Indigenous Creative Practices
2026 —
Indigenous Studies elective subject
The University of Technology Sydney, Australia
Image: Kent Morris, Barkindji Blue Sky - Ancestral Connections, 2021 projected onto the UTS Broadway Screen during a tour of the Indigenous art and culture collection
This subject engages the rich body of work by Indigenous creative practitioners across a variety of different modes and forms such as literature, music, film, television, animation, theatre and multi-disciplinary art. You develop deeper understandings of the ways that Indigenous creative practitioners speak back to systems of power via their creative work to issues faced by Indigenous people and learn how to situate Indigenous creative work in the context of colonisation. Through the presentation of case studies in lectures and tutorials, you engage deeply with the creative aspects of Indigenous practice and learn about the ways that Indigenous creative practitioners navigate the creative industries.
Science, Technology and Responsibility: Ethics and Nuclear Technology
2025 —
Nuclear Engineering core subject
The University of New South Wales, Australia
Image: the Australian Government’s design for the acquired radioactive waste repository site which has since been sold and withdrawn
This guest seminar addresses Indigenous self-determination in relation to the civilian and militaristic applications of technology in Australia. In so doing we also contextualised Indigenous Australian responses ranging from asserting land rights to withholding community consent within an international context. This course equips STEM students with a humanities framework for understanding the social, environmental, and ethical issues of nuclear science and engineering, which have developed in parallel with a broader appreciation of the limits, responsibility and ethics in science.
Australian Environmental Philosophy
2017 — 2020
Indigenous Studies elective subject
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Image: Tae Rak channel and holding pond, Tyson Lovett-Murray/Gunditj Mirring Traditional Owners and UNESCO, 2016 which was presented by community representatives from the Gunditjmara language group who were invited to speak to students each year along with the Wurundjeri who are the Traditional Owners of the campus grounds
This subject considers recent developments that are being generated through Indigenous and non-Indigenous dialogue and intersections in the context of Australian environmental thought. Students will engage with recent critiques of prevailing Western knowledge systems, particularly deep-rooted assumptions surrounding the 'nonhuman'. Students will gain awareness of how these assumptions shape our lives and relationships with the world, and will examine connections between epistemology, life practices and environmental ethics. Students will explore topics such as eco-phenomenological perceptions of 'nature', other-than-human subjectivity and sentience, and their inclusion in epistemology, societal values, identity and belief. Through a study of Australian Indigenous and non-Indigenous environmental thinkers, and drawing from Indigenous and non-Indigenous relationships with land and waters, students will think about ethical, social and political issues, including connection to place, human and other-than-human rights, interspecies communication, environmental democracy, ecofeminism, Indigenous and non-Indigenous relations, and decolonization.
Key Thinkers and Concepts in Indigenous Studies
2018 — 2019
Indigenous Studies core subject (hybrid)
The University of New South Wales, Australia
Image: Tjulpu wiltja: bird nest basket, Ilawanti Ungkutjuru Ken, 2017 which was among the many items that students engaged with throughout semester at the Faculty of Medicine Museum exhibition on bush medicine and kinship
This subject enables students to form a deeper and more profound understanding of Indigenous knowledge, socio-political context, and experience. For the 2018 delivery of this unit, we will specifically explore two dimensions. In Part A, we examine thinkers and concepts that address questions of land and place. In Part B, we turn to texts that explore the dimensions of space and time. Weekly topics include permission, standpoint, markings, lore, othering, representation, experience, justice, dialogue, repatriation, water, extinction, and healing. Throughout, a key resource will be on-campus exhibition The Art of Healing: Australian Indigenous Bush Medicine in the Faculty of Medicine Museum at The University of Melbourne.
Nuclear Humanities
2016
Global Studies elective intensive subject
Whitman College, United States
Image: Hanford B-Reactor, N.A.J. Taylor, 2016 which students visited as part of the five-day intensive O’Donnell Visting Educator in Global Studies
A world empty of nuclear weapons eludes us. State-led progress on the road to nuclear abolition has historically been slow, in part because the politico-economic forces driving the modernisation programmes of nuclear weapons states continue unabated. What little hope there remains for achieving a nuclear-weapon-free world must therefore arise out of global civil society. For this, traditional approaches involving trust- and capacity-building initiatives would be enhanced by the alternative insights and understandings about the problem of nuclear harm that can only be derived from the humanities, and in particular environmental philosophy, dialogue, ethics, and the creative arts. This five-day workshop enables participants to explore several such alternative pathways to nuclear disarmament, and to consider the possibility of creating one of their own.
Environment and Story
2018
Foundation (Indigenous) core subject
Trinity College, Australia
Image: West Papuan protest, 2016
This subject introduces students to the skills of interdisciplinary thinking, writing and reading, and brings together knowledge and perspectives from different disciplines for discussing complex social and environmental challenges. Drawing from disciplines such as literature, cultural studies, media studies, philosophy and environmental studies, the relationship between humans and the natural environment will be explored. The subject will consider the role of stories as a cultural medium for storing and communicating the knowledge and values of a society. We will raise questions such as: What is a natural environment or “nature”? How do humans relate to nature? How do we socially and ethically position animals, plants or landforms? How is nature represented in our major stories and cultural narratives? Is society listening to the stories of the land? This subject engages with a range of Indigenous and non-Indigenous scholarship to enable students to theorise the interaction of different knowledge systems in relation to land management.
War and Peace: Thirteen Films
2017
International Studies core subject
Federation University, Australia
Image: Barefoot Gen, Keiji Nakazawa, 1976 which was among the many films set throughout semester in combination with written texts and flipped classrooms
War is both a phenomena and concept, as is peace, its opposite. As such, people may variously resort to war to achieve peace, or organise peacefully to win a war. This course explores the complexity of this relationship through the medium of film, thereby problematizing commonly-held assumptions about what war and peace are, and are not. In so doing, we will encounter war and peace through the prism of the Cold War but also War on Terror, and not only in relation to the humanitarian consequences, but also the manifold ecological considerations that conditions of war and peace give rise to. Crucially, we will situate ordinary people’s experiences alongside the testimony of state elites, as well as documentary films alongside fiction, animation and drama. Through all of this, we come to interrogate the idea that war and peace is practiced, theorised, experienced, represented, and mediated according to a variety of social, cultural, disciplinary, and historical perspectives.
Aboriginal Land, Law and Philosophy
2018
Indigenous Studies core subject
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Image: Wurundjeri Uncle Bill Nicholson conducting a smoking ceremony and Welcome to Country - Uncle Bill was invited for the first time to launch the class
This subject utilises the physical, symbolic and metaphysical role of land and Country in Australian Indigenous society as a starting point for the consideration of critical issues in Indigenous and Settler relations in contemporary Australia. Aboriginal Land, Law and Philosophy will enable the development of a deep and nuanced engagement with a selection of major issues. These may include land tenure, crime and punishment, political representation, social policy, cultural production, governance and economics. Using land and Country as a base, these issues will be explored from Indigenous and non-Indigenous perspectives and from the interdisciplinary perspective of Literary Studies, Philosophy and Law. The interdisciplinary fusion of Literary Studies with Philosophy and Law will create a divergent interrogation of how land, possession and dispossession has influenced materially, legally and theoretically the experience of Indigenous Australians.
Sustainability: Hope for the Earth?
2019 — 2020
Sustainability HASS-STEM breadth subject
The University of Melbourne, Australia
Image: As a member of the six-person HASS-STEM team I was responsible for contributing expertise in Indigenous-Settler relations to lands and waters
In this subject we utilise sustainability to explore, understand and analyse human-environment relationships. Topics include: needs and inter-dependencies of all beings; the diverse ways humans meet their needs through material and non-material means and the ecological and social consequences of this for humans and other beings; the economic, social and political norms that shape the ways we meet our needs; the ethical and disciplinary frameworks through which the sustainability of human-environmental relationships can be assessed. We will consider sustainability of systems at multiple scales and through diverse ways of knowing including scientific, historical and Indigenous perspectives. Through this subject, students will develop foundational knowledge, skills and values to facilitate a sustainable future. The subject has been developed and team-taught across HASS-STEM disciplines, by the Faculty of Science, the Melbourne School of Engineering, and the Faculty of Arts.
Gender and Power in World Politics: Thirteen Narratives
2017
International Studies core subject (online)
Federation University, Australia
Image: Object 2012.0031.0001 Val Plumwood’s canoe, National Museum of Australia, 1985
This subject explores the intersections between Gender and Global Studies. To do this we engage narrative texts—including auto-ethnography, autobiography, interview, art, literature, and film—to dismantle actual and perceived binaries in gender, power and world politics. In so doing we discuss how and why factors such as race, ethnicity, Indigeneity, class, gender, sexuality, wealth, bodies, embodiment, anthropocentrism, and violence contribute to the oppression of particular people and species in new and interesting ways.
Managing Risk
2009 — 2010
Sustainability capstone graduate subject
La Trobe University, Australia
Image: the Anglo-American mining company Rio Tinto was divested by the Norwegian Government Pension Fund on the basis of their then ownership of the Grasberg mine complex
This subject explores the concept of 'extra-organisational risk', and its management at an advanced level. It asks students to apply their interest in any one particular form of risk that is derived outside of the organisation (i.e. political, social, environmental, or economic) to a real-life context of their choosing (i.e. a company, investor, government, or NGO). Toward that aim, students will work through a series of three assessment tasks in a cumulative learning exercise, resulting in the development of a risk management strategy designed to protect and enhance financial value and good governance. For instance, how politically stable is the country they will be operating in, and what is the likely impact of regional tensions and conflicts? At the completion of this course students will be able to: identify risks that emanate outside of the organisation; determine the most appropriate risk management framework to manage them; as well as evaluate and monitor its effectiveness.