PROFESSOR IAN LOWE

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse sessions:

'Hostility, turbulence and disorder'
- 3.30pm, Saturday, August 18
The last 1000 years, the next 1000 years
- 5pm, Saturday, August 18
'The world will get weirder, the end of the human era'
- 11.30am, Thursday, August 16
'Australia is not an island'
- 5.45pm, Thursday, August 16

Professor Ian Lowe has been with the School of Science at Griffith University since 1980. He was Director of the Commission for the Future in 1988, gave the ABC's Boyer Lectures in 1991 and chaired the advisory council which produced in 1996 the first independent report on the state ofthe Australian environment. He received in 2000 the Queensland Premier's Award for Excellence in Science and the Prime Minister's Environmental Award for Outstanding Individual Achievement. The former president of Australian Science Communicators, he writes regular columns for New Scientist and other publications as well as making frequent contributionsto radio and TV.

SANDRA PHILLIPS

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse sessions:

'Humanity thinking out loud'
- 2pm, Saturday, August 18
Fascination vs. Recognition
- 6pm, Friday, August 17
Late Night Ideas - Ideas to fight for
- 9pm, Thursday, August 16

Sandra Phillips is a freelance editor and writer who has recently returned to Queensland after residing in Singapore. As an editor Sandra has worked with Queensland University Press on the Black Australian Writers Series, with Magabala Books in Western Australia.

Sandra has held senior policy and research positions in Literature and in Aboriginal and Torres Strait Arts with the Australia Council and worked as a research consultant for the former Department of Employment, Education and Training. She has taught at Tranby College and the Eora Centre for Performing and Visual Arts in Sydney and lectured at the University of Technology, Sydney and the University of Sydney.

Sandra' s editing credits include:

• Jandamarra and the Bunuba Resistance, Howard Pedersen and BanjoWoorunmurra, Magabala Books, 1995 (1996 Winner of the WA Premier's Award)
• Warrigal's Way, Warrigal Anderson, UQP, 1996
• Follow The Rabbit-Proof Fence, Doris Pilkington, UQP, 1995
• Plains of Promise, Alexis Wright, UQP, 1997 (Shortlisted 1998 Asia Pacific Section, Commonwealth Literary Award)
• Steam Pigs, Melissa Lucashenko, UQP, 1997 (1998 Winner of the Dobbie Award For Women Writers Of Life Writing, and shortlisted 1998 Asia Pacific Section, Commonwealth Literary Award)

DR DALE SPENDER

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse sessions:

'Young people inherit the world like a straitjacket'
- 1pm, Friday, August 17
Content Creators
- 2.30pm, Friday, August 17

Dr Spender was awarded her AM in 1996 for services to the community as a writer and researcher in the fields of equal opportunity and the status of women.

She is the author of Man Made Language and Women of Ideas as well as Invisible Women: The Schooling Scandal; For the Record, and Mothers of the Novel ; Reflecting Men; Writing a New World; Two Centuries of Australian Women Writers and The Writing or the Sex? - or why you don't have to read women's writing to know it's no good. In press is Dymphna Cusack: Politics and Pen (with Kirsten Lees); and Nattering on the Net: Women, Power and Cyberspace 1995.

She is the editor of Penguin Anthology of Australian Women's Writing; the editor of Heroines; The Penguin Anthology of Contemporary Australian Women's Writing and the co-editor of the Anthology of British Women Writers.

She is the series editor of 'Penguin Australian Women's Library' and founding and consulting editor of 'Women's Studies International Forum' and 'The Athens Series'.

Man Made Language along with Feminist Theorists and parts of The Writing or the Sex? have been translated into Japanese. Invisible Women has been translated into German and Learning to Lose translated into Spanish.

Author and editor of more than thirty books, Dale Spender has founded publishing imprints, series and journals, she is the Australian representative on a number of international academic journals. Her work as a consultant is primarily in the areas of information technology and management, in education and the construction of knowledge; and on the role and structure of the university in the electronic era. Dale Spender is also acknowledged as an international expert in the fields of language, communication, writing, editing, publishing - and equity.

Researcher, writer, editor, broadcaster, teacher. (Visiting Fellow, University of London); Senior Research Associate, WITS (Women, Information, Technology and Scholarship), University of Illinois; Honorary Research Fellow, University of Queensland. Member of Executive, Australian Society of Authors; convenor Electronic Publishing and Public Affairs Committees. Member of the Board of Governors, Communications Research Institute.

PHILLIP ADAMS AO

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse sessions:

The Ideas Debate
- 7.30pm, Friday, August 17
Sunday Brunch
- 11am, Sunday, August 19
What are we doing with our ideas?
- 11am, Thursday, August 16

Named one of Australia's 100 National Living Treasures by the National Trust, for almost 40 years Phillip Adams' columns in our national newspapers and magazines have provoked discussion and controversy. Twice honoured in the Order of Australia, Phillip is renowned for his contribution to film, television and the arts. He is also a prominent philanthropist who has been a board member of Greenpeace Australia and CARE Australia.

Often described as "The Godfather of Australian Film", Phillip was the author of the report that inspired Prime Minister John Gorton to revive the local industry. Working with Barry Jones, he devised the Experimental Film Fund and was the driving force behind the Australian Film and Television School. He devised the South Australian Film Corporation for Premier Don Dunstan, which became a model for similar bodies in all other States.

Producer of 14 major Australian films, including Don's Party, The Getting of Wisdom, We of the Never Never and Lonely Hearts, Phillip has collected many awards for his work, including the film industry's highest accolade, the Raymond Longford Award for "Outstanding Services to the Australian Film Industry". His many roles in the industry have included Chairman of the Australian Film Commission, Foundation Chairman of the Commission for the Future, Foundation Chairman of the Film, Radio and Television Board, Foundation Member of Film Victoria, Foundation Chairman of the Independent Feature Film Producers' Association, Chairman of the Australian Film Institute and the Victorian Government Representative on the Children's Television Foundation.

Phillip is the author of a number of best-selling books, including The Unspeakable Adams, The Inflammable Adams, Adams Versus God and Retreat from Tolerance. A patron, with Dick Smith, of the Australian Sceptics, and a passionate archaeologist, he has the largest private collection of antiquities in Australia. His film on ancient Egypt, "Death and Destiny" was screened by the ABC. Amongst his other documentaries, "Adams' Australia" was made by the BBC where it enjoyed a considerable rating success prior to screenings in the US and Canada.

In addition to his columns for The Australian newspaper, Phillip is well-known as a broadcaster for the ABC's Radio National network and a presenter for ABC TV on series such as Two Shot and The Big Questions with Professor Paul Davies.

WENDY SARKISSIAN

Participated in Ideas at the Powerhouse session:

'Very simple miracles'
- 8pm, Friday, August 17

Dr. Wendy Sarkissian is a planner specialising in social planning and research, housing and community participation. She holds a BSc., M.A., and a Masters of Town Planning (Adelaide University) and a PhD from Murdoch University. She recently undertook training for accreditation as a mediator. She is a Fellow of the Royal Australian Planning Institute.

Her work has focused on community participation, social design and the needs of disadvantaged groups. She has written widely on these matters during a long career, using her practice as a basis for the preparation of published case studies and guidelines.

Dr. Sarkissian has worked as researcher and planner for government for many years as a private social planning consultant. She has also managed a large Community Services Department for an outer suburban municipality in South Australia. Planning and research consultancies have been undertaken in every Australian State.

Her academic career has included teaching in schools of architecture, landscape architecture and planning in Australia and overseas.

She is co-author of numerous papers and articles on housing, planning, participation, and research and co-author of Housing as if People Mattered (with Clare Cooper Marcus), which received the 1992 Progressive Architecture Citation for housing research. This popular book on social factors in housing design is in its fifteenth year in print.

Her housing, planning, community participation, planning scholarship and research work has been acknowledged by 24 major awards for excellence in planning and housing in recent years. Her firm was short-listed in 1992 and 1993 for the World Habitat Award for a housing and community participation project in Melbourne.

Wendy is co-author of the multi-award wining series, Community Participation in Practice (1994-97), practical advisory material for planners and others conducting participation processes. These publications, available from Murdoch University, are based on the firm's practical experience and examples of best practice by other practitioners. They have been acknowledged by five Awards for Excellence from the Royal Australian Planning Institute.

Her Ph.D. dissertation explored ways of nurturing an ethic of caring for Nature in the education of Australian planners, focusing on approaches in environmental ethics and deep ecology. It received the 1998 National Award for Excellence in the Planning Scholarship Category from the Royal Australian Planning Institute.

JIM REEVES

Jim Reeves has been Chief of Staff to the Lord Mayor since April 1994.

A qualified social psychologist, he spent the early part of his career working with juvenile and adult offenders. He has a long history of community involvement.

Jim Reeves was a Ballarat City Councilor for eight years and was the youngest person to be elected to the Council and their youngest Mayor.

He has worked in senior political and policy positions in Canberra and Queensland, and prior to joining Jim Soorley, was the Director of the South-East Queensland 2001 Growth Management Project. This Project produced the regional framework for growth management which underpins the strategic planning for Local and State Government bodies and agencies throughout South East Queensland.