This month we welcome new Fellows to provide knowledge leadership across four sectors, representing the first round of recruitment by the RSV towards establishing a new College for Science and Society to help guide our activities, provide appropriate spokespeople to represent formal positions and establish effective partnerships across the sectors to win progress towards aligned goals. Our Fellows will be leading our forthcoming Forum on Biodiversity Conservation and Recovery in June.

We are delighted to announce that Governor-in-Council (the Governor and Premier of Victoria) have appointed two new Trustees of the Royal Society of Victoria as of 1 March 2022 in keeping with the terms of our Crown Grant of 1883. Please congratulate Dr Gillian Sparkes AM, Commissioner for Environmental Sustainability, and Professor Timothy Entwisle, Director and Chief Executive of Royal Botanic Gardens Victoria, on commencing as Trustees for the land and buildings of the RSV.

Our Society’s role as a convenor of Victoria’s science community must be reinvigorated and extended to include sectors and knowledge systems beyond academia. This way, we connect Victorians everywhere with expertise that can enable effective decision making – informed, localised responses to issues both global and regional. We are re-examining and refocusing our strategy, structure and scope of activities.

To assist Members in lodging notice of the appointment of a proxy, this online submission form is provided.

The term neurodiversity refers to the essentially infinite variability in our neuro-cognitive abilities and needs. It celebrates differences as beautiful rather deficits. Within this inherent diversity, neurodivergent people interact with and interpret the world in unique ways from what neurotypical people might expect. By viewing neurodiversity as a normal variation between every single one of us, we can reduce stigma around learning and thinking differences.