Reading the Room: The Podcast launch

The COVID-19 pandemic brought home just how important it is to have a space to ourselves where we can be free from distraction and, in some cases, to isolate.

Women have also been disproportionately impacted by the pandemic - in terms of balancing work and family, jobs lost during the shutdowns, and through rising rates of domestic violence.

It's timely, then, to revisit Virginia Woolf's classic feminist text 'A Room of One's Own'.

On Reading the Room: The Podcast, hear Virginia Woolf's classic feminist text A Room of One's Own as never before - read aloud by 40 academics, students, alumni and leaders from the ANU community. Together, they engage with the question of how far we've come in achieving gender equality since the book was published almost 100 years ago.

ANU PhD candidate Lara Nicholls had the idea for this "lockdown podcast" during the first Canberra lockdown, while she was under lockdown at the University's Burgmann College. Since then, all the Readers have recorded themselves/been recorded during the second lockdown in Canberra.

Readers include former Prime Minister of Australia Julia Gillard, the ANU Vice-Chancellor Professor Brian Schmidt, and newly appointed Judge of the International Court of Justice Professor Hilary Charlesworth.

Former Governor-General of Australia Dame Quentin Bryce will launch the podcast at a virtual event on 24 November, and lead us into a panel discussion about A Room of One's Own featuring:
 

Panelists

Professor Rosie Campbell: inaugural director of the Global Institute for Women's Leadership at the Kings College, London, now affiliated with the Australian National University and a political scientist who focuses on the political position of women in democracy.

Associate Professor Kate Mitchell: literature scholar focused on nineteenth and twentieth century literary and cultural history. Director of the ANU Research School of Humanities and the Arts (from January 2022).

Dr Raihan Ismail: DECRA Fellow and a Senior Lecturer at the ANU Centre for Arab and Islamic Studies. She has researched and published widely on politics, religion and the role of women in society in the Arab World.

Mr Ben Jefferson: previous president of the Burgmann College Residents Association currently studying Economics and Philosophy at ANU.

The panel discussion will be chaired by Associate Professor Fiona Jenkins and Lara Nicholls.
 

Reading the Room: The Podcast producers

Lara Nicholls: PhD candidate in the ANU Centre for Art History and Art Theory, researching the professionalisation of women artists in the nineteenth century, and the inaugural Jennifer Strauss Fellow in the Humanities for her research in women artists and Impressionism. She is a Residential Fellow at Burgmann College.

Associate Professor Fiona Jenkins: Convenor of the ANU Gender Institute and an Associate Professor in the School of Philosophy. Her recent research on "Gendered Excellence in the Social Sciences" takes up themes close to those Virginia Woolf broaches in A Room of One's Own, looking at the causes of women's persistent under-representation in some disciplinary areas and the impacts this has on knowledge.

Evana Ho: A Communications Coordinator in the ANU College of Arts & Social Sciences. She previously produced the podcast Future Self, featuring students interviewing people doing their dream job, and produced and hosted This Academic's Life and Better Things.

Reading the Room: The Podcast artwork was designed by ANU School of Art & Design students Lara White and Kate Rice.