The SEI Podcast Series

The Critical Companions Series celebrates innovative and rich thinking. The series aims to traverse disciplinary silos to provoke different perspectives and invite new conversations. Ethnographic museums across Europe are full of objects with a troubled past. The interests of early collectors rarely extended to detailed provenance and the often-colonial context of early collecting left such m...

The Critical Companions Series celebrates innovative and rich thinking. ‘Critical Companions’ are individuals within the Sydney Environment Institute’s network that inspire others with their unique methodology to stretch horizons and strengthen thinking. The inaugural lecture was given by Nicole Larkin, University of Sydney Masters of Architecture graduate and affiliate of the Sydney Environment I...

Anthropologist Tess Lea has recently launched her remarkable new book, 'Wild Policy: Indigeneity and the Unruly Logics of Intervention'. Drawing on her years in “the field”, which included being a lurker in the Strategic Indigenous Housing and Infrastructure Program – until she was thrown out by a Commonwealth Minister, her many years working with Indigenous people, bureaucrats, and construction c...

International guest Professor Kari Marie Norgaard joins Professor Jakelin Troy to discuss violence, denial, cultural identity and Norgaard’s latest book Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People (Rutgers University Press, 2019). Once the third-largest salmon-producing stream in the Western United States, the Klamath River has, as of 2014, fallen to only 4% of its previous productivity. This gives the once...

The Pacific has been at the forefront of climate change’s most immediate impacts over the years, with rising sea levels threatening communities, their livelihoods and their culture. Dr Jessica Pasisi, of Niuean descent, critiques the current colonial representations of climate change in the Pacific and demonstrates how they obscure Pacific voices and fail to recognise the importance of Indigenous...

Water is the lifeblood of civilisations, ecosystems and cultures, however, for years this source of life has been exploited and polluted. As the threat of climate change worsens, academics and scientists are turning to Indigenous knowledge to alter attitudes and encourage sustainable practices. Dr Virginia Marshall is a Wiradjuri Nyemba woman, practising lawyer and legal scholar. She is particular...

International guest Kari Marie Norgaard, Associate Professor of Sociology and Environmental Studies at the University of Oregon, joins Dr Christine Winter to discuss her new book Salmon and Acorns Feed Our People: Colonialism, Nature, and Social Action (2019). Kari's work focuses on the social organisation of denial (especially regarding climate change), and environmental justice and climate work...

The Pacific Oyster is an invasive species. As it moves along the coast, it ‘colonises’ the rocky shoreline. And as with settler colonialism, this oyster comes to stay, picking off the prime spaces in the intertidal zone ensuring it gets maximum nutrition while displacing native Sydney Rock Oysters to rocky perches that are reached by sea and nutrients only at high tide. Mitchell Gibbs, a Dunghutti...

Sophie Chao has worked with the Marind people of Indonesian West Papua for over a decade. With them, she has watched as the Indonesian government and large agribusinesses have entered traditional Marind territories and converted them to Palm Oil plantations. Here she shares with us her experience of what was to be a two-day mapping expedition – which grew to a three-week encounter with Marind song...

Penrith hit an all-time high of 48.9 degrees in early January – for a day it was the hottest place on the planet. The climate-changed projections for Sydney are clear: average temperatures will continue to increase, with more hot days and more frequent and lengthier heatwaves. The impacts of heatwaves are one of the most inequitably distributed impacts of climate change. Those that can afford simp...

Militarisms are all around us, but they're often hidden – not in the sense that we can't see them or taste them or touch them, but in the sense that we don't notice them, or recognise them as such. They're hidden in plain sight. In this podcast, University of Sydney researchers Astrida Neimanis and Tess Lea offer the concept of ‘everyday militarisms’ to explore these issues in more depth. They sug...

Dr Tanya Fiedler in conversation with Professor Michael Mann and Professor Christopher Wright. In the wake of the catastrophic bushfires that have devastated Australia this summer, a growing groundswell of the population are demanding greater action on climate change and the rapid decarbonisation of our economy. And yet, business as usual goes on, leading many to feel powerless in the face of this...

An interdisciplinary panel considers how government and industry should best respond to climate-related disasters, which will only become increasingly common, intense, widespread and destructive as the planet warms. The current state and federal approaches to disaster management are failing, as there are inadequate laws and policies to fund government agencies and compensate victims, especially wh...

'Swinging the Pendulum Towards the Politics of Production: Animal-Based Food and Environmental Justice' Dr Wadiwel explores the impact of animal agriculture on climate, planetary health and justice, and the issues with focusing on individualised responsibility, rather than structural and institutional reform. For more information about this click here . Timestamps 00:00 Introduction – David Schlos...

Humans seem to agree on few ethical principles, but one that seems to be near universal is that unless it serves the ultimate purpose of peace, violence ought to be condemned. In this recording, SEI hosted an interdisciplinary panel on 'Violence in Plain Sight' with visiting scholar Professor Kari Marie Norgaard, that explored the reality of violence in research, the mechanisms of denial and invis...

From the shipwrecked swims of Odysseus and Robinson Crusoe to the immersive poetry of Byron and Whitman, swimming captures the human experience of environmental alienation. In this recording, SEI welcomes visiting scholar Professor Steve Mentz for his keynote lecture, 'Swimming Into the Blue Humanities'. For more information about this event click here . Timestamps 00:00 Welcome and Introduction -...

In this panel discussion, a group of academic experts and business practitioners discuss how businesses might change their approach to environmental and social sustainability in a warming world, and what is needed to build genuine business leadership which better engages with citizens, communities and governments at this critical time. This event was held in partnership with the Waste Fighters Soc...

Mine rehabilitation and mine closure is at first glance much less “spectacular” than the arrival of a new mine – there are rarely protests, blockades, or election promises when it’s time to close a mine. But it is in these apparently mundane spaces we catch a glimpse of the long-term social and environmental impacts of mining. In this recording, a panel of experts challenge Australia’s current app...

This recording is from the Sydney Environment Institute's launch of David Schlosberg and Luke Craven’s new book Sustainable Materialism, a work that explores the new wave of sustainability movements that are reclaiming material systems and overturning environmental injustices across the world. Drawing on years of research including activist interviews, Sustainable Materialism explores th...

Climate science and the models it uses to project climatic changes over the 21st century were designed to answer big picture policy questions at the global scale. So just how can science be adapted to answer the questions businesses want to know? For example, how can scientists advise a company whether a particular piece of infrastructure at a specific address is likely to be rendered useless beca...

Many businesses are already feeling the effects of climate change. As a consequence, investors are expecting far greater insight and transparency around the ways in which organisations are preparing for the shorter and longer-term risks and opportunities that might arise. Just how are businesses responding to this challenge? And where do the complexities lie? This event brings together consultants...

Why are financial regulators, investors and other entities demanding greater insight into the financial risks and opportunities posed by climate change? Are businesses responding to these demands? If so, how? And does that response hold up under scrutiny? This event, part one of the Business Making of Climate Change series, brings together investors, lawyers and academics as they consider these qu...

The future of our planet is unlikely, unpredictable, innovative and deeply interwoven; an improvisation at a planetary scale. As our world continues to warm, we are learning to expect the unexpected, learning to flow, move, collaborate and make space. This event prefaced a week-long workshop which brought together choreographers and specialists from other disciplines, that asked artists and academ...

This Sydney Environment Institute and Sydney Ideas event examined a variety of ways of rethinking local politics for more sustainable and democratic ends. Speakers addressed the potential of coalitions forming to prevent the increased enclosure of public lands, grassroots efforts to create new food systems, and new forms of cultural intervention and shifts – value-guided ecological democracy. The...

An original piece by Alexandra Spence. The piece was inspired by the work of retiring SEI Co-director Professor Iain McCalman and performed as part of the launch of an annual lecture, celebrating Iain’s career. From Charles Darwin to the Great Barrier Reef; the sciences to the humanities; Iain McCalman established himself as an internationally renowned cultural historian, an award-winning author a...