Environments and Societies

Richard Carter-White's MQ New Staff Grant ‘Communities of relocation and return in post-disaster Tohoku, Japan’ explores how the concept of community has provided a model for planning and recovery in the aftermath of the March 2011 earthquake, tsunami and nuclear disasters in northeast Japan, as well as a means of apprehending the experiences of disaster victims. More broadly, he is interested in the social and cultural (after)life of disasters, particularly in relation to displacement.

Marnie Graham is an ARC DECRA Fellow working on a project ‘Re/connecting People, Nature and Sustainable Futures through Indigenous Tourism’.  Marnie is partnering with Indigenous tour operators to understand if and how Indigenous-led tourism initiatives may impact tourists within and beyond the tourism encounter - in their everyday lives, families, workplaces and communities. Together with Sandie Suchet-Pearson, Marnie is a member of the Dharug-led Yanama Budyari Gumada research collective.

Anna-Karina Hermkens’ project Rising Seas and drowning Cultures? Climate change and barkcloth Art among the Maisin people of Papua New Guinea, is an interdisciplinary project that details the effects of rising sea levels on Indigenous culture and the arts, while empowering local communities and creating awareness about safeguarding people’s unique cultural heritage and livelihood.

Donna Houston is working on a new project exploring urban culture and the sixth mass extinction. She is also undertaking collaborative projects on future foods (with Andrew McGregor), visual culture and extinction, urban re-wilding and pollinator-friendly cities. Donna is a member of the Shadow Places Network and works on multispecies geographies in climate changing worlds.

Sung-Young Kim is currently working on a book-length project on 'The Sources of Competitive Advantage in Exporting Green Energy Systems', which examines why, what and how governments and corporations are promoting smart grids. As a revolutionary step forward from the 'dumb power grids' still in use today, smart grids are the technological infrastructure upon which a clean energy transition will be possible. He is also one of four Chief Investigators on an ambitious Australia Research Council Discovery Project (ARC DP) examining 'East Asia's clean energy shift: enablers, obstacles, outcomes and lessons' (2019-2021), which examines the state's role in China and Korea's clean energy transitions.

Andrew McGregor is working on an Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research funded project analysing the social dimensions of agricultural extension and transition in Cambodia with Cambodian and Australian partners (including Nick Harrigan). He is also leading a series of projects exploring veganism and novel proteins within food system transitions (with Donna Houston) and is involved in the multispecies geographies in climate changing worlds initiative.

Jessica McLean does research on how humans, more-than-humans, environments and technologies interact to produce geographies of change. Her research focuses on digital technologies, water cultures and politics, climate action and activism. Jess currently works with Aboriginal and settler colonial people in the Mudgee (NSW) area on water cultures, with Gomeroi people on enabling healthier Country through a NSW Environmental Trust grant, on digital sustainability in urban places and is a member of the Shadow Places Network.

Fiona Miller is undertaking collaborative research on the climate-related displacement in Vietnam, looking at the interaction between planned resettlement projects and migration. Fiona, together with a number of MQ Social Sciences staff, is a member of the Shadow Places Network – a network of scholars, artists and activists who collaborate to document, co-produce and reimagine connections between places and peoples in an era of climate change.

Emily O’Gorman is working on a new project that aims to develop a history of global wetlands conservation. She is also undertaking a number of collaborative projects, including NSW Environmental Trust funded research on ‘Enabling Healthier Gomeroi/Kamilaroi Country’ and ARC Discovery Grant funded research on ‘Narrative Ecologies of Warragamba Dam’.

Sandie Suchet-Pearson and Kate Lloyd are part of the Bawaka Collective. The Bawaka Collective is an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-than-human research collective that has worked together since 2006 . Sandie is currently an ARC Future Fellow leading a project entitled “Enabling Indigenous and Country-led understandings of sovereignty”.

Jonathan Symons does research on how global governance, public policy and political movements respond to novel environmental challenges. Jon’s current work focuses on how international inequalities structure global climate governance, and on emerging political contestation over carbon dioxide removal, engineering biology and solar reflection.

Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B., Maymuru, D., Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S. & Lloyd, K. 2019 Songspirals: Sharing Women’s Wisdom of Country Through Songlines, Allen & Unwin, Crows Nest.

Bawaka Country including Wright, S., Suchet-Pearson, S., Lloyd, K., Burarrwanga, L., Ganambarr, R., Ganambarr-Stubbs, M., Ganambarr, B. & Maymuru, D., & Sweeney, J. 2016 Co-becoming Bawaka: Towards a relational understanding of place/space. Progress in Human Geography 40 (4), 455-475.

Bawaka Country including Suchet-Pearson, S., Wright, S., Lloyd, K. & Burarrwanga, L. 2013 Caring as country: Towards an ontology of co-becoming in natural resource management. Asia Pacific Viewpoint 54 (2), 185-197.

Carter-White, R & Doel, M. 2022 The signature of the disaster: witness-ness in death camp and tsunami testimony. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers 47 (2) 455-469.

Fuller, S 2021 The politics of energy justice, The Oxford handbook of energy politics. Hancock, K. J. & Allison, J. E. (eds.). New York: Oxford University Press: 217-232.

Hodge, P., McGregor, A., Springer, S., Véron, O., White, R. (eds) 2022 Vegan geographies: spaces beyond violence, ethics beyond speciesism.  Lantern Publishing and Media: Brooklyn.

Houston D, Hillier J, MacCallum D, Steele W, Byrne J. 2018 Make kin, not cities! Multispecies entanglements and 'becoming-world' in planning theory. Planning Theory. 17 (2), 190-212.

Kim, S. 2019 Hybridized industrial ecosystems and the makings of a new developmental infrastructure in East Asia's green energy sector. Review of International Political Economy, 26(1), 158-182.

Kim, S. 2021 National competitive advantage and energy transitions in Korea and Taiwan. New Political Economy, 26(3), 359-375.

O’Gorman, E 2021 Wetlands in a Dry Land: More-than Human Histories of Australia’s Murray-Darling Basin. Seattle: University of Washington Press. ISBN: 9780295749150

Maher, B. and J. Symons. 2022 The International Politics of Carbon Dioxide Removal: Pathways to Cooperative Global Governance. Global Environmental Politics 22, 1, 44-68.

McGregor, A., Rickards, L., Houston, D., Goodman, M., Bojovik, M. 2021 The biopolitics of cattle methane emissions reduction: governing life in a time of climate change. Antipode 53: 1161-1185.

McLean, J. 2020 Changing digital geographies: technologies, environments and people. Palgrave Macmillan.

McLean, J., Lonsdale, A., Hammersley, L., O'Gorman, E., & Miller, F. 2018 Shadow waters: making Australian water cultures visible. Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers, 43(4), 615-629.

Miller, F., Tran, T., Huynh, V., Ngo T., and Boi, N. 2022 Double displacement–Interactions between resettlement, environmental change and migration. Geoforum 129, 13-27.

Page, M. & Fuller, S. 2021 Governing energy transitions in Australia: low carbon innovation and the role for intermediary actors, Energy Research and Social Science. 73: 101896.

Potter, Emily, Fiona Miller, Eva Lövbrand, Donna Houston, Jessica McLean, Emily O'Gorman, Clifton Evers, and Gina Ziervogel. 2022 A manifesto for shadow places: Re-imagining and co-producing connections for justice in an era of climate change. Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space 5 (1), 272-292.

Steele W, Hillier J, MacCallum D, Byrne J, Houston D. 2021 Quiet activism: climate action at the local scale. Cham, Switzerland: Palgrave Macmillan, 2021. 166 p.

Bojovic, M. 2022. Not like udder milk: ‘synthetic’ dairy milk made without cows may be coming to a supermarket near you, The Conversation.

Bojovic, M. and McGregor, A. 2022. A review of megatrends in the global dairy sector: what are the socioecological implications? Agriculture and Human Values.

Prebble, S., McLean, J., & Houston, D. (2021). Smart urban forests: An overview of more-than-human and more-than-real urban forest management in Australian cities. Digital Geography and Society.

• Milena Bojovic is a Phd candidate in the Discipline of Geography and Planning.  Her research interests are human-environment relations, climate change, food systems and transitions from intensive animal agriculture to alternative proteins. Her thesis is a case study about the future of the dairy sector in Aotearoa New Zealand and draws on just transitions theory and systems thinking to explore just food transitions for humans, non-humans and environments.
• Flávia Julius is a PhD candidate in the Discipline Politics and International Relations. She researches colonialism, US imperialism and neoliberalism in Brazil, focussing on how the racist and patriarchal capitalist structure perpetuates oppression, dispossession and inequality. Within this context, Flávia is highly concerned with the destruction of the Amazon and its disastrous consequences for the Indigenous population and global climate change.
• Sarah Prebble is a Phd candidate in the Discipline of Geography and Planning.  She conducts research with the more-than-human to better understand and experience human-nature relationships with a special focus on multi-habitation of human, more-than-human and digital technologies in cities. She is currently working with urban forests, citizens, and governing bodies to explore how smart urban forests (including citizen science apps and VR videos) might contribute to the resilience and sustainability of cities.
• Tshering O’Gorman is a current PhD candidate in the discipline of Geography and Planning. Her PhD research examines Nepal’s climate change adaptation policies and response through an environmental justice lens.  Her interest in this topic emerges from and is shaped by her identity as a person of Indigenous Himalayan heritage, together with her extensive professional experience. She is a dedicated humanitarian and environmental practitioner who has worked globally in the design and management of environmental conservation and community-based development initiatives for the not-for-profit sector. She began her career at the grassroots level working in remote, mountain communities of Nepal. She has over 20 years of experience in her field in a range of countries including Nepal, Bhutan, China, India, Uganda, Fiji, U.K. and Australia.