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Louise Templeton
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louise.templeton@unsw.edu.au

Meridian 180, a multilingual policy leadership group, has established its first base in the Southern Hemisphere at UNSW Sydney and is celebrating the new partnership with a day of conversations at the University on Friday focused on the theme Trust and Distrust.

Former foreign affairs minister Julie Bishop will deliver the keynote address, reflecting on the role of trust in diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region, and drawing on her experiences in forging relationships within the region.

Other speakers include Tim Fung, Founder and CEO of Airtasker; Professor Ian Chubb AC, former Chief Scientist of Australia; Ian Oppermann, NSW Chief Data Scientist and CEO Data Analytics; and Annelise Riles, Founder of Meridian 180 and Executive Director, Roberta Buffett Institute for Global Studies Chicago.

The Trust and Distrust event will provide a taste of the Meridian 180 concept and an example of how scholars, business leaders, community organisers and policy makers can contribute to future conversations.

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Julie Bishop

Professor of Law and Academic Director of the newly established Meridian 180 base at UNSW, Fleur Johns, said: “Meridian 180 is about making space to work across specialisations and language groups, so that talented people can try out new ideas in dialogue with people with whom they might never otherwise cross paths. I can think of few better sites for that initiative than UNSW, an incredibly diverse campus, with a wide range of research strengths, and a record of educating people to become leaders of their generation.”

Meridian 180 co-hosts its transformative leadership and policy innovation forums with universities in the USA, South Korea, Japan and now Sydney. The platform allows members to converse and collaborate in real-time in four languages – Japanese, Korean, Mandarin and English – on critical issues facing the world today. Meridian 180 members come from around the globe and represent a wide range of disciplines, expertise, and professional domains.

“Fleur Johns and so many other UNSW scholars bring vital new ideas to the global conversation. All of us at Meridian 180 are so excited to be able to collaborate in a much more intensive way with the UNSW community,“ said Ms Riles. “Together, we will develop new solutions to pressing global problems. And more than this, we will reimagine the global university and bring a new spirit of creativity, empathy and curiosity to the two-way dialogue between the university and the world.”

Register to attend the UNSW-Meridian 180 launch event 

Date: 5 October 2018Time: 9am to 5pmVenue: Tyree Room, Scientia Building, UNSW Kensington

Registration is available for a whole day of conversations, or for individual sessions.

Learn more at www.meridian180.unsw.edu.au or email australia@meridian-180.org.