Now it’s Dr Jane Awi – but the community service continues
24 November 2014
KEITH JACKSON
JANE Awi told me she’d “been quite busy lately” organising a three-day river festival in her Kerowagi village starting tomorrow.
And now the University of Goroka lecturer is organising something else – a trip to Brisbane with her mother and father to receive her doctorate at a graduation ceremony next month.
Jane will receive her PhD from Queensland University of Technology, where she was studying in the Creative Industries Faculty.
Her thesis, in the manner of such things, was a bit of a mouthful - Creating New Folk Opera Forms of Applied Theatre for HIV and AIDS Education in Papua New Guinea.
But don’t be fooled by that into thinking that Jane inhabits the upper realms of academic abstraction.
As her work to get the river festival organised shows, she is committed to grassroots development and spends as much time as she can amongst her own Kerowagi, Simbu, people, putting her credentials in leadership training to good use.
Jane is also turning her attention to the whole spectrum of communications in PNG, especially in the role of arts, design and creative education.
She is also a member of the Crocodile Prize Organisation, COG, which has today kicked off the national literary awards for 2015.
Jane - all the blood, sweat, tears and perseverance have paid off - congratulations. Joan and I look forward to catching up with you and your parents next month when you visit Brisbane to have your doctorate conferred.
Posted by: Murray Bladwell | 25 November 2014 at 09:53 AM
Congratulations!
Posted by: Mathias Kin | 24 November 2014 at 11:02 PM
Congratulations Jane.
Posted by: Ron Kone | 24 November 2014 at 12:04 PM
Congratulations Jane. Best wishes for your folk opera productions.
Reminds me of my days back at Brandi 1971-74 when we used to put local legends to music and act them out and the Sepik pipes and drums improvised music to accompany the story in the Indonesian style.
Posted by: Barbara Short | 24 November 2014 at 06:52 AM