Environment and Technology

Program Co-Convenors: Professor Gay Hawkins and Declan Kuch

Environmental crises now permeate and form all aspects of our lives. Researchers and practitioners in this program engage with the cultural, political and technological processes of a planet in rapid and profound transformation. Research spans a range of themes and issues, including a critical engagement with the politics of environmental knowledge and debates concerning the Anthropocene, social-ecological futures and global environmental change. This requires critically engaging with diverse knowledges, including Indigenous peoples’ knowledge and governance that has long understood the interdependence of all living things.

Research projects in the Environment and Technology program attend to the material and political consequences of environmental and technological change to produce new analytical perspectives, methods and creative work. Topics include environmental governance and accountability, justice-based environmental movements, and extractivism and resource politics. We pursue politically motivated academic work that aims to tackle the deep-rooted challenges of climate change adaptation, environmental degradation and biodiversity loss.

Our interdisciplinary research involves collaborations with the natural and technology based sciences, critical biophysical approaches, design, heritage and museum studies and industry experts. We also work with local communities, governments, scientists, Indigenous organisations, cultural institutions, media practitioners and artists. This community and industry engagement shapes the impact and translation of our research and efforts to confront matters of critical ecological and technological concern.

Some of the current and recently completed research projects being developed through this research program include:

Curating Museum Collections for Climate Change Mitigation - ARC Linkage (2021-2024)

Australia a Space-faring Nation: Imaginaries and Practices of Space Futures - ARC Future Fellowship (2020-2024)

Heritage-making among recent migrants in Parramatta - ARC Linkage (2019-2023)

Antarctic Cities and the Global Commons: Rethinking the Gateways - ARC Linkage (2017-2021)

Hazards, Culture and Indigenous Communities - (2017-2020)

Scientific Diversity, Scientific Uncertainty and Risk Mitigation Policy and Planning - (2014-2017)

Social Dimensions Node of the ARC Centre for Excellence in Synthetic Biology (opens in a new window)

Some of our Doctoral candidates researching in related fields of research and creative practice include:

Anisah Madden - The micro-politics of agri-environmental governance: care and commoning in the UN Committee on World Food Security

Vanicka Arora - Post-disaster reconstruction of cultural heritage: negotiating value, authenticity, and acceptable change in the Kathmandu Valley, Nepal.

Robert Nugent - Space And The Cinema Of Planetary Regard; Modalities Of Filmmaking In The Time Of The Anthropocene

Billy Pringle - Green and Gold: Crises of ecology and economy and the path to degrowth ontologies in Australia

Fan Xuegang - Alternative food networks in China: new peasantry and reproduction of alternative agricultural space

The Environment and Technology group has also played a vibrant role in the ICS international Knowledge/Culture conferences series including Knowledge/Culture/Ecologies (2017) co-convened by Juan Salazar, Gay Hawkins, Anna Pertierra and Paul James, and Knowledge/Culture/Climate Action (2019) co-convened by Fiona Cameron and Juan Salazar.

Check out the ICS Events and Twitter for more information on events and public engagement.