Celebrating multidisciplinary research with the Iain McCalman Lectures

The Iain McCalman Lecture celebrates SEI co-founder and former co-director Iain McCalman’s dedication to fostering and accelerating multidisciplinary environmental research. The lectures aim to highlight the work of early to mid-career researchers working across disciplinary boundaries to impact both scholarship and public discourse.

As SEI looks back over the past 5 years, we collate the annual Iain McCalman Lectures of 2020 to 2024.

2024: Multispecies mourning: grief and resistance in an age of ecological undoing

As climate change intensifies and resource extraction erodes complex ecosystems, many people are experiencing profound grief over the loss of species, landscapes and their cultural connections. Environmental anthropologist, Dr Sophie Chao, presents the 2024 Iain McCalman Lecture exploring the Indigenous Marind People’s practice of ‘multispecies mourning’ in West Papua.

2023: Harnessing the transformative potential of climate governance: achieving deep coordination, change and equity

The climate crisis is a wicked governance problem: not only must we develop technologies capable of transforming our energy, land, infrastructure and industry sectors, but we must also implement those technologies at all levels of government and within complex, dynamic and interconnected systems. Associate Professor Kate Owens presents the 2023 Iain McCalman Lecture on how we can effectively harness climate governance to achieve deep coordination and sustained change.

2022: Wilful ignorance - pacific collections, connections and equitable futures

Senior-curator of the Macleay Collections, Dr Jude Philp, presents the 2022 Iain McCalman Lecture on the role of museums in reinforcing cultural ignorance and how we can reposition these institutions as places that stimulate change and showcase the power of respect.

Pesented in partnership with the Chau Chak Wing Museum.

2021: Shallow and Deep Collaboration: Art, Ecology and Alexander von Humboldt

More and more people hold the view that the arts and the sciences need to collaborate in order to address the environmental crisis. But how can this be done? What should this collaboration look like? And what should its aims be?
Associate Professor Dalia Nassar speaks on the need for deep collaboration between the arts and sciences, and its importance in a time of environmental crisis.

2020: Swinging the pendulum towards the politics of production: animal-based food and environmental justice

Animal-based foods are an increasing source of global concern due to their climate impact. Scientists are calling for humans to reduce their consumption of meat and dairy products and we see increased interest in vegetarian and vegan diets. But many of these demands for change call for consumers to make individual choices. Dr Dinesh 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.