is kind of independent from the university is subsidiary and kind of to serve the university's purposes. So I guess how do we inject those more student focused and more transgressive and a definitely more academic conversations into council, because that's kind of where we make the change and if you can't shift it to council. Sorry everyone it's quite glum for the rest of us. Yep, that's perfect. I think there's an element of top down and bottom up there as well like I don't think it's completely hopeless at the ground but yes you're right it does absolutely have real impacts about what's happening on the ground and that strategy piece. Particularly if we think about things like increasing precarity for employment of staff in universities and higher higher education systems generally. You know, it's like it's very hard to convince you know teaching staff member to do something radical and different that's a bit off script when their institution has literally told them this is the way you like they'll shout do this. And so yes, it's a real challenge. I think, you know, it's again it's about those sort of spaces of being able to find the little ways to chip away and you know one of the things that so my time so I was at Flinders as a student. And one of the things that happened there was the student rep on council managed to sneak in to the strategic plan for the, you know, the next five years of the institutions operation managed to sneak in both that student voice and student partnership are on the agenda for both decision learning in governance, but also in terms of learning and teaching, and that students should have a say in in those spaces, all in this really veiled corporate quite interesting lingo. That's also happened at a bunch of other institutions it's by no means a Flinders exclusive. But it is a way of sort of, you know, having something to sort of hang your hat on in a sense of, you know, there's there's something in the strategic plan and that's the governing document for the way that we operate. You know, it's like, even just getting one word or one or two words in there can really help make that you know a more activist, even if it's not very activist, but you know a more a more free thinking a more flexible way of working actually come to be so I think yeah there's plenty of stuff that could be done and probably should be done but you know, small, small steps. Just another question in chat. Isha Mamlu says students at my university Western Sydney overwhelmingly belong to first in family to go to uni have a low social economic status background, etc. Therefore their priorities tend to be work and simply completing their degree. How do we ensure we engage students like these. And yet a fundamentally very important question I think for all of our work. It's a, it's an interesting space because it tends to be a lot of case by case and I really hate saying that it, but the. I think it comes back to that conversation around you know like students who engage with their you know with a TAFE for only six months, you know how do we get them to be involved. It's the same kind of question it's like students who don't have a framework or a model for that kind of engagement who don't expect to because they've you know gone through school and haven't had a say in the way that this school was run and then they come to our education provider and our education provider doesn't really give them a say, or maybe starts to but they still feel that sort of inherent. This is not the space for me to speak. It's, it's a really big challenge it's a really big problem for the way that we encourage interaction and engage with discussions and decision making and even just build a culture amongst people. And I think it's something that you've really got to, you know, you've just got to sort of think about you know what kind of tools what kind of teaching what kind of education can be used to bring them on watch because everybody who engages in their education at least engages in some kind of, you know, it may be very didactic you know teacher standing at the front of the class talking at students. You can influence the way that that's done and inject again some of those tool educational tools, activist tools, what have you can inject some of those into that conversation and encourage your peers to apply that learning. You can start to create a culture whereby it's sort of more normal to engage democratically with decision making with bigger picture problems. And always, of course, you know, key lessons of educational theory you know like making making the learning relevant, putting things in context, sharing personal narrative, talking finding people who have sort of come out of that position of you know I didn't want to have anything to do with it but then this thing happened so suddenly I started doing something about it. And they can be really important people to drag into your message as well so yeah again really complex, really complex issues but I think again it just it just sort of takes times like this conference you know to sit down together and and think about you know ways that we can sort of encourage others to participate. And might take one final question I see that Georgia asks in a university setting how do you determine what the best method to solving an issue is example traditional activism roles versus following internal processes. There's a really a lot of very good questions today. Look, I think this, it depends it depends on context and I think maybe this is this is a space of even resource development. Because I think, you know, it's like, you could have, you know, issues that are facing, you know, an equity group for example an institution would require things like consultation working together finding collective ways forward, but it things where it's like, okay now we're going to put up your fees by $500 for each course that you take for the rest of your study at this university or this tape. You know that will probably activate all students and so I guess it's the magnitude would of the you know the magnitude of the thing the challenge sort of directs the magnitude of the action taken. But again, I guess it all does come back to you know how many people do you have engaged, how are people working together. Is there that culture of everybody having a voice everybody being able to be involved and everybody having decisions both in their learning and teaching and in their government spaces. Before you can even actually start to ask that question so again great question. And I think it's, you know, again it's something that hopefully you'll talk about. Thank you Aynan and thank you for your amazing session and thank you to everyone that asked questions and engaged.