Online book discussion ‘Beyond Green: The social life of Australian nature’ by Professor Lesley Head

Abstract

In Beyond Green, Professor Lesley Head interrogates the ways the cultures of nature have operated in Australia across time, and how these ways of thinking and being limit our capacity to deal with the challenges of the climate change and biodiversity crises. Drawing on her life’s work and lessons she has picked up along the way, Head suggests that it is up to us to attentively listen, the better to destabliise and subvert dominant narratives, and to imagine new possibilities. She believes we have the nous, resources and lessons from Indigenous, settler-descendent and immigrant cultures to reduce risk in the face of the unexpected and the unimaginable.

This story of nature and people weaves research and personal experience through many different times and spaces, offering new ways of understanding. It is a richly creative engagement with the abundant possibilities and pleasure of nature as a place of regeneration that is as warned by the rawk of the crow as it is accompanied by the carolling of magpies.

Bio

Lesley Head has been professor of Geography at the University of Wollongong and the University of Melbourne. Her research has shaped international debates about relationships between humans and nature from the deep past to the present. Her recent work focuses on the cultural dimensions of environmental issues including climate change. She has been King Carl XVI Gustaf Visiting Professor in Environmental Sciences, Sweden, and President of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. Her recent books include Plants: Past, Present and Future (with Zena Cumpston and Michael-Shawn Fletcher), Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene, and Beyond Green: the social life of Australian nature.

Speaker website link

https://findanexpert.unimelb.edu.au/profile/70857-lesley-head