Our members

Dr Justin See

2022 Postdoctoral Fellow

School of Geosciences

Justin See is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in Climate Change Adaptation at the Sydney Environment Institute. He helps in the development and management of research projects relevant to climate change adaptation for SEI’s Climate disaster and adaptation cluster.

Justin has more than 10 years of research experience in the field of climate change adaptation, vulnerability, and climate justice. Utilising strengths-based, gender sensitive and place-based approaches, his research explores the complex social, political, and economic injustices brought about by various responses to climate change and highlights diverse pathways to climate adaptation. He has published his work in climate change journals such as Global Environmental Change, Climatic Change, Climate and Development, and Journal of Flood Risk Management. Justin completed his PhD in Community Planning and Development at the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University, and was awarded as the 2020 International Student of the Year by the Victorian International Education Awards. 

Dr Scott Webster

2022 Postdoctoral Fellow

Department of Gender and Cultural Studies

Scott Webster is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow on the New South Wales Government-funded Self-Organising Systems to Minimise Future Disaster Risk project (2022-2023), working with several community partner organisations: Resilient Blue Mountains, Plan C/Resilient Byron, StreetConnect and the NSW State Emergency Service. Scott is also the primary researcher on the Bushfire Stories project – a public and participatory environmental storytelling initiative that brings together community stories about past, present and future Australian bushfires.

Scott completed his PhD in the Department of Gender and Cultural Studies at The University of Sydney in 2021. His research explores home, memory, and their deliberate destruction – ‘domicide’ and ‘memoricide’ respectively – as both an everyday and more-than-human phenomenon. At the core of his work is recognition of connection to place for humans and other-than-human beings: the knowledge and ways of being that emerge from close familiarity with place and the beings that share it; the loss that comes when that connection is severed; and, the transformative possibilities of recognising multiple and multispecies belonging in shifting how we dwell in place together at time of ecological and climate crisis. Scott’s research exists within the cross-section of cultural studies, memory studies, postcolonial theory and environmental humanities.

Past Fellows

• Dr Anna Sturman, Department of Political Economy (2022)
• Dr June Rubis, School of Geosciences (2020)
• Dr Blanche Verlie, Department of Sociology and Criminology (2019)
• Dr Christine Winter, Department of Government and International Relations (2020)
• Dr Kate Johnston, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies (2019) 
• Dr Genevieve Campbell, Sydney Conservatorium of Music (2019)
• Dr Brigitte Sommer, School of Life and Environmental Sciences (2019)
• Dr Killian Quigley, Department of English (2017)
• Dr Bradley Garrett, School of Geosciences (2016) 

Victoria Bonilla-Báez 

Department of Anthropology

Victoria Bonilla-Báez is an Uruguayan woman of Indigenous (Pampina, Abya Yala), African and Iberian decent and a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. As a recipient of the Indigenous Knowledges, Health and Sustainability Scholarship her research is tied to the Australian Research Council’s Discovery Project ‘Planetary health Historicities: Developing Concepts’ led by Prof Warwick Anderson, Prof Jakelin Troy, Prof Anthony Capon, and Prof Sverker Sörlin.

Her research aims to further the unearthing of ancient Indigenous and African knowledges that are embedded and, ‘hidden in plain sight’, within the Uruguayan culture in hopes to (re)connect and (re)emerge key concepts in caring for land and non-human kin. She follows the footsteps and stories of her ancestors, her land, and non-human species and elements within her project as she does in her everyday life. As an emerging Indigenous anthropologist her research is a part of her connection to her ancestors and vice versa. Her goal and responsibility as both a woman and an Indigenous person in Uruguay is to weave (re)emerged knowledges and (re)assemble the memories that have been scattered throughout time onto the Gran Quillapí del Oyendau (Grand Quillapí of Memory) through this academic channel.

Darren Chang

Department of Sociology and Criminology

Darren Chang is a PhD candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminology. His research interests broadly include interspecies relations under colonialism and global capitalism, practices of solidarity, kinship, and mutual aid across species in challenging oppressive powers, social movement theories, and multispecies justice.

Through political (and politicised) ethnography at animal sanctuaries, Darren's PhD research project explores potential alignments and tensions between animal and other social and environmental justice movements. The multispecies dimension of this project also considers the place, positions, and subjectivities of nonhuman animals in relation to anthropogenic social movements.

Hannah Della Bosca

Department of Sociology and Criminology

Hannah Della Bosca is a Phd candidate in the Department of Sociology and Criminology and a Research Assistant at the Sydney Environment Institute. Hannah has a background in Legal Geography around environmental decision making, generational coal mining communities and energy transitions, and protected upland swamps. She has previously contributed to research on community resilience and responses to disruption, and continues to work on projects related to environmental and social justice, and violence.

Hannah’s PhD research project is titled For Colony and Empire: The Lifeways and Lifeworlds of Ants as Paradox and Paradigm of Terrestrial Resilience. Shifting the lens onto non-human resilience research subjects, the intention of this work is to position the ant as a provocateur in re-imagining and re-storying the terrestrial narrative of colony and domination that characterises the Anthropocene. It draws together biological and biosocial research on ant species with diverse narratives of ant-human encounters in order to explore the boundaries of identity and theory in day-to-day life. The goal is to challenge or extend theories and ideals of justice as they relate to and are applied as solutions in an age of disruption, attending closely to difference, nuance, and messy but vital realities on a shared planet.

Omar Elkharouf

Department of Government and International Relations

Omar Elkharouf is a PhD student with the Department of Government and International Relations and a Research Assistant for FoodLab Sydney. Omar holds a Bachelor degree in Arts /Sciences and an Honours degree in Human Geography at the University of Sydney. Omar has a passion for social/environmental justice, urban geographies, sustainable food systems and intersectionality. His PhD seeks to build on this passion by examining the idea that an intersectional lens holds explanatory potential in heightening critical public policy models aiming to alleviate food system inequities by uncovering at risk group populations often rendered invisible

Jan Kucic-Riker

The University of Sydney Business School

Jan is a PhD student at the University of Sydney Business School where his research examines the role of community-owned renewable energy in Australia’s low-carbon transition. His work considers the relations that govern the ownership and use of renewable energy as well as the tensions that exist between competing understandings of community energy. He is particularly interested in issues of political economy and how environmental crises interface with sufficiency-based ideas like the movement for degrowth. Jan has written on the challenges to building post-capitalist alternatives and reimagining wellbeing as separate from economic growth in the context of globalization.

Freya MacDonald

Department of English 

Freya Grace MacDonald is a Doctoral Fellow at SEI and a PhD candidate in the Department of English at The University of Syndey. Her interdisciplinary PhD research elucidates and explores the relationship between Environmental Imaginaries and contemporary Environmental Fiction in Australia in the wake of the 2019/2020 Black Summer Bushfires.

Philip McKibbin

Department of Sociology and Criminology

Philip McKibbin is a writer and PhD candidate at the University of Sydney. He is a New Zealander, of Pākehā (NZ European) and Māori (Ngāi Tahu) descent. He holds a Master of Arts in Philosophy from the University of Auckland and is passionate about te reo Māori (the Māori language). His PhD explores love, politics, and multispecies relations. His book, Love Notes: for a Politics of Love, is published in New York by Lantern Books.

Ana Maria Ulloa

Department of Government and International Relations

Ana Maria Ulloa is a PhD candidate in the Department of Government and International Relations at the University of Sydney. Her work focuses on the role of NGOs in holding governments to account for the lack of actions to implement the Convention on Biological Diversity and the Paris Agreement on Climate Change. She is interested in understanding how this dynamic between NGOs and states can enable learning and catalyse actions to improve biodiversity and climate outcomes.

Sam Widin

Department of History

Sam Widin is a PhD candidate in the Department of History at the University of Sydney. He has worked as a tutor in the Environmental Humanities at UNSW, and a number of research assistant positions at USyd. His work focuses on extinction, multispecies studies and environmental history. His PhD is looking at the small and declining population of palm cockatoos in the Cape York Peninsula. Sam collaborates with Thom van Dooren on The Living Archive: Extinction Stories from Oceania. In 2017 he received first class honours in the Environmental Humanities at UNSW.

Gemma Clare Viney

Department of Government and International Relations

Gemma is a Research Assistant on the FASS 2018 Strategic Research Program Project developing the field of Multi Species Justice and is currently completing a PhD in the Department of Government and International relations.

Gemma was an Honours Research Fellow with the Sydney Environment Institute in 2017. She has a Bachelors degree in International and Global Studies from the University of Sydney, and a First-class Honours Degree in the Department of Government and International Relations.

Gemma Viney is the Research Lead on Anti-Mining Community Movements at the Sydney Environment Institute.

• Alana Barbaro, Faculty of Law
• Lauren Hocking, Faculty of Engineering/Science
• Antonio Izzo, Faculty of Science
• Arielle Saunders, Faculty of Science
• Sanaa Shah, Faculty of Science

Past Honours Fellows 

2023

• Mik Barrow, Faculty of Science 
• Grace Barrett-Lennard, School of Civil Engineering
• Libby Newton, Sydney Law School

2022

• Ailish Ryan, Department of Government and International Relations
• Olivia Mulligan, School of Geosciences
• Vivienne Goodes, School of Languages and Cultures

2021

• Phoebe Evans, Department of Government and International Relations
• Judita Hudson, School of Geosciences
• Sam Norman, Department of Government & International Relations
• Bart Shteinman, Department of Government and International Relations

2020

• Sarah Chow, School of Geosciences
• Stella Maynard, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies
• Zoe Stojanovic-Hill, Department of Government and International Relations

2019

• Mark Bosch, Department of Gender and Cultural Studies
• Hadrian Conyngham, Department of Philosophy
• Lauren Macrae, School of Geosciences

2018

• Anja Bless, Department of Government and International Relations
• Patrick James Cain, Department of Government and International Relations
• Alice Simpson-Young, Department of Government and International Relations

2017

• Andrew Brodzeli, Department of Political Economy
• Jodie Pall, School of Geosciences
• Gemma Viney, Department of Government and International Relations

2016

• Akash Bhattacharjee, Sydney Law School
• Anastasia Marie Mortimer, Department of Sociology and Social Policy
• Josephine Wright, School of Geosciences

2015

• Elisabeth Wale,  Department of Government and International Relations

Past Fellows

• Dr Maria Saari, University of Oulu (2024)
• Anna Cain, Australian National Univeristy (2024)
• Professor Daniel Aldrich, Northeastern University (2023)
• Dr Emily Beausoleil, Victorian University of Wellington (2023)
• Dr Eva Giraud, University of Sheffield (2023)
• Dr Reza Hafezi, National Research Institute for Science Policy (2023)
• Professor Sebastian Ureta, University Alberto Hurtado (2023)
• Associate Professor Nicole Rogers, Southern Cross University (2022)
• Dr Erin Fitz-Henry, University of Melbourne (2022)
• Associate Professor Gareth Edwards, Leverhulme International Fellow, University of East Anglia (2021-22)
• Professor Jennifer Deger, Charles Darwin University (2021-22)
• Professor Lisa Disch, University of Michigan (2020)
• Professor Petra Tschakert, University of Western Australia (2020)
• Professor Karia Norgaard, University of Oregon (2019)
• Professor David Roesner, University of Munich (2019)
• Associate Professor Daniel Barber, University of Pennsylvania (2017)
• Dr Michael Mann, Penn State (2017)
• Professor Julie Guthman, UCLA Santa Cruz (2016)
• Professor Neil Adger, University of Exeter (2015)
• Professor Gregg Mitman, University of Wisconsin Madison (2015)
• Professor Stephen Gardiner, University of Washington Seattle (2014)
• Dr John Ingram, Oxford University (2014)
• Professor Will Kymlicka, Queen's University (2014)
• Professor Dirk Matten, Schulich School of Business (2014)