Join Iain McGilchrist at IMMERSION – Living our Anglican Lives Annual Conference
Thursday-Saturday, 7th-9th August, 2025, at the Sofitel Brisbane Central
We are pleased to invite you to the 2025 Annual Anglican Schools Australia Conference, held at the Sofitel Brisbane Central in Brisbane, Queensland, Australia. Under the theme, ‘Immersion: Living Our Anglican Identity,’ you are invited to consider how Anglican Identity can be best lived out in our schools. Over the three days of the conference, you will be invited to fully immerse yourself in what’s central to being an Anglican school – from curriculum to service, worship to wellbeing. This event brings together over 250 senior leaders, including principals, chaplains, governors, religious educators and senior staff from over 160 Anglican schools across Australia. A number of bishops will also join us. The program includes tailored workshops, compelling keynote addresses, and opportunities to engage with global and local thought leaders.
Set in the heart of Brisbane, the conference venue offers sophisticated facilities and proximity to iconic attractions, ensuring a dynamic and engaging experience. We look forward to gathering as a community for the opportunity to learn together and strengthen the connection to our faith and how it is lived in our schools.
Keynote | Why brain asymmetry matters to all of us by Dr Iain McGilchrist
Most of what was said about hemisphere differences in the past was plain wrong – so badly wrong that it was on completely the wrong track. So please forget it. Half a century later, we know much more, and our insights reveal something far more interesting than we could have expected. It is something that many wisdom traditions in different parts of the world appear to have intuited, and is indeed so important that without it we are at a loss to understand what is happening to our modern world. And its importance concerns not just the future of our civilisation, but the spiritual life of each one of us … and quite probably the survival of humanity itself.
Dr Iain McGilchrist
Psychiatrist, Neuroscience Researcher
Philosopher and Literary Scholar
Dr Iain McGilchrist is a psychiatrist, neuroscience researcher, philosopher and literary scholar. He is a Quondam Fellow of All Souls College, Oxford, an Associate Fellow of Green Templeton College, Oxford, a Fellow of the Royal College of Psychiatrists, and former Consultant Psychiatrist and Clinical Director at the Bethlem Royal & Maudsley Hospital, London. He has been a Research Fellow in neuroimaging at Johns Hopkins Hospital, Baltimore and a Fellow of the Institute of Advanced Studies in Stellenbosch. He has published original articles and research papers in a wide range of publications on topics in literature, philosophy, medicine and psychiatry. He is the author of a number of books but is best-known for The Master and his Emissary: The Divided Brain and the Making of the Western World (Yale 2009). In November 2021 his two-volume work The Matter with Things: Our Brains, Our Delusions, and the Unmaking of the World was published by Perspectiva Press.