Humanities for a Changing Climate

15 November 2021

This three-part online event, hosted in partnership with La Trobe’s Centre for the Study of the Inland, brings together museums, music, research and creative thinking from across the environmental humanities to reflect on how our disciplines are engaging with the challenge of living with climate change and acknowledge the personal stress, the responsibility and the injustice of the Great Acceleration.

This event will be co-hosted with Katie Holmes, FASSA, (Centre for the Study of the Inland) and include musical interludes from the group ‘Music for a Warming World’.

Event details

When: 2.00pm-4.30pm (AEDT), Monday 15^th November 2021 Where: Zoom Webinar

Event co-host

Session one: Conversation

Lilian Pearce (Centre for the Study of the Inland) will chair a conversation between Christof Mauch, Rachel Carson Center for Environmental Humanities (partner to the pioneering Deutsches Museum, “Anthropocene” gallery 2014-2016, Munich), and Jenny Newell, Climate Projects Officer at the Australian Museum Sydney, whose new exhibition Changing Climate opened in 2021.

Professor Christof Mauch

Professor Christof Mauch is Director of the Rachel Carson Center for Environment and Society, and Chair in American Cultural History at LMU Munich. He is an Honorary Professor and Senior Fellow at the Center for Ecological History of Renmin University in China, a past President of the European Society for Environmental History and a former Director of the German Historical Institute in Washington, D.C. (1999-2007). His recent and upcoming books include Slow Hope: Rethinking Ecologies of Crisis and Fear (2019); Urwald der Bayern (Bavaria’s Primeval Forest) (2020), and Paradise Blues. Auf der Suche nach der amerikanischen Natur (In Search of America’s Nature) (2022). 

Website: Rachel Carson Center (RCC)

Dr Jenny Newell

Dr Jenny Newell is the Manager of Climate Change Projects at the Australian Museum where she works to advance understanding and engagement in climate solutions through the medium of museums. Her most recent exhibition is Spark: Australian innovations tackling climate change (2021, Australian Museum – onsite and online). With a background in Pacific environmental history, Jenny has worked with Pacific communities and collections at the British Museum, National Museum of Australia, the American Museum of Natural History and the Australian Museum to amplify voices on climate change for broad audiences. Jenny convenes the Museums & Climate Change Network and is a member of the International Council of Museums’ Working Group for Sustainability. Her publications include edited volumes Living with the Anthropocene and Curating the Future: Museums, Communities and Climate Change.

Twitter: @ClimateJen Linkedin profile

Dr Lilian Pearce

Dr Lilian Pearce is a lecturer in environmental humanities at La Trobe University’s Centre for the Study of the Inland. She specialises in environmental history, geography, ecology and storytelling. She has a particular interest in issues of social and environmental justice and how environmental management practices do social and political work.

Twitter:@Lilmpearce Website: lilianpearce.com

Session two: Big Weather

Big Weather Indigenous Curator, Hannah Presley, will speak about the 2021 exhibition at the National Gallery of Victoria, Federation Square.

Hannah Presley

Hannah Presley is an Aboriginal curator based in Melbourne, she is currently curator of Indigenous art, National Gallery of Victoria. Presley was the inaugural Yalingwa curator at Australian Centre for Contemporary Art where she curated A Lightness of Spirit is the Measure of Happiness in 2018. In 2017, she was First Nations Assistant Curator for Tracey Moffatt at the 57th Venice Biennale, working alongside curator, Natalie King. Her practice focuses on the development of creative projects with Aboriginal artists, working closely with artists, learning about the techniques, history and community that inform their making to help guide her curatorial process.

Presley draws on inspiration from her early roles working at Warumpi Arts, with Papunya Community, Iltja Ntjarra, Many Hands and other Central Australian Art Centres. As Exhibitions Officer at Araluen Galleries, in Alice Springs, Presley had the privilege of coordinating a number of shows including the annual Desert Mob exhibition.

Session three: Roundtable

This roundtable will bring together a range of voices from across the environmental humanities. It will include a Q & A and an open discussion between participant and audience.

Libby Robin, FAHA, author of the essay ‘#Arts for Survival’, published in Humanities Australia, 2021 will be participating chair. Speakers: Barry Judd (Indigenous Studies), Susan Martin (Literature), Guy Abrahams (co-founder of CLIMARTE, lawyer and business leader), Graham Tulloch FAHA (Editor Humanities Australia), Katerina Teaiwa (Arts practice in the Pacific), and Anita Smith (World Heritage in Pacific Islands).

Emeritus Professor Libby Robin

Libby Robin FAHA is Emeritus Professor of Environmental History at the ANU. She is an historian of science and environmental ideas. She has published widely in the history of science, international and comparative environmental history and the ecological humanities. An award-winning author, her most recent work is The Environment: A History (2018), co-authored with Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde.

Libby has also had extensive experience working in the museum sector and has also had a profound influence in her role as a supervisor and mentor to many younger environmental historians. She has been a leader in the field of environmental humanities and was one of the very first scholars in Australia to be working in this field.

Twitter: @Libbyde

Guy Abrahams

Guy Abrahams is Director of the ART+ENVIRONMENT consultancy and Co-founder and former Chair & CEO of CLIMARTE. Guy is an Associate of the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute and a valuer for the Australian Government’s Cultural Gifts Program. Guy was a lawyer before becoming Director of Christine Abrahams Gallery, one of Australia’s leading commercial art galleries. Previous positions include Chair of the City of Melbourne’s Art & Heritage Collection Advisory Panel and a member of their Public Art Advisory Panel, President of the Australian Commercial Galleries Association, Board member of the Melbourne Art Fair, the National Gallery of Victoria Art Foundation, the Australian Tapestry Workshop, and the Banksia Environmental Foundation. Guy holds Law and Arts (visual arts) degrees from Monash University and a Master of Environment (climate change politics & policy) from the University of Melbourne. He has received climate communications training from former US Vice President Al Gore and is an active advocate for urgent action on the climate crisis.

Twitter: @GuyAbrahams1

Professor Barry Judd

Barry Judd is a descendent of the Pitjantjatjara people of north-west South Australia, British immigrants, and Afghan cameleers. He is a leading Australian scholar about Aboriginal participation in Australian sports and his research focuses on engaging the broader population in difficult questions around the place of Indigenous people in Australian society. Barry has lived and worked extensively in inland Australia and has an ongoing research interest in remote Indigenous contexts. Barry commenced in the position of Professor and Director of Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne in February 2020.

LinkedIn profile

Emeritus Professor Susan K. Martin 

Susan Martin is Professor Emerita in English and a former Associate Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) for the College of Arts, Social Sciences and Commerce, La Trobe University, Australia. Her current research is on the teaching of Australian literature, and Australian cultural production and the representation of drought. She has researched and published widely on contemporary and historical Australian writers. She has particular interests in Australian literature and the environment, and Australian book culture. She was a member of the Australian Research Council ERA Research Excellence Committee (REC) Panel for HCA in 2018, and a former President of the Association for the Study of Australian Literature (ASAL). Her books include Women and Empire (Australia)(Routledge, 2009) and Colonial Dickens (ASP, 2012 with Kylie Mirmohamadi).

Twitter: @susanshark

Associate Professor Katerina Teaiwa

Katerina is of Banaban, I-Kiribati and African American heritage born and raised in Fiji. She is Associate Professor of Pacific Studies and Deputy Director – Higher Degree Research Training in the School of Culture, History and Language, Australian National University. She is Vice-President of the Australian Association for Pacific Studies, Chair of the Oceania Working Party of the Australian Dictionary of Biography, Art Editor for The Contemporary Pacific: a Journal of Island Affairs, author of Consuming Ocean Island (2015) and a practising visual artist. In 2019 Katerina was awarded the College of Asia and the Pacific’s Teaching Excellence Award. The Pacific Women’s Professional and Business Network of NSW awarded her “Educator 2020”. 

Twitter:@KTeaiwa

Emeritus Professor Graham Tulloch

Graham Tulloch FAHA is Emeritus Professor of English at Flinders University. He has co-edited a number of collections of essays and, as Editor of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, he has edited the Academy’s journal, Humanities Australia, from 2017 to the present. Graham has written extensively on Scottish Literature and the Scots language and has a special interest in Scottish literature and language in Australia. He has also edited a number of Scottish and Australian texts including Walter Scott’s Ivanhoe and Marcus Clarke’s His Natural Life.

Dr Anita Smith

Dr Anita Smith is an Associate Professor of Heritage and Archaeology at La Trobe University, with a teaching and applied research focus on Indigenous, archaeological and built heritage. Anita is internationally recognized for her expertise in the implementation of the UNESCO World Heritage Convention and she is currently the Cultural Expert member of Australia’s delegation to the World Heritage Committee. Anita is an Advisor to the UNESCO Pacific World Heritage program and her research has supported four successful World Heritage nominations in the region including Budj Bim Cultural Landscape, Australia. She is the lead author of a report to the Heritage Council of Victoria – ‘Heritage and Climate Change’ (Extent Heritage, 2021) and co-author of a chapter titled ‘Developments in Management Approaches’ in the United Nations Second World Ocean Assessment (WOA II) launched by the UN Secretary-General in April 2021.