Hancock Lecture
The Hancock Lecture invites young Australian scholars of excellence to deliver their research in the form of an accessible public presentation.
The Academy is dedicated to supporting and celebrating emerging leaders in the humanities. The Hancock Lecture invites outstanding scholars at the earlier stages of their careers to talk about their work to a public audience.
2026 Hancock Lecture
Presented by Dr Jaya Keaney
The 2026 Hancock Lecture, Remaking reproduction: gender, artifice and population futures, will be delivered by Dr Jaya Keaney on 29 September at The University of Melbourne.
Abstract
While in vitro fertilisation, or IVF, has been commonplace since the 1980s, new technologies such as uterus transplants, artificial wombs, and lab-grown sperm and eggs take reproduction beyond the accepted limits of what we think the body can do. These technologies promise to solve the population “crisis” of falling birth rates facing many parts of Asia and the global North by intervening into fertility on a cellular scale. Such technologies make reproduction increasingly artificial, reorganising the relations between gender, biology, and generation. And yet, today gender is also forcefully defined as natural in a populist “gender critical” discourse, which takes issue with gender both as an analytic category and a field of Humanities inquiry. In this populist discourse, there are males and females, with distinct reproductive anatomy: gender is biological sex, nothing more. How should we understand these two, divergent narratives? In this talk, I explore reproduction as a site of contest across multiple scales, from the cellular to the populational, that is bound to what I term artifice as much as to nature.
Biography
Dr Jaya Keaney is a Senior Lecturer in Gender Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research develops feminist theories of race, reproduction, and inheritance by drawing together approaches from gender and cultural studies and science and technology studies. Her monograph, Making Gaybies: Queer Reproduction and Multiracial Feeling, was published by Duke University Press in 2023, and received citations in two international prizes (Rachel Carson Prize; Eileen Basker Memorial Prize). It examines the racial and gendered imaginaries that structure queer reproduction in the transnational fertility industry. Jaya’s research has appeared in journals including Body & Society; Catalyst: Feminism, Theory, Technoscience; Science Technology & Human Values; and History and Philosophy of the Life Sciences. Prior to her role at the University of Melbourne, Jaya was a postdoctoral research fellow at Deakin University. She has also taken up visiting fellowships at Kings College London and the University of Cambridge. Jaya recently served as an expert advisor for the Australian Law Reform Commission’s Review of Surrogacy Laws (2025-26).
Namesake & history
Emeritus Professor Sir (William) Keith Hancock KBE FAHA (1898—1988) was a Foundation Fellow and the first President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. This lecture is made possible by a bequest from the estate of Sir Keith.
The first Sir Keith Hancock Lecture was given by (then) Associate Professor Christine Alexander in 1993.
Since 1993 we’ve hosted the lecture almost every year.
Past lectures
Thirteenth Lecture
Design as an act of (Blak) power
The 13th Hancock Lecture was presented by Professor Alison Page, Professor of Practice at the Faculty of Design and Society, University of Technology Sydney. Professor Page is a descendant of the Dharawal and Yuin people and is an award-winning creative at the forefront of the contemporary Australian Aboriginal cultural movement. She is a leading force in the Australian design scene and has an extensive career spanning design, public art, exhibitions and urban design.
The lecture was held on 13 November 2025 on Gadigal land, at the University of Technology Sydney.
Twelfth Lecture
What makes a multicultural nation? The contribution of Chinese Australian communities
The 12th Hancock Lecture was presented by Dr Nathan Gardner, a post-doctoral Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne and an historian of (forced) migration, diasporas and multiculturalism in Australia. The lecture was held on 3 September 2024 at the State Library of New South Wales.
Eleventh Lecture
Artificial figures: gender-in-the-making in algorithmic culture
The 11th Hancock Lecture was presented by Dr Thao Phan, a Research Fellow in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making & Society and the Emerging Technologies Research Lab at Monash University. The Lecture was held on Thursday 16 November at RMIT.
Tenth lecture
The 10th Hancock Lecture was presented by Dr Frances Flanagan, Sydney Fellow and Lecturer, University of Sydney. The Lecture was held on Tuesday 31 May 2022 at the State Library of New South Wales.
*Recording courtesy of ABC Radio National, The Science Show
Ninth lecture
The 9th Hancock Lecture — Maaya Waabiny: Mobilising song archives to nourish an endangered language — was given by Wirlomin Noongar researcher Associate Professor Clint Bracknell from the Kurongkurl Katitjin Centre for Indigenous Australian Education and Research and WAAPA, Edith Cowan University. It was the curtain-raiser event for the Academy’s 50th Symposium Humanising the Future, held on Wednesday 13 November 2019 at the Griffith University Art Museum, Brisbane.
Eighth lecture
Hybrid Civilisations of Clash of Civilisations?: Re-visiting the Muslim Other (watch the video)
Dr Raihan Ismail
16 November 2018, Sydney
Dr Ismail is also the joint recipient of the Australian Academy of the Humanities’ 2018 Max Crawford Medal, Australia’s most prestigious award for early-career researchers in the Humanities.
Seventh lecture
Life at the edge of extinction: Spectral crows, haunted landscapes and the environmental humanities
Dr Thom van Dooren FAHA
15 November 2013, Brisbane
Sixth lecture
Was the twentieth century the great age of internationalism?
Professor Glenda Sluga FAHA
19 November 2009, Canberra
Fifth lecture
Foreign values; or, on English as a Chinese language
Professor Meaghan Morris FAHA
18 November 2005, Canberra
Fourth lecture
Representations of their lives: Archaeology and the tangibility of the past
Dr Susan Lawrence FAHA
11 November 2001, Canberra
Third lecture
Being and nothing: Figuring Aboriginality in Australian art history
Dr Ian McLean
11 November 1998, Sydney
Second lecture
Mabo and the Humanities
Mr Noel Pearson
5 November 1994, Sydney
Inaugural lecture
Charlotte Brontë’s paintings: Victorian women and the visual arts
Associate Professor Christine Alexander FAHA
23 March 1993, Melbourne