The Annual Tuckwell Academic Dinner held on Wednesday 30 September, saw ANU Academics from different disciplines, Tuckwell Scholars, staff, and distinguished guests come together for a memorable evening at the National Museum.
Each year scholars nominate an academic to be their guest for the evening and this year we witnessed a full circle moment where some current scholars nominated Tuckwell alumni as their academic guest: Dr Olivia Taifalos (2019) '25, Jacob Gome (2021) '24 and Mariane Johnstone (2021) '26.
The evening was seamlessly MC’d by 2022 Scholar Josh Abelev who set the tone for a memorable night as he shared what the Tuckwell scholarship has meant to him as it has created spaces for conversations, with events such as Academic Dinner providing the infrastructure for Scholars to have a good chat with Academics. He encouraged scholars to ask their academics how they balance life and study. Josh also made special mention of 2023 scholar, Chi Chi Zhao who has recently been awarded a Rhodes Scholarship for which she received a standing ovation from her fellow scholars.
Each year, the evening features a Scholar speech. This year our Tuckwell speaker was Bridget Lunn (2020) a 3rd year Doctor of Medicine & Surgery student, a published author and avid runner who also happened to celebrate her birthday on the evening, with the MC leading the audience to sing Bridget a happy birthday.
Bridget is originally from the south coast country town of Moruya in NSW and shared her journey of becoming addicted to running and creating training programs for herself which led to Inward Bound, marathons and long-distance trail running events overseas including world championships in Italy. She is a big fan of saying yes to any opportunity and enjoys the feeling of progression after training consistently. She also mentioned her time looking for lizards around Canberra and publishing a reptile guide with her fiancé, all while running and studying medicine. Her closing advice to scholars was that it is "never too late to try something new." To use their resources, opportunities and connections and really use their time at university.
The keynote address was delivered by Academic speaker, Associate Professor Joshua Neoh from the ANU Law School. Joshua is a philosopher of law, and his main area of research is in jurisprudence, with a special interest in the intersection of law and religion. He grew up in Penang, and he completed his LLB at the ANU, LLM at Yale, and PhD at Cambridge. He is the author of “Law, Love and Freedom: From the Sacred to the Secular” (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and the co-author of “Central Issues in Jurisprudence” (Sweet & Maxwell, 6th ed, 2022).
Joshua captivated the audience with his profound words which resonated with both Scholars and Academics. He shared his wisdom on academia as a form of life with similarities and peculiarities with the monastic form of life. He spoke about HECS debts, AI and the never-ending nightmare of marking student work, a light-hearted moment which Academics in the room immediately concurred with.
Joshua's words were thought provoking as he asked the Scholars to think about why they are at university. He shared that they are at university to acquire knowledge and reminded them that the role of an academic is not to prepare them for the workforce, but to simply be available for Scholars to talk to openly about their ideas, to help broaden their minds - "I read, I think, and I write." His final piece of advice was that time at university will go by quickly and scholars should spend time being "useless." Words which will stay with the audience long after the event.
The Tuckwell tradition of bringing Scholars and academics together for a formal evening of thought-provoking discussion, continues to be a highlight of the Program and is often named as the favourite event for many scholars, staff and ANU Academics, with some Academics invited and hosted over consecutive years by different scholars!
Thank you to all Academics, Scholars and staff who joined us at the National Museum. You have made this another memorable Academic Dinner for the ANU Tuckwell community and we hope to see some of you return next year.
