Academic and feminist Susan Carland is a self-confessed nerd. As a kid one of her favourite hobbies was perusing the dictionary after school and testing out the big words she had learned.
“I do remember I used to get teased a lot for being too much of a nerd…I liked big words and I liked using them. I used to get picked on a lot for that,” she laughs.
A high school debater, the host of SBS series Child Genius remembers being an intellectually curious student who loved to learn. It was a trait not always appreciated at school.
“I wasn’t one of the cool kids because I was seen as someone who was too into study, too into my grades, too into reading,” she said.
It’s might not have won her high school popularity points, but it is the kind of pedigree that makes Dr Carland well- suited as quizmaster of the six-part SBS show, bringing together 19 of Australia’s brightest kids to undergo a string of challenging quizzes, cognitive and language tests to assess their mental acuity.
The show taps into contemporary debates on child education as the audience meets children from across the social spectrum and the parents behind them - from ‘tiger’ mums to working class and rural parents bewildered by their child’s precociousness.
Dr. Carland’s parents Ken and Jan, were not tertiary educated and placed a premium on education, encouraging their children in their intellectual pursuits. Her older brother Michael undertook a PhD in organic chemistry. Her mum Jan later went on to pursue a university degree as a mature age student.
“I guess my brother was my example of what that looked like. It always just felt natural to me. I never considered not going to university after Year 12. It felt like an inevitability.”
At Melbourne’s Monash University, Dr. Carland studied for both science and art degrees. “University was such welcome change and maybe that’s why I haven’t really left university,” she said. “It’s such a privilege to have an idea or have a question about something and then decide to take down every rabbit hole you can.”
It is this spirit of curiosity that took the Melbourne teenager on a unique journey. She converted to Islam at 19, adopted the hijab, married Channel Ten’s The Project co-host Waleed Aly and went on to become a researcher in gender and Muslim women, the subject of her doctoral dissertation.
Her PhD with Monash evolved into a book Fighting Hislam, looking at how Muslim women globally are challenging patriarchal interpretations of Islam.
Dr. Carland is a regular presence on Australian television and radio, and a glamorous fixture on the red carpet, boasting a combined social media following of over 70 thousand followers. Now a lecturer and teacher, she says spending long hours researching is where she is happiest.: “I loved being by myself (during the Phd) and spending all day every day digging… and just holding up thoughts like threads in my hand and thinking I wonder when this one ends? “
“One of my favourite things is when I find out something I believe to be true to be completely wrong. I love that. It’s the most exciting intellectual experience I can have.”
“I feel like this is what I’m made to do.”
Despite being most at home in academia, Dr. Carland maintains it’s important to have a public presence in Australian society where Muslims who make up just over two per cent of the population dominate media headlines, but rarely get to contribute to the conversation about them.
It’s an involvement she mediates with caution, conscious of the vitriol directed at high profile Muslim women, particularly conversation around gender and Islam. She has disabled Instagram comments and describes her participation in social media as ‘one toe in’. For Dr. Carland though maintaining a social media presence is not about changing people’s minds, an arena she says is counterproductive for civil debate. Rather it offers the opportunity where just existing in a landscape as visible minority is a radical act, allowing her to show a different way of being through providing an innocuous window into the everyday life of an Australian Muslim woman.
“The vast majority of Australians will never have a Muslim friend, colleague or neighbor and the only source of information they are getting about Muslims is the media, which is generally terrorism and that sort of thing. So I’m very aware that particularly on things like social media, Instagram, that a lot people are seeing a very small window into the average life of an average Muslim woman.”
I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep saying these things and going to keep adding to the conversation.
Perhaps not so average. The feminist author is a dissenting thinker in a landscape that puts her odds with the mainstream as well as within her own faith community. Copping backlash from both Muslim and non-Muslims is a juggle she admits is not an easy one to navigate: “There are certainly those moments especially in areas like Muslim women and sexism, because you feel like you’re getting your head kicked in from all sides.”
It is a position that has forced her to develop both a thick skin.
“Even when people come out and say, ‘you’re wrong, you’re an idiot’, it kind of doesn’t matter, because there is a quiet inner certainty that I know that I am right about this. You need to have it, otherwise criticism from all sides can destroy you.”
Dr. Carland says she not out to convert anyone but merely provide an alternate point of view, opening others to acknowledge there could be multiple ways of thinking about an issue, “What I would love to see is people go ‘huh, this is a lot more nuanced than I thought'.”
Despite the difficulties, Dr. Carland has a calm equanimity and a genuine joy for her work that seems to filter the noise. There’s also a steeliness that comes from a being a woman who has spent a lifetime charting unknown waters, one who is adamant that she is not going to disappear from public life.
“I’m not going anywhere. I’m going to keep saying these things and going to keep adding to the conversation. That sort of slow gradual drip on the rock face of public conversation does sort of change things and sometimes you just have to stick it out.”
Six-part SBS series hosted by Dr Susan Carland, Child Genius follows the lives of Australia's brightest children and their families and will see them testing their abilities in maths, general knowledge, memory and language.
The quiz show will be broadcast over two weeks, with episodes airing Monday to Wednesday at 7.30pm.
You can catch up on Episodes 1, 2 and 3 on SBS On Demand now.
Want to test your inner Genius? Try one of the quizzes tested in Child Genius episodes.
