Ika Willis

@ikax

I'm an education-focussed academic & Head of School, Culture & Communication, at the Uni of Melbourne. Talk to me about decolonising education, inclusive pedagogy, workload models, process mapping, and management as praxis. Views mine not my employer's.

2.193 Folgt3.203 Follower6.416 Posts

Bluesky

Ist das dein Profil?Übernimm es — dann gehört dir ikax.dirty.social.Profil übernehmen

Ika Willis@ikax· 27d

Not the best photo but it was a beautiful rainbow in Edithvale wetland near Frankston

A bit of rainbow shines in a grey sky above trees near a bike path

Ika Willis@ikax· 28d

It is once again my fate to be pulled in at a truck stop on the Hume Highway due to uncontrollable sobbing, this time not Jane Austen but @noreenmasud.bsky.social whose last line punched me right in the heart. Go and read A Flat Place if you haven’t already

View through a car windshield of a rest area just past Gundagai on the Hume Highway at sunset. There’s a couple of trees, a wall, and a water tank.

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 4

Got a certificate 😂🤩

Certificate of Completion, Get Handy Beginners DIY and Home Repairs Workshop

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 4

Wait what’s s’t’r (at the risk of infinite recursion)? It is a tiny tiny deck now

The frame has two bits of wood screwed to the top now, like a tiny section of decking

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 4

Made a thing

A rectangular frame made of pine is sitting on a workbench. You can see big screws (they are called “bugle battens” I learned today) in the short sides. Is it entirely flush? No. Are there gaps between the pieces? Kinda. Did I make it all by myself? Yes

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 4

Drilled some holes nbd

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 4

I sawed these bits of wood to size! And drew first blood (that’s a win, right?)

Wood clamped to bench, offcuts and sawdust on ground

Ika Willis@ikax· Jul 3

I hammered these nails in you guys

Ika Willis@ikax· Jun 29

This is my friend’s cat her name is Moo

Black and white fluffy cat is looking at you!

Ika Willis@ikax· Jun 17

Students are all doing exams! THE TREE IS MINE* *The tree belongs to itself and/or to Wurundjeri Country. But I get to be on my own with it, is what I mean, snd have a nice contemplative coffee under its lovely branches.

Round-faced white woman smiling. There is an awesome twisty-branched gum tree behind her. She has very cool glasses by the way, they’re new!

Ika Willis@ikax· Jun 3

I can see why they want us to report hooning. At Seaford-Edithvale wetlands.

A sign reading, in part, “please report hoon driving at this QR code”. It’s in a patch of bright green grass marked by tyre tracks in complicated donut patterns where some hoon has obviously been hooning

Ika Willis@ikax· May 29

I have a new haircut and my gf and I are currently in discussions about whether it makes me look like Amelie (complimentary) or Tom Sawyer (complimentary)

A middle-aged white butch woman in a car. She has a short kind of boyish haircut with a slightly choppy fringe. Will she charm you with her Gallic Pixie Dream ways or trick you into painting a fence? Only you can decide

Ika Willis@ikax· Apr 30

Hey I was just looking up the book Ellie Crookes & I co-edited in 2024 and the hardback is on sale! It is SUPER PRETTY (and contains some absolute bangers) so if you want one for £36 rather than £85, have at it

An angel holding a big shiny thing is facing us but looking off to one side! It has red wings and a golden robe and bare bumpy feet. It's standing against a blue-and-gold starry background. There is a lady's head in a circle looking up at the angel. It's a painting by Dante Gabriel Rossetti and it's on the cover of a book called Medievalism and Reception, edited by Ellie Crookes and Ika Willis.

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 26

It is literally insane working at @unimelb.edu.au: yesterday I went to a talk on disagreement & civic society by Leila Brammer; today a colleague told me me about his work in partnership with the Micronesian Centre for Sustainable Transport who have built a SAILING CARGO SHIP the Juren Ae 🤩

A huge ship with like four big sails sails towards you through a very blue ocean. There is an island in the background and a blue sky with fluffy white clouds. It is the Juren Ae!

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 19

Literally going to give this little fella a place on the exec committee to recognise his contribution to my strategic planning

A blue-and-sand-coloured flexi fidget sitting on a pile of notebooks in which I have been making plans while fidgeting with this lovely thing

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 19

Back under the best tree 😍😍😍😍😍

Looking up into the twining branches of an old white-trimmed gum tree. A super ugly asbestos-ridden building named after a eugenicist is visible in the background but let us not speak of it

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 18

Totally was Newcastle, well spotted! The Canberra ones are all of bus shelters

Fridge magnet showing the ocean baths at Newcastle

Fridge magnet saying Newcastle Australia

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 17

Like many households we keep a running list on the fridge and add to it when we see we’re running out of necessities

Fridge with a shopping list saying (in two different handwritings): toothpaste, peas, champagne. Also visible on the fridge are some very cool magnets we got in Canberra with iconic buildings on including a bus shelter (Canberra bus shelters are circular and weird)

Ika Willis@ikax· Mar 11

YES the good tree is MINE

Me (a white woman with short messy hair & round glasses) under the good tree (a white-trunked crooked-branched gum tree) (if you know the unimelb campus you will recognise it)

Ika Willis@ikax· Feb 21

Does this count?

Stylised monochrome picture of a round boy with glasses and a backpack getting ready to throw a punch with the work OKAY. It’s the US student who went viral recently for punching a pro-ICE student.

Ika Willis@ikax· Feb 4

I had not fully realised that it was on a farm so there were slightly too many cows looking in at me/ blocking the exit from the tiny house for my liking but it was awesome nonetheless

A cow looking into a tiny house through the French door

Ika Willis@ikax· Jan 14

My piece for this year, about 1/8 done! Eventually it will say HOW DO YOU ORGANISE FOR EMERGENCE (and have a lot more flowers, obviously). I used a free online tool to design it, 80% of it is single stitches, I knew it would do my head in and it is. But it’s pretty!

Partly completed cross-stitch with lots of Australian native flowers and the letters W, D, O and U showing through them

Ika Willis@ikax· Jan 6

Will also be diving back in to the notes I made on @drbibliomane.bsky.social and Alexandra Gillespie’s THE UNFINISHED BOOK at my glorious reading retreat in 2024. I promise the below is not the only page of notes I took…

Notebook page saying READING RETREAT / 23-24 JANUARY 2024 / BAMARANG in handwritten caps in Sharpie

Double spread of a notebook, verso showing illegible bleed through/mirror writing in teal Sharpie, recto with the words “all these essays are so fucking elegant” scrawled diagonally in magenta Sharpie

Ika Willis@ikax· Jan 6

Library haul! (For my book chapter on student refusals to read)

A pile of hard-copy books! Daniel Pennac’s THE RIGHTS OF THE READER, Agnes Neuenhuizen’s edited collection THE WRITTEN WORLD: YOUTH AND LITERATURE, Amy Hungerford’s MAKING LITERATURE NOW and Kellie Carter Jackson’s WE REFUSE: A FORCEFUL HISTORY OF BLACK RESISTANCE

Ika Willis@ikax· Jan 5

Spotted in the wild (at Bargoonga Ngangin library Fitzroy North) - new and shiny! @jodimca.bsky.social

It’s Jodi McAlister’s book An Academic Affair on display at the library with a sign saying NEW AND SHINY: these books are ready for loan!

Ika Willis@ikax· Dec 28

post a perfect album from the 90s that isn't nirvana, sound garden, pearl jam, or alice in chains* *um lol I had a very different 90s from yours apparently

It's the album art for The Magnetic Fields' "Get Lost" (1995). Photo of five mid-century-looking attractive young people, all looking in different directions with stern expressions, wearing jackets & ties or pearl necklaces. According to Wikipedia one of them is the Magnetic Fields' cellist Sam Davol and another is the person he would go on to marry.

Ika Willis@ikax· Dec 22

About Ellie Frump Pee Aitch Dee, the hilarious cross between David Lodge & Ian Fleming told from a female perspective and revealing that academics put too much text on PowerPoint slides? I don’t know!

Jackie Ess’s post saying WHY IS NO ONE TALKING ABOUT THIS” with many arrows pointing up to a post advertising what appears to be a self-published humorous campus novel/ spy caper called Ellie Frump, Pee Aitch Dee.

Ika Willis@ikax· Dec 18

The perfect Christmas advert does not exi—

Poster in the window of a GP clinic saying “It’s almost time to switch from your regular anxiety to your fancy Christmas anxiety. Merry Christmas Fitzroy North!” with information about opening hours and Telehealth

Ika Willis@ikax· Nov 24

The kerning here is off and it took me longer than I should have not to read this as “une edit” (? First aid as an edit of the wounded body?)

First aid kit saying Uneedit. The kerning is off so the spaces between the letters get progressively smaller - almost an end-of-word space between the U and the n, then “dit” very crowdedtogetherattheend

Ika Willis@ikax· Nov 1

Hello #Naarm #Melbourne! Any fans of Jenny Pausacker (jennypausacker.com) might like to hear to the Brunswick Brotherhood next week or so, she’s just culled seven boxes of her obscure children’s lit collection