Salon After D'Arc: How Memory Makes Meaning

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Salon After D’Arc returns in 2026 with 4 thought-provoking evenings exploring the forces that shape how we love and remember.

Join host Jamila Rizvi (Deputy Managing Director of Future Women) for our final event in the series, How Memory Makes Meaning, as we explore the ways in which we remember and how memories are constructed.

Drawing on her own research and professional experience, Professor Yen Ying Lim will kick off the evening, delving into how memory is formed, stored and recalled, and what contemporary medical and scientific research can tell us about memory loss and Alzheimer’s disease.

Discover how scent is deeply tied to memory and it can connect you with old memories and help you create new ones through a powerful scent meditation led by Erin Adams, founder of Smell Art. Erin will then lead you on a guided scent tour of the Dome before a meaningful reflection activity.

In conversation with writer Astrid Edwards, Jamila will share her personal journey of how she navigated a brain tumor diagnosis.

The Salon After D'Arc series is generously supported by the Helen Macpherson Smith Trust. It is an opportunity to delve deeper into interesting topics, make connections in the beautiful surrounds of the Library and view rare books acquired through the Women Writers Fund initiative.

Presented in State Library Victoria’s 170th year, Salon After D’Arc invites audiences to consider not only the stories we inherit, but those still being written, and whose voices are finally being…