Understanding Everyday Resilience and Tackling Hate Workshop

CRIS Conference 2021

5-7 October 2021 | Online

The 2021 CRIS Conference was held online due to the Covid-19 pandemic and restrictions. The CRIS Consortium acknowledges the Traditional owners of the various lands from which our attendees and speakers met. We pay our respects and gratitude to Elders – past, present, emerging and future – of the lands we live and work on, to their ancestors, and to any First Nations members of our communities who may be joining us today. Indigenous Australians are the Traditional Custodians of this land, and sovereignty has never been ceded.

As the field of resilience studies tells us, there is no genuine resilience without adversity; resilience emerges dynamically in responses to crises and challenges, and it is how we cope with these challenges when we encounter them that signals how resilient we may be as individuals, families, communities and societies. For many of us, the current global challenges we’re facing – a series of uncertainties and adaptations initiated by the pandemic, climate change, and social and political polarisation – and the ways in which these resonate for us more locally as individuals and in our communities, make our focus and discussions around understanding everyday resilience and tackling hate more relevant than ever.  

In popular discourse, ‘resilience’ is often framed as something we only draw on, like savings set aside for a rainy day, when adversities or crises hit. But many of the adversities people grapple with are not so spectacular or acute, but instead quiet and chronic: adversities related to social inequalities, food and housing insecurity, discrimination, and access to the health, education and employment opportunities that help people thrive. So everyday resilience is really about social and cultural wellbeing, and it is the features and resources required to understand and sustain this less flashy, more systemically focused social ecology of resilience that we focussed on during these three days.

We have published a select few videos from the conference below, and encourage you to sign up to our mailing list to hear about the next CRIS events.

Featured CRIS Conference Videos
Law Enforcement Perspectives: Transferable Knowledge From The UK

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Paul Giannasi OBE, Police Hate Crime Policy Lead, National Police Chief's Council

The racially motivated murder of black student Stephen Lawrence, in 1993, was a watershed moment for policing in the UK. When the subsequent inquiry found that the police force was "institutionally racist", there were major changes to policing, and community approaches to racism.

Paul has 30 years of policing experience and led the cross-government hate crime programme for 12 years, where he was responsible for creating new relationships between police, the state and communities to combat hate. Currently the national Police Hate Crime Policy Lead, In this keynote address Paul explains how police and community use “Critical Incident Gold Groups” to set action plans in response to serious incidents at home and overseas. Collaboration between government, nongovernment and academics has lifted the quality of existing data about hate crime, hate incidents and hate speech, to the benefit of all parties and most importantly, of UK communities. The meaningful, trusting relationships between police and non-government organisations have been formalised in Information Sharing Agreements enabling partners to tailor solutions to critical societal problems.

Everyday Resilience - Fact or Fiction for Young People in Significantly Stressed African Ecologies?

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Professor Linda C. Theron, University of Pretoria, South Africa
Session Chair: Dr Vanessa Barolsky, Deakin University

In sub-Saharan Africa, relentless adversity and disruptive shocks are commonplace. So too is child and youth resilience. Studies of this fast-growing population’s capacity to adjust successfully to adversities and shocks underscore the ordinariness of resilience-enabling resources. In this paper, Linda Theron probes that putative ordinariness. To do so, she explores the systemic dynamics that facilitate everyday resilience and those that demand extraordinary resilience from sub-Saharan young people, their families, and communities. Drawing on current resilience science, she demonstrates that transforming extraordinary resilience into everyday resilience requires multi-systemic, contextually responsive supports and proposes evidence-informed accelerators of such change.

In Conversation with Ro Allen

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Ro Allen, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission

Session Chair: Dr Matteo Vergani, Deakin University

Ro commenced their role as Victoria’s Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commissioner on 1 June 2021. Ro brings more than 25 years of experience in community services, governance and social justice, and has a deep commitment to equality and a broad experience in strategic advocacy. In this panel, Ro will discuss their plans to empower existing – and establish new – collaborations with communities, and the Commission’s plans to tackle hate against a wide range of target groups.

Local Government's Role in Strengthening Community

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Dr Mario Peucker, Victoria University
Cristina Del Frate, Yarra City Council
Session Chair: Mark Duckworth PSM, Deakin University

This session discusses practical learnings from a recently concluded research study on far-right dynamics in three Victorian municipalities, paying particular attention to community-specific factors that can influence community resilience to far-right narratives and increase, or decrease, the chances of community-driven counter-mobilisation.

Focusing in particular on the role of local government and civil society, the workshop will explore how structural factors, such as urban planning and segregation, interact with community and identity-related issues, such as local pride, belonging and social cohesion, and in doing so influence local resilience to harmful political mobilisation and social division. Moreover, the workshop will shed light on how local government can manage local conflicts and dissent, and enhance its preparedness and responses to divisive social and political dynamics in their municipality.

Measuring Resilience: Challenges and Possibilities for Assessment

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Dr Philip Jefferies, Dalhousie University

Session Chair: Dr Matteo Vergani, Deakin University

Within the growing interest in the study of resilience, there is an increasing interest in measurement. But there are as many different approaches to quantifying resilience as there are ways of conceptualising it. Should we limit ourselves to just a direct assessment of how much a person perceives they can ‘bounce back’ from adversity? Or should we consider specific risk and protective factors that might enable a person or community to demonstrate resilience? And what score must a person or community achieve to be considered ‘resilient’? This discussion provides a review of options for measuring resilience as well as a discussion of their utility in different situations. Contexts include individuals and communities experiencing acute crises as well as ‘everyday’ adversities.

Why Do We Need a Database of Hate? Advancing Fairness, Equality, Respect and Understanding

CRIS Conference 5-7 October 2021 | Online

Professor Nicole Asquith, University of Tasmania
Peter Wertheim AM, Executive Council of Australian Jewry
Josh Bull MP, Co-Chair of the Victorian Anti-Racism Taskforce
Session Chair: Professor Greg Barton, Deakin University

In this panel session, moderated by Prof Greg Barton, we will explore why a database of hate behaviours can contribute to advance fairness, equality, respect and understanding. Panellists will include Prof Nicole Asquith, Director of the Tasmanian Institute of Law Enforcement Studies and Secretary of the Australian Hate Crime Network, and Mr Peter Wertheim, co-CEO of the Executive Council of Australian Jewry. The panellists will discuss how a database of hate can be useful to academics, civil society organisations and government.