54456 Indigenous Creative Practices
2026 —
Indigenous Studies elective subject (as coordinator)
University of Technology Sydney
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.
ARTS3100 Science, Technology and Responsibility: Ethics and Nuclear Technology
2025 —
Nuclear Engineering core subject (as guest lecturer)
University of New South Wales
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the Australian Government’s design for the acquired radioactive waste repository site which has since been sold and withdrawn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.
62673 Political Ideas and Change
2025
Politics core subject (as coordinator)
University of Technology Sydney
Image: opponents of Egypt's Islamist ousted president Mohammed Morsi wave national flags as they celebrate in Tahrir Square, in Cairo, Egypt, Friday, July 5, 2013. (Amr Nabil/Associated Press)
This subject investigates the main concepts that define politics, and which influence the everyday political lives of states, economies and civil societies. Drawing on real world contexts, students examine a range of contemporary political ideologies, with an emphasis on Environmentalism, Indigenous Self-Determinism, Anti-Racism, and Feminism. Using ethnographic research methods, students conduct participant observation of one organisation, choosing from a range of political parties, non-government organisations, religious institutions, trade unions and political movements. By immersing themselves in their chosen organisation, students learn how the organisation’s goals and activities are shaped by different political ideas.
AIR101 Worlds in Crisis
2024
International Relations core subject (as coordinator)
University of Technology Sydney
Image: a screenshot taken from the Australian Government’s Operation Sovereign Borders
This unit introduces students to key themes, structures, actors and issues in contemporary international politics. These include the challenges of state violence and terrorism, borders and people movements, crises in the global economy, human rights and the global order, and the challenges of nationalism and globalisation. For 2024 the assessment tasks centred around student’s critiquing a provided GenAI response to one of two set prompts.
AIP245 Environmental Politics
2023 — 2024
Politics core subject (as coordinator)
Deakin University
Image: Evolution of planetary boundary control variables under the business-as-usual SSP 2 scenario. Adapted from Figure 3 in 'Exploring pathways for world development within planetary boundaries' from the Stockholm Resilience Centre.
Environmental problems, such as climate change, constitute one of the biggest policy challenges facing governments around the world. The difficulty which many states, including Australia, have had in implementing effective policy responses to this environmental challenge is one of the key political puzzles of the twenty first century. This unit explores the ways in which state, non-state and international organisations understand environmental problems and the diverse policy actions that have been proposed and/or taken in response. Five main themes are covered. These are: the unique challenge environmentalism poses to existing political ideologies and forms of political organisation; the relationship between the economy and environment; globalisation and the environment; international environmental politics; and the politics of climate change. These themes highlight both continuities and discontinuities with existing local, national and global political structures created by environmental problems. A range of specific issues such as sustainable development, carbon trading, consumption, environmental justice and the environmental implications of economic growth, trade and finance are also explored, using Australian and international case studies.
AIR745 Security and Strategy
2023 — 2024
International Relations subject (as coordinator)
University of New South Wales
Image: supplied by the United Nations to evidence how the establishment of Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zones (NWFZs) strengthens global nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament norms and consolidates international efforts towards peace and security.
This postgraduate unit examines power, conflict and the security states, societies and individuals. We begin by examining the causes of war and the evolution of strategic thought from classical times to the present. This leads to a discussion of both traditional and alternative theoretical frameworks of analysis. We then focus on current debates within the field: nuclear strategy (including the deterrence or defence debate arising from ballistic missile defence), proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, regional conflicts and the development of grand strategy by the great powers. We conclude by focusing on emerging issues on the security agenda, such as migrations, energy, transnational crime and ecological deterioration.
UNIB10024 Sustainability: Hope for the Earth?
2019 — 2020
Sustainability breadth subject (as co-coordinator)
University of Melbourne
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.
AIND20010 Australian Environmental Philosophy
2017 — 2019
Indigenous Studies elective subject (as coordinator)
University of Melbourne
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.
AIND20007 Key Thinkers and Concepts in Indigenous Studies
2018
Indigenous Studies core subject (as coordinator)
University of New South Wales
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.
ENST10001 Environment and Story
2018
Foundation (Indigenous) core subject (as coordinator)
Trinity College
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.
AIND20005 Aboriginal Land, Law and Philosophy
2018
Indigenous Studies core subject (as coordinator)
University of Melbourne
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.
HISGL2109 War and Peace: Thirteen Films
2017
International Studies core subject (as coordinator)
Federation University
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.
GLINT3452 Gender and Power in World Politics: Thirteen Narratives
2017
International Studies subject (as coordinator)
Federation University
Image: Object 2012.0031.0001 Val Plumwood’s canoe, National Museum of Australia, 1985
This postgraduate 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.
GS7000 Nuclear Humanities
2016
Global Studies intensive subject (as coordinator)
Whitman College
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.
037050 Global Political Economy
2016
International Studies core subject (as coordinator)
Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University
Image: Google Creative Lab’s interactive visualisation of the global trade of small arms and ammunition between 1992 and 2010 in collaboration with the Peace Research Institute Oslo (PRIO) and Igarape Institute, which was unfortunately pulled down in the late-2010s
This course introduces students to the many ways in which politics and economics intersect and interlink, globally. Rather than understanding the global economy as being separate from political processes, the course examines the relationship between the two to consider the political, social, and environmental implications of different economic systems and decisions, as these occur in local, global and regional contexts. Key concepts explored include: the role of the state in guiding the economy, privatisation versus state ownership of public services, the global distribution of wealth and poverty, and the sustainability of contemporary capitalism. Several case studies are drawn on to examine these themes, such as global labour migration, the increasing influence of multinational corporations, and emerging threats to environmental security. The course seeks to equip students from a range of disciplinary backgrounds with the critical skills to more deeply understand the breadth of social and political outcomes that emerge from an increasingly integrated global economy.
POLS104 Introduction to International Relations
2016
International Relations core subject (as coordinator)
Australian Catholic University
Image: the Passport Index is an interactive passport and mobility ranking tool
Understanding how major international events occur and shape our lives is central to the study and practice of International Relations. This unit provides a broad-ranging introduction to the study of the discipline of international relations in the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. It concentrates initially on the major twentieth-century events (the World Wars, the nuclear age and Cold War); ideas (realism, liberalism, constructivism, and cosmopolitanism); and strategic practices (balance of power, collective security, and deterrence) that have shaped the traditional international relations agenda. The unit then engages the new agenda of the post-Cold War period, including the new international political economy of the globalisation era, climate change, terrorism, the rise of the Asian Century, and the re-emergence authoritarian powers. The unit concludes with a discussion of Australia’s role in a changing world.
BUA5RSK Managing Risk
2009 — 2010
Sustainability subject (as coordinator)
La Trobe University
Image: 82,000+ pieces (84,800 pounds, or 38 percent of the total dry weight) of the Columbia space shuttle debris at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida during accident investigation in 2003. NASA.
This postgraduate 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.
Sustainable Investment and Environmental, Social and Governance Risks
2007 — 2012
Sustainability industry training (as coordinator)
Russell Investment Group and Taylor McKellar
Image: an aerial image of the Grasberg mine complex in West Papua/Indonesia, which resulted in the divestment of Rio Tinto by the Norweigan Government Pension Fund in 2008 (co-owner Freeport McMoran had been divested in 2006). In 2007 Australia’s university pension fund UniSuper awarded me the inaugural prize for Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) research where the panel of judges noted my “pioneering role” which “may have single-handedly debunked any residual concerns [...] and could fundamentally change how [legislators and trustees] now tackle this subject”.
This training module equips trustees of Australian superannuation funds, who are coming under increasing public pressure, to take sustainability factors (such as the Environment, Social & Governance) into account in their investment strategies. Their reticence to embrace sustainability is entirely understandable and stems from the conventional wisdom that a range of practical and legal impediments stand in their way. We review that conventional wisdom and find that there are now cogent answers to each of the impediments. Thus, whilst trustees should not underestimate the practical issues that arise, we believe that the way is open for them to embrace a more positive approach to Sustainable Investing.