2012 Canberra, Australia

Conference Summary

The Humanities Research Centre and National Centre of Biography at the Australian National University, in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery, presented Framing Lives, the 8th Biennial Conference of the International Auto/Biography Association (IABA). Contemporary auto/biography and life narrative studies is a dynamic and interdisciplinary field.

Framing Lives featured distinguished speakers and events at the Australian National University, National Portrait Gallery and National Film and Sound Archive. The conference drew attention to the extraordinary turn to the visual in contemporary life narrative: to graphics and animations, photographs and portraits, installations and performances, avatars and characters, that come alive on screens, stages, pages, and canvas, through digital and analogue technologies. At the same time, framing suggests the ways that lives are lived, recorded and viewed through multiple frames including those of language, politics, place, gender, history and culture. Conference themes included depiction and display, ethics and rights, living archives, place and displacement, media and celebrity, digital identity and social media, and creative life narrative.

We gratefully acknowledge the major sponsorship of the Australian National University College of Arts and Social Sciences and Research School of Humanities and the Arts. Further funding was provided by the visiting fellowships schemes of the Research School of Social Sciences and Humanities Research Centre, and by the ANU Centre for European Studies. Framing Lives is hosted in partnership with the National Portrait Gallery. The University of Queensland, the Australian Research Council, and the IABA 2010 Sussex conference provided additional financial support.

Convenors:

- Paul Arthur (Deputy Director, National Centre of Biography, School of History, ANU)

- Rosanne Kennedy (Associate Professor and Head of Discipline, Gender Sexuality & Culture, ANU)

- Gillian Whitlock (ARC Professorial Fellow, School of English, Media Studies & Art History, University of Queensland)

Conference management: - Leena Messina

(Programs Manager, Humanities Research Centre, Australian National University)

- Jason Ensor (Conference support, Australian National University)

- Jennifer Eadie, Ian Edelstein, Niki Francis, Erin Gazzard, Alessandro Moliterno, Kate M. Murphy, Alec O’Halloran, Channa A. Razaque, Kaaren Sephton, Jen Thompson, Elizabeth Watt, Kasia Williams

(Conference volunteers)