SOCY PhD Offsite

Friday 24 July 2026

Acknowledgement of Country

Schedule

Morning — work in progress (12 min + 3 questions)

Midday — pre-confirmation (4 min + 1 question)

Afternoon

Coming up · 9:15 — 10:30

15-minute slots: 12 min + 3 for questions

  • 9:15 Evan Skinner
  • 9:30 Jake Blight
  • 9:45 Amy Wardrop
  • 10:00 Tom Chan
  • 10:15 Bek Conroy

Evan Skinner

Cybernetic governance · 9:15

Jake Blight

Applying cybernetic approaches to law reform · 9:30

Applying cybernetic approaches to law reform

  • legal doctrinal methodology dominates law reform; few lawyers were involved in early cybernetics, and there’s been little uptake since
  • the question: can tools from cybernetics be useful in the law reform context? A practical focus
  • national security law as the worked example
  • (topic has evolved since TPR; part-time candidate, working full-time)

PhD by compilation — four published, plus WIP

  • powers and functions of national security agencies
  • national security legislation, administrative law and AI
  • ASIO interception and data access powers
  • modernising the system for issuing warrants — findings from the SLAID Act review
  • WIP: how secrecy affects regulation; reviewing NS laws and the role of civil society engagement
  • annexures: four law-reform reports — secrecy offences, special cyber-warrants, espionage, defining terrorism

Still to do

  • 2026 — one more article to publication
  • 2027 (planning to go full-time on the PhD)
    • introduction and overview
    • legal doctrinal methodology vs cybernetic approaches
    • linking sections for each publication
    • overall conclusions and impact

Surviving a PhD while working full-time

  • great supervisors
  • leverage PhD research for work, and work for the PhD
  • PhD by compilation — bite-sized pieces, so you can see and show progress
  • be disciplined with time and effort
  • won’t be the right path for everyone

Amy Wardrop

The year that was, and the last stretch · 9:45

Since last July

  • presented at the POM, IAC and HWRS conferences
  • UNESCO initiative workshop, Montpellier
  • national workshops: climate adaptation, water quality modelling
  • two papers published

This year

  • back at work
  • finishing the writing: two final pieces for the PhD
  • …plus the thesis itself

Water modelling meets earth observation

  • with a colleague in South Africa, funded via UNESCO
  • ties together the water modelling and conversations with earth observation folk at CSIRO

From framework to model

  • the framework built from the initial data and the literature review
  • now the model we’re testing and evaluating
  • half of it might just be a chapter — it’s like four papers

And then, the thesis

  • pulling the pieces together

Tom Chan

Built environment transition intermediaries · 10:00

Bek Conroy

Cybernetic praxis for a world on fire · 10:15

Morning tea

10:30 — 10:45

Coming up · 10:45 — 11:45

15-minute slots: 12 min + 3 for questions

  • 10:45 Matthew Heffernan
  • 11:00 Bill McAlister
  • 11:15 Liz Skelton
  • 11:30 Dominika Janus

Matthew Heffernan

10:45

yarning intensifies

Bill McAlister

Historical aerial photography · 11:00

Liz Skelton

Systemic leadership in polycrises · 11:15

Dominika Janus

Cybernetic principles in stakeholder engagement · 11:30

Short break

11:45 — 12:00

Coming up · 12:00 — 12:45

5-minute slots: 4 min + 1 for questions

  • 12:00 Charlie Paulk
  • 12:05 Joshua Castle
  • 12:10 Thomas Griffiths
  • 12:15 Sui Jackson
  • 12:20 Gareth Jones
  • 12:25 Nadereh Ghelich Khani
  • 12:30 Thomas McEvoy Zafiropulos
  • 12:35 Zhuotao Fang

Charlie Paulk

Demonic multitudes · 12:00

Joshua Castle

Net abundance in the age of AI · 12:05

Thomas Griffiths

The cybernetic city · 12:10

Sui Jackson

12:15

Gareth Jones

To what extent can AI replicate Indigenous worldviews? · 12:20

Whakataka te hau ki te uru — Cease the winds from the west,

Whakataka te hau ki te tonga — Cease the winds from the south.

Kia mākinakina ki uta — Let the breeze blow over the land,

Kia mātaratara ki tai — Let the breeze blow over the ocean.

E hī ake ana te atākura — Let the red-tipped dawn come with a sharpened air,

He tio, he huka, he hau hū — A touch of frost, a promise of a glorious day.

Tīhei mauri ora! — Behold, there is life!

The challenge

  • AI is transforming health, education, security and governance
  • Indigenous knowledge is relational, spiritual and place-based
  • AI predicts patterns rather than lived relationships
  • can AI authentically replicate Indigenous worldviews?

Research design

  • comparative study across Māori, Aboriginal, Torres Strait Islander and Pacific knowledge systems
  • methods: Kaupapa Māori, Yarning, Talanoa, AI audits and interviews
  • cybernetics examines relationships between people, technology and governance
  • develop an Indigenous-led AI governance framework

Expected impact

  • protect Indigenous Data Sovereignty
  • support ethical AI policy
  • strengthen digital trust and cultural integrity
  • inform governments, industry and communities

An example

  • an AI-generated Māori game character, released without meaningful Māori consultation — cultural inaccuracies and associations that caused significant concern
  • AI can reproduce Indigenous identities without understanding whakapapa, tikanga or cultural context
  • highlights the need for Indigenous governance, cultural oversight and authentic engagement in AI-enabled technologies
  • illustrates the central question: can AI replicate Indigenous worldviews, or only imitate their visible features?

Kia ora

  • builds on previous PhD and leadership in Indigenous health, national security and AI
  • brings together AI, cybernetics, governance and Indigenous knowledge
  • deliverable: an Indigenous AI Authenticity & Integrity Framework
  • future: Indigenous peoples shaping AI

Nadereh Ghelich Khani

Transformative learning experiences in creativity · 12:25

Thomas McEvoy Zafiropulos

Art and the divided self · 12:30

A cybernetics of ontological repair

  • many contemporary philosophers and cognitive scientists now understand the self as a process rather than a static substance — if so, can it also be understood as a viable cybernetic system?
  • how does the self-system emerge, and how is it maintained?
  • how and why does it break down?
  • what role does art play in maintaining or restoring viability?

Year one

  • theory: develop a cybernetic account of conceptual engineering — what changes when concepts are understood as processes rather than static objects?
  • literature: examine historical systems-based accounts of psychopathology and develop a cybernetic etiology of psychopathology
  • empirical groundwork: analyse how different disciplines conceptualise “the self” using word-embedding methods
  • pilot intervention: design an art-based intervention to test the role of aesthetic experience in self-viability

Zhuotao Fang

GenAI and informal leadership · 12:35

Lunch

12:45 — 13:45

Working with Claude (Code)

Skills session · 13:45 — 15:15

How this session works

  • this is a participatory demo
  • your existing files are fine — Claude reads Word, PowerPoint and the rest
  • you get a subscription, and you get a subscription, and you…

key idea: Claude is good at manipulating folders of files

step 1: keep your files in a folder

Claude works well with a folder full of plain text or markdown files — version control optional, and explicitly not for everyone

step 2: curate your CLAUDE.md

CLAUDE.md is a file that lives in the root of your folder and gets sent to the LLM each time, so you don’t have to repeat yourself about what’s going on within a folder

step 3: skill issue(s)

skills are markdown files you can call on with a ‘slash’, and they’re a way to not repeat yourself across folders

closing thoughts

  • even if you don’t live in plain text, take heart — Claude reads Word and PowerPoint perfectly well
  • but what it writes is mostly text — so it’s worth learning markdown, the lingua franca of LLMs
  • putting your thesis in a folder of plain text files costs nothing and needs no subscription — you can start on the walk home

Afternoon tea

15:15 — 15:30

Admin updates

15:30

New Submission Readiness Review milestone

  • replaces the Oral Presentation, due 3–6 months before submission
  • due after 1 September 2026? you’re on the new one
  • due before, or overdue? current eForm, until 31 October
  • already presented? nothing changes
  • runs in the ANU Researcher Hub

ConCon27 · Friday 12 March 2027

  • the SOCY confirmation mini-conference — 9am–5pm, Birch Innovation Space
  • this morning’s pre-confirmation cohort present their Confirmation of Candidature seminars
  • everyone else comes along: it’s the other day we’re all in one room

Discussion & feedback

15:45 — 16:30

that’s a wrap — see you at Badger