3. The IVth Year Honours thesis is about 18,000
words based on original research and exposition
by the student. It is examined at a professional
standard. Students also complete units of study
in the IVth year Honours. Many are enrolled in
combined award courses.
The Best and Brightest
Honours Graduate Program
Honours graduates from Government
and International relations have gone
on to careers as problem solvers in
public service, international affairs,
public policy and administration,
consultancy, journalism and media,
lobbying organisations – domestic
and international, and more.
Recent graduates have been
employed by Aristocrat Technologies,
Australian Broadcasting Corporation,
Australian Federal Police, Australian
Prudential Regulatory Authority,
Bearing Point, BT Financial
Group, Citi-Group, Clayton Utz,
Clubs NSW, Commonwealth
Bank, Department of Defence,
Department of Foreign Affairs and
Trade, Housing NSW, Elektroskandia
AB, Fox Communications, GHC
entertainment, HarperCollins,
Macquarie Group, NSW Parliament
House, RailCorp, SBS Television,
Westpac Banking, and World Vision.
Many graduates pursue a post-
graduate degree shortly after
graduation. Honours Graduates
in Government comprise a long
list of distinguished contributors
to Australian society and its place
in the region and the world. They
contribute to all walks of life.
Previous panellists at Best and
Brightest have been Rhodes
Scholars, Menzies Fellows and have
pursued higher degrees at Harvard
University, Oxford University,
Cambridge, Yale University, Queen
Mary (London) University, the
University of Toronto, and the
University of Sydney. A former
panellist is now a documentary film-
maker in London, a senior advisor
to a cabinet minister, a portfolio
manager at a major accounting firm,
a policy advisor to the NSW Farmers’
Association, an ABC producer, and
several are legal practitioners.
Page1TheBestandBrightestsydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydney
4. IVth Year Honours
Program
Welcome and call to order
The Panellists
1. Sarah Mourney We Don’t Want Food Security: Power, Resistance, and Food Policy in
Indonesia
2. Felix Donovan The Weight of the World: The Burdens of Class and Choice on Young
People’s End of School Transitions
Interim Question Time - first two speakers
3. Alexandra Peattie From Resistance to Re-Colonisation: An Intersectional Analysis of
Bolivia’s Proceso De Cambio
4. Ruby Rowe Beyond the Line: Religious Settlers and the Israeli State 2005-2015
5. Stuart Bryan To Kill a Hydra: Drone Strikes and the Epistemology of Efficacy
General Question Time - all speakers
Closing Remarks
Reception in Lobby
Page2sydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydneyTheBestandBrightest
5. IVth Year Honours
Tonight’s Panellists
Sarah Mourney
We Don’t Want Food Security: Power, Resistance, and Food Security in
Indonesia
This thesis uses a case study of
Indonesia to examine the conflict
between the food security and
food sovereignty discourses at the
national and local levels in order
to understand how food policy is
justified and criticised.
Policymakers in Indonesia tend to
gravitate toward ‘food security’
as a basis for policy-design, to
which many peasants and activists
express direct opposition. They
call, instead, for the government to
adopt ‘food sovereignty’ as the main
policy approach to food. Drawing on
primary fieldwork in Indonesia, this
thesis conducts a discourse analysis
of food security and sovereignty,
examining the power relations
at the core of this conflict and
explaining how and why peasants
try to influence policy. It adapts the
‘discourse coalition’ literature to
examine who ‘speaks’ discourse at
the global, national and local levels.
In doing so, it makes two key
arguments. Firstly, food security is
the dominant discourse, as it serves
the interests of powerful actors
by promoting neoliberal policies.
Secondly, food sovereignty emerges
in resistance to food security, and
peasants re-articulate the discourse
to suit their local contexts.
−− Supervisor: Associate Professor
Charlotte Epstein
Page3TheBestandBrightestsydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydney
6. Felix Donovan
The Weight of the World: The Burden of Class and Choice on Young People’s
End of School Transitions
In Australian schools, there are
substantial class inequalities
in educational outcomes and
transitions. These inequalities are
not only the result of class disparities
in test performance, but also the
consequence of different class
based aspirations, expectations and
choices. This thesis asks: How does
class shape young people’s thinking
and decision making about their post
school futures?
First, it engages the choice biography
approach to youth studies in
conversation with the class theories
of Bourdieu and Goldthorpe,
reaching a conception of youth
biographies that foregrounds both
class and choice. Drawing on survey
and interview based research with
students in NSW high schools, this
thesis argues that class is implicated
in young people’s end of school
transitions to higher education and
work. Although young people do
not meaningfully identify with class
labels, class still influences their
views of justice and equality in the
social world and is present in their
perceptions of risk and security when
imagining their futures.
When it comes to making decisions
about transitions, the choice
biography imposes a greater burden
on working class young people. With
fewer reserves of social and cultural
capital, they are asked to face more
decision points with increased
reflexivity. I conclude that these
beyond the classroom effects of
class are a significant challenge to
equity in the Australian education
system.
−− Supervisor: Professor Ariadne
Vromen
Page4sydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydneyTheBestandBrightest
7. Alexandra Peattie
From Resistance to Re-Colonisation: An Intersectional Analysis of Bolivia’s
Proceso De Cambio
The election of Bolivian President
Evo Morales marks the first time in
500 years that Bolivia’s indigenous
majority are led by one of their
own. Under Morales leadership, an
ambitious national project – referred
to as the proceso de cambio (process
of change) – has been launched to
decolonise Bolivia.
While Morales has been heralded
as a beacon of hope for indigenous
people across the world, a dramatic
rise in conflict between indigenous
groups has raised questions as
to the emancipatory potential of
Morales’ decolonial project. Drawing
upon the political thought of Latin
American decolonial scholars and
an intersectional approach, this
thesis examines the starkly divergent
visions of decolonisation currently
being articulated in Bolivia. While the
Morales Government and Bolivia’s
indigenous majority have faith in the
emancipatory power of Modernity
to achieve decolonisation, Bolivia’s
most marginalised indigenous groups
argue that it is Modernity itself that is
responsible for their colonisation.
The central conclusion of this
thesis is that by failing to take into
account the profound heterogeneity
of Bolivia’s indigenous population,
Morales’ ostensibly inclusive
decolonial project has as much
potential to reproduce colonial logics
of domination as it does to undo
them.
−− Supervisor: Dr Betsi Beem
Page5TheBestandBrightestsydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydney
8. Ruby Rowe
Beyond the Line: Religious Settlers and the Israeli State 2005-2015
The Israeli settlement enterprise is
one of the most dynamic barriers
to peace between Israel and
Palestine. Entrenched physically
and ideologically in the Occupied
Territories, settlements symbolise
the Zionist claim to the biblical Land
of Israel.
In 2005 Israel unilaterally withdrew
its presence from the Gaza Strip
-peace attempts prevailing over
the Israeli claim to the land. The
Israeli religious-settler community
embodies various degrees of
religious Zionism, asserting that
settlement in Greater Israel will
bring about messianic redemption.
The withdrawal was a devastating
rupture in their agenda. In the
decade that has followed, however,
the religious-settler community has
gained greater access to resources,
institutional power and avenues for
normative diffusion.
How has this fundamentalist
enterprise gained traction in the
face of such adversity? This study
demonstrates the significance of
social and structural sacralisation,
security anxiety and the historic
roots of the Israeli state. It then
argues that this context has
supported the goal of messianic
settlement, forming foundations for
the religious-settlers’ contemporary
strategy.
In the past decade the religious
settlers have driven their agenda
and moved ever closer to realising
their goal. However, as the research
of this thesis progressed, it became
increasingly clear that the methods
of the community, whilst key to
practical gains, may be diluting the
ideological purity of the agenda.
−− Supervisor: Dr Gil Merom
Page6sydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydneyTheBestandBrightest
9. Stuart Bryan
To Kill a Hydra: Drone Strikes and the Epistemology of Efficacy
In little more than a decade, armed
drone technology has gone from
relative obscurity to a cornerstone
of U.S counterterrorism strategy
across the Middle East and North
Africa.
Despite the expansive criticisms
of the program, the Obama
administration – though lamenting
the resultant collateral damage - has
continually lauded the effectiveness
of targeted drone strikes at
degrading terrorist cells.
In recent years a small but influential
body of empirical scholarship has
affirmed these efficacy claims,
arguing that the evidence suggests
that drones do indeed fulfil their
intended function - conclusions
that have been readily incorporated,
uncritically, into the literature - by
even the staunchest opponents of
drone strikes.
By conducting a close critical
analysis of the most comprehensive
of these studies, this paper seeks
to challenge the methodology,
logic and epistemological certainty
underpinning efficacy claims. In
doing so it questions whether
the efficacy of drone strikes can
be quantified - and, if not, the
implications this uncertainty should
have on the future of drone policy.
−− Supervisor: Dr Sarah Phillips
Page7TheBestandBrightestsydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydney
10. The Department of Government
and International Relations
The department of Government and
International relations is a large and
active group of students, teachers,
and researchers covering all aspects
of government and politics from
the local to the national to the
international.
Its work reflects current
developments and activities in the
ever-changing world of politics,
but it offers in-depth perspectives
that go to the enduring structures
that determine the day-to-day
reality of government, politics, and
international relations. Politics is
always local and it is never only local.
That is the paradox that political
science unpacks. Everything arises
in a local context and everything has
parallels, roots, and implications
beyond the local in time or in
space. Terrorism, human rights,
globalization, voting and elections,
environmentalism, immigration,
defence, ethics, leadership, power,
gender, the rise of China, these are
only some of the specifics analysed
in the department.
At the same time, the department
does not lose sight of the
fundamentals and so Plato, Aristotle,
Thucydides, Niccolò Machiavelli,
Harriet Taylor, Ayn Rand, Hannah
Arendt, and other enduring thinkers
also play a part in teaching and
research.
In 1910 the university first recognized
political science and it has been
offered continuously since then.
When students join us today they
are also joining the thousands
of alumni who have majored or
completed Honours in Government
and International relations, or a
post graduate degree in either a
professional or research masters, or
a Ph.D.
We prepare students for life, not just
the first job!
Find out more
The Department has a small suite of prizes for outstanding students like
those who presented tonight. These prizes do much to encourage students
to do their best work, but, sadly, most are underfunded.
To discuss a financial contribution contact: Dr Michael Jackson, Emeritus
Professor at michael.jackson@sydney.edu.au or on 0412 194 672
Page8sydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydneyTheBestandBrightest
11. Retired Associate Professor Michael
Hogan’s history of the Department of
Government and International Relations is
available from Connor Court Publishing
−− www.connorcourt.com
It includes profiles of many graduates and
staff members, as well as an account of
the evolution of the Department from
the Twentieth Century to the Twenty-
First. In addition, Hogan shows how the
Department fostered the systematic
study of government and politics in other
Australian universities.
Acknowledgements
The good will, advice, encouragement, and professionalism of many people
go into this event.
Jim Buck
Trevor Cook
Ann Corlett
Vidushee Deora
Jeannie Douglass
Robert Flicker
Josh Fry
Anika Gauja
Rosie Giddings
Ross Gittens
John Gore
Antony Green
Ryan Griffiths
Don Harwin
Alister Henskens
Barbara Caine
William Klaasen
Michael Jackson
Mark McDonnell
Kate Macfarlane
Julie Newton
Michael Neylan
Alice Oppen
Maria Robertson
Emily Scanlan
Joel Schubert
David Smith
Simon Tormey
Graeme Gill
Zena Thomas
Colin Wight
Miguel Yamin
Grace Yang
Michael Lambert
Nena Serafimovska
and many others
Page9TheBestandBrightestsydney.edu.auTheUniversityofSydney
