Society and culture

Leisure, when properly valued says Dr David Ellison, offers a reprieve from life’s pressures. It’s essential to also acknowledge that leisure often relies on others’ labor. This realisation can lead to judging those who consume leisure without considering its environmental and cultural impacts, like “The White Lotus”. Despite shame seeming to result from prioritising work over leisure, it has always played a vital role in regulating leisure and driving its potential for reform.

The 2023 FIFA Women’s World Cup in Australia and New Zealand has generated excitement but also highlighted the slow progress towards gender equality in sports. The Matildas, Australia’s national women’s soccer team, are using this event to advocate for improved governance, pay equity, and representation for women in sports.

Professor Michael Petraglia has always been drawn to the distant past. Growing up, he pored over copies of National Geographic and books about Ancient Egypt that his family – particularly his older sister – would gift him every Christmas. So it seems only natural that he would pursue a career in archaeology that’s taken him around the world, from teaching at the universities of Oxford and Cambridge in the UK to directing field projects in Africa and Asia that have reframed our understanding of ancient human migration. Professor Petraglia, now the Director of Griffith University’s Australian Research Centre for Human Evolution (ARCHE), and he talked to Griffith Review Editor Carody Culver about the origin story of our species – which, like humanity itself, is constantly evolving. This is an excerpt.