The School of Education and the Arts at CQUniversity invites you, either in person or virtually, to the Annual Celeste Lawson Oration. This annual lecture honours Emeritus Professor Celeste Lawson, our valued colleague and passionate educator and champion of the Arts and Humanities, who passed away in 2023.
She is remembered for her inclusion, leadership, and a teaching philosophy that encouraged student engagement and deep learning. Celeste was a bright light at CQUniversity with a passion for students, their successes, and their achievements. She taught, mentored, and inspired many students and colleagues in her work in the School of Education and the Arts. She is also remembered as a highly valued president of CQU’s Academic Board, where she skilfully led attendees to consider and recommend on important University matters.
Celeste believed in the transformative power of education and the importance of studying the Arts and Humanities in order to better understand our changing world. The annual lecture in her honour will draw on these themes.
2025 Speaker
Dr Michael Hewson
With degrees in Science and the Humanities, Michael Hewson is an environmental geographer in the School of Education and the Arts, CQUniversity. He teaches weather and climate, environmental ethics and geopolitics. Michael’s research interests revolve around mapping threatened species habitat change, Central Queensland weather future and an Environmental Humanities approach to environmental policy critique.
Is Science a Pain in the Arts?
University faculty devolution and government ‘tariffs’ on Arts education suggest so, based on perceptions of employability. What if the Arts have had a history of helping Science with its strategic storytelling? What if that fruitful partnership is needed now more than ever, given the Earth system and civilisations’ need for policy cut through on biodiversity and Climate Change?
A/Prof Celeste Lawson embraced the provocation in this lecture - the idea that the different knowledge systems walk together toward an outcome. Recent Rights of Nature laws granting rivers legal personhood are (according to some) scientifically indefensible, but First Nations Peoples’ perspectives and the Arts say the intersection of stories achieves scientia (Latin for ‘knowledge’).
Previous Speakers
2024
Jan was deeply honoured to present the Inaugural Celeste Lawson Annual Lecture titled Why the Arts Matter in the 21st Century. Jan’s lecture first honoured Celeste through a creative exploration of the special place she held in the lives of those at CQUniversity, before addressing the place of the Arts in the social, cultural, and historical climate of the time.
Jan concluded with a presentation of the research she and her team had been undertaking, co-creating virtual worlds with young people navigating life-limiting health conditions, as a showcase of the importance of the Arts in the 21st century and beyond.
