Watering the Forest: Beyond hydraulic developmentalism in the Murray Darling Basin
Seminar
In the early 1980s a new danger faced the Barmah-Millewa Forest, just upstream of Echuca on the border of Victoria and New South Wales. Bordering an 80-kilometre narrow stretch of the Murray River, this forest of river red gums and moira grass had endured decades of unseasonal water flows on…
India’s Eucalyptus Affair: Development, Environmental Management and Politics, c 1960-1990.
Seminar
Between 1960 and 1990, India developed the world’s second largest area of Eucalyptus cover. Today, however, multiple states have banned its planting and state forest departments even uproot mature trees from the roots and replant with native species.Meanwhile, in other countries, this natively…
Unfolding plans: Projections, time, and political possibilities in Mumbai
Seminar
This paper explores how plans unfold over time, shaped by urgency, waiting, and tactical foresight. Based on long-term ethnographic research in Mumbai, it follows the revision of the city’s urban plan to show how plans operate simultaneously as images and as documents, moving through different…
Let's ‘slip the surly bonds’ of academic prose! Writing for a 'broader audience'
Workshop
An interactive hybrid workshop for colleagues interested in writing for a ‘broader audience’ – whatever that means! – and other forms of science communication. This draws on my extensive experience in this area (including written media contributions, broadcast writing, podcasts, and books) and…
How to Build a Stock Exchange - Public Lecture by Professor Philip Roscoe
Lecture
Join us for a public lecture by Professor Philip Roscoe, RSSS Visiting Fellow in Sociology, on his book How to Build a Stock Exchange: The Past, Present and Future of Finance (2023).About the BookWhy is finance so important? How do stock markets work and what do they really do? Most importantly,…
The Economies of Life in the Platform Economy: Social Reproduction, Depletion, and Disposability
Seminar
This paper examines the dynamics of the platform economy through the lens of social reproduction theory and feminist technoscience approaches to economics and capitalism. Both perspectives converge in their focus on situating bodies and the embodied experience of working and existing at the core of…
The historian in the mirror: writing first-person history, and other issues in contemporary historiography
Seminar
Responding to the impulse to provide an account of the birth of what was (probably) Australia’s last new polity – the ACT Legislative Assembly – has presented multiple challenges. The period under review (1989-2001, the first four Legislative Assemblies) ends just 25 years ago, rendering…