Welcome back to a new(ish) year, and to the life and activities of the DIIU.
We were a little quiet for a month or so while Australia took its long summer break. That’s not to say that the DIIU has been inactive all that time. One thing we have been doing is working with others across UNSW as part of the programme of university website updates. We hope to be able to unveil our website – with a new look and, importantly, improved accessibility – very soon.
Since the restructuring of Faculties and Divisions across UNSW last year, the DIIU has been working extensively with the whole Division of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (EDI), and with its sister Institute of Global Development (IGD), to consider how we can best work together and cross-fertilise each other’s areas of activity. Members of the DIIU participated in two EDI planning workshops towards the end of 2020, focusing particularly on exploring how the priorities of the Institute feed into the overall EDI agenda and looking for synergies with the various sections of the division. There are exciting suggestions for increased collaboration, especially because the latest additions to the DIIU team, Manager Hannah Sheridan and Project Support Officer Kayla Lochner, also work in IGD. As we move through February we are finalising plans for events and communications that will be coordinated with central EDI planning. More details of these events and outputs will be available soon, but we can already highlight a seminar/webinar series at least as innovative and inclusive as last year’s, and the next piece of work in our planned series of resources on inclusive research to follow on from the Guidelines launched in August 2020.
As we announced at the end of 2020, I have joined the ARC Centre of Excellence on Automated Decision-Making and Society as Co-Investigator, a role previously filled by Professor Leanne Dowse. Automated Decision-Making (ADM) refers to a collection of intelligent technologies in which computers make decisions, with varying levels of human oversight. These technologies have the potential to drive profound change across many areas of our lives, including health and social care, transport, housing and communications, in ways that have obvious implications for people with disability. The ARC Centre of Excellence is a network bringing together universities, communities, government and industry. UNSW hosts one node of the network, and its CIs (Professor Deborah Lupton from the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, and myself) will be leading research projects focusing on ADM in various aspects of health. This is an important opportunity for DIIU to play a pivotal part in understanding the future impact of ADM – positive and negative -- for the world of disability. The DIIU Newsletter and website will feature regular updates on our involvement in this and other areas of research.
Many people hoped that COVID-19 would be left behind with the end of 2020, but of course that’s not the case. Nevertheless, 2021 has brought the promise, if not yet the reality, of effective vaccination programmes. But just as with concerns about the rationing of critical care at the height of pandemic, the limited supply of vaccine around the world and the predicted need in Australia and elsewhere of a phased roll out of vaccination have enormous implications for people with disability. Where will they, and their families and carers, come in the queue for vaccination? Can their health and safety be assured? How will information be conveyed accessibly? The DIIU’s Rosemary Kayess was profiled in an ABC feature raising some of these questions, and these issues also being addressed by clinical ethics committees to which Jackie Leach Scully gives input. It’s safe to say COVID will remain a major theme in the lives of people with disability for some while yet.