Systems of Unfreedoms and Liberatory Practices in Settler Colonies: Prisons, Carceralities, Genocides and Settler Colonialisms — A Hybrid Forum
Description
The Carceral Geography Working Group is pleased to invite you to a one day forum, bringing together academics, scholars, activists and advocates to reflect on how carceral logics, unfreedoms and liberatory practices are manifested in settler colonial spaces. What does it mean to live under these systems and to resist them in settler colonies?
Carceral logics and systems of unfreedom are part of the ongoing occupations of Indigenous lands, genocides in settler colonies, policing and prison systems, and in carceral practices operating at transnational, national, state/regional, and intimate levels within communities, and increasingly circulating through and as digital technologies.
Resistance, opposition, decolonising praxis, anti-colonial refusal and the daily undoing of these unfreedoms are ongoing. Yet universities themselves have become ever more visible sites for surveillance, silencing, banning and unfreedoms.
We ask: How do academics, researchers, activists, scholar-activists and communities respond, oppose, refuse, resist or organise across these systems, and what liberatory practices are already emerging?
Event Information
When: Friday 31 July, 11:00am - 5:00pm (AEST)
Where: This event will be hybrid:
In person at Macquarie University's Wallumattagal Campus
Online via Zoom
RSVP: Registrations close Thursday 30 July at 2pm.
Registration via Humanitix is required to attend both online or in person.
This is a free event.
Lineup
Kim Alley
(she/her) Kim Alley is an Aboriginal academic and researcher, with more than fifteen years’ experience in researching and teaching Indigenous, Australian and Middle Eastern Politics, Policy and History. Her work focuses on settler colonial histories and resistance politics, examining settler nationalism, militarism and political violence, as well as social movements for change and liberation and transnational activism. Dr Alley’s work seeks to highlight how such histories and activism impact and inform Indigenous Settler relations today both in Australia and internationally.
Uncle Dave Bell (he/him)
(he/him) Uncle Dave Bell is a Director/Elder Aboriginal Elder and respected community leader, a proud Wiradjuri man born in Cootamundra. Uncle Dave has been running Young Spirit Mentoring since its beginnings over twenty years ago, helped by incredible volunteers and mentors. This program has changed the lives of youth at risk, Campbelltown YSMP’s community & families in such powerful & far-reaching ways. Uncle Dave’s work in YSMP is a community leadership role that connects him with many specific activities and initiatives including contacts with a particularly important study on “Ageing in Prison”.
Aunty Amanda Hall
(she/her) Aunty Amanda Hall is a proud Worimi and Kamilaroi community leader who is passionate about culture, community and supporting young people. She is experienced in circle sentencing processes and is part of the Youth Spirit Mentoring Program team.
Chris Cunneen
(he/him) Chris Cunneen is Professor at the Jumbunna Institute at the University of Technology, Sydney. Chris has a national and international reputation as a leading criminologist specialising in Indigenous people and the law, juvenile justice, restorative justice, policing, prison issues and human rights. He is co-founder of the Network for Anti-genocidal, Decarceral and Anti-colonial Criminologies (NADAC) and is currently co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Criminology titled Criminologies of Genocide: Genocide Past and Present.
Christopher John Kirkbright
(he/him) Christopher John Kirkbright is a respected Elder descended from Wiradjuri, Gamilaroi and Ngiyampaa and Wangabine dialect speakers. A lawyer, educator, linguist and poet, he is former Registrar of Aboriginal Land Rights (NSW), former solicitor with the NSW Aboriginal Legal Service, and former lecturer in Community Management (Governance) at Macquarie University. He is a former CEO of the Yarrawarra Aboriginal Cultural Centre, with more than three decades of work in law reform, cultural leadership and language revitalisation.
Diana Johns
(she/her) Diana Johns is Associate Professor of Criminology at the University of Melbourne. Her work explores the effects of criminalisation, the impacts of imprisonment, and the possibilities of restorative and relational justice practices, particularly for children and young people, their families and communities.
Maria Giannacopoulos
(she/her) Maria Giannacopoulos is Associate Professor and Director of the Centre for Criminology, Law and Justice at UNSW Sydney. An interdisciplinary scholar taking decolonising approaches to both law and criminology, her work has a sustained focus on law’s relationship to colonial power and its expanding carceral reach. She is a co-founder of the Network for Anti-genocidal, Decarceral and Anti-colonial Criminologies (NADAC) and is currently co-editing a special issue of the Journal of Criminology titled Criminologies of Genocide: Genocide Past and Present.
Alana Lentin
(she/her) Alana Lentin is a teacher, writer, and Professor of Cultural and Social Analysis at Western Sydney University who works on the critical theorization of race, racial capitalism and antiracism. She is the author of The New Racial Regime: Recalibrations of White Supremacy (Pluto 2025) and Why Race Still Matters (Polity 2020). Previously she published The Crises of Multiculturalism: Racism in a neoliberal age with Gavan Titley (Zed, 2011), Racism: A beginner’s guide (2008) and Racism and Antiracism in Europe (Pluto, 2004). She co-edits the Lexington Books ‘Challenging Migration Studies’ books series and the ‘Decolonization and Social Worlds’ series at Bristol University Press. Her academic and media articles as well as videos, podcasts, and teaching materials are free to be used and available at www.alanalentin.net
Micaela Sahhar
(she/her) Micaela Sahhar is an Australian-Palestinian writer and researcher. She is a Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication at RMIT University. Her first book, Find Me at the Jaffa Gate: an encyclopaedia of a Palestinian family (NewSouth Publishing), won the 2026 Victorian Premier’s Literary Award for Non-Fiction and the 2026 NSW Literary Award for New Writing, and was shortlisted for the Douglas Stewart Prize for Non-Fiction and the Multicultural NSW Award, and longlisted for the Stella Prize. Her current research engages narrative appropriation, questions of representation and the problem of archives in settler-colonial contexts, with scholarly publications in Mashriq & Mahjar, Middle East Critique, and Racism, Violence and Harm: Ideology, Media and Resistance (eds. Monish Bhatia, Scott Poynting and Waqas Tufail; Palgrave Macmillan).
Leighann Spencer
(she/they) Leighann Spencer is a PhD scholar, criminologist and human rights advocate. Their expertise is in state and non-state policing and justice in the context of global abolition. She is a co-founder of the Network for Anti-genocidal, Decarceral and Anti-colonial Criminologies (NADAC) and is currently co-editing the Journal of Criminology special issue titled Criminologies of Genocide: Genocide Past and Present.
Zainul Swaleh
(he/him) Zainul Swaleh is an early career researcher at Macquarie University. His doctoral research examined how Indigenous children negotiate carceral geographies in settler colonial contexts with a comparative focus on Australia and occupied Palestine. Zain’s current research also examines how racial dehumanisation occurs as part of the weaponisation of machine learning technologies. Focussing on the use of machine learning for surveillance and military targeting in the Israel-Gaza war, he theorises the datafication of Palestinian life as intensifying the persistent dehumanisation of Palestinians. His research areas include carceral geography, settler colonial studies, critical Indigenous studies and race-critical theory. Zain is a member of the Carceral Crossings Collective, where he serves as a co-editor.
Melissa Stubbings
Details forthcoming.
Cammi Webb-Gannon
(she/her) Cammi Webb-Gannon is a Senior Lecturer with the Faculty of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities at the University of Wollongong. She is a decolonisation ethnographer focusing on the Pacific Islands region, with a long-term interest in West Papua’s independence movement and, more recently, decolonisation in Kanaky (New Caledonia). Cammi is the Coordinator of the West Papua Project at the University of Wollongong.
Ather Zia
(she/her) Ather Zia, PhD, is a political anthropologist, poet, short fiction writer, and columnist. She is a Professor in the Department of Anthropology and Gender Studies at the University of Northern Colorado, Greeley. Her research focuses on Kashmir, militarization, settler colonialism, gender, and decolonial theory, with an emphasis on questions of political violence, memory, and resistance. She is the author of Resisting Disappearances: Military Occupation and Women’s Activism in Kashmir and has co-edited books including Can You Hear Kashmiri Women Speak?, Resisting Occupation in Kashmir, and A Desolation Called Peace; and special issues on Kashmir and Palestine in Identities (Taylor & Francis, 2020) and Kashmiri Futures in English Language Notes (Duke, 2023). Her poetry collection In Kashmir: Writing Under Occupation (2025) was published by Agitate Collective. Zia is the founding editor of Kashmir Lit and co-founder of the Critical Kashmir Studies Collective. She is a former co-editor of Cultural Anthropology and currently serves as Associate Editor of the Encyclopedia of Women & Islamic Cultures. Zia’s works span academic scholarship, poetry, and public commentary, engaging interdisciplinary approaches to questions of violence, sovereignty, memory, neocolonialism, and decolonial futures.
Agenda
- 11:00 am - 11:20 am
Opening
Welcome to Country: Melissa Stubbings (Dharug Cultural Practitioner and Manager of Merana Aboriginal Community Association for the Hawkesbury Inc) Introduction to event (Dr Lara Palombo, Macquarie University & Dr Claire Loughnan, University of Melbourne)
- 11:30 am - 12:00 pm
Panel 1 – Indigenous Justice/Undoing Settler Colonial violence
Uncle Dave Bell & Aunty Amanda Hall
- 12:00 pm - 12:50 pm
Panel 2 – Refusing settler carceral violence
Christopher Kirkbright: Poetry performance: Balgarbalgar Dreaming Dr Kim Alley: The Politics of Solidarity and Anti-Racism in Settler Colonial Australia
- 12:50 pm - 1:30 pm
Lunch
- 1:30 pm - 2:30 pm
Panel 3 – Carcerality and Unfreedoms: Pasifika Peoples and Kashmir
Professor Cammi Webb-Gannon: Radical Hope and Joy as Decolonial Strategy in West Papua Professor Ather Zia: Temporal Dynamic of Settler Colonialism in Kashmir
- 2:30 pm - 3:45 pm
Panel 4 – Palestine, Witnessing, Settler Colonialism and Indigenous Identities
Professor Alana Lentin: Fascism, Settler Colonialism and the Black Radical Tradition Dr Micaela Sahhar: Some Notes on Erasure Associate Professor Diana Johns: Witnessing life under occupation (a personal account)
- 3:45 pm - 4:00 pm
Afternoon tea
- 4:00 pm - 4:45 pm
Panel 5 – Network of Anti-genocidal, Decarceral and Anti-colonial Criminologies
Associate Professor Maria Giannacopoulos & Leighann Spencer: Anti-genocidal, Decarceral and Anti-colonial criminologies
- 4:45 pm - 5:00 pm
Closing
Ways forward and conclusion Vote of thanks
FAQs
- What if I have questions?
Please reach out to the event organisers with any queries that you might have:
Lara Palombo: lara.palombo@mq.edu.au
Claire Loughnan: claire.loughnan@melbourne.edu.au
- How do I get there via public transport?
Macquarie University can be easily accessed by public transport.
There is a Sydney Metro train station (Macquarie University Station) on the corner of Herring Road and University Avenue, which is a two-minute walk to campus.
There are several public bus stops within the campus boundary on University Avenue that connect Macquarie to the rest of Sydney.
- Is there parking on campus?
Macquarie University Wallumattagal Campus has more than 4500 parking spaces available, in a variety of zones, across 14 car parks.
Visitors are welcome to park in one of the general campus carparks that charge a visitor rate using either a ticket machine (charged by the hour) or PAYG online/via an app (charged by the minute).
The best parking zone for accessing 17 Wally's walk is General Zone 1, in either the West 3 or South 2 carparks.
You can find more information on visitor parking, including daily rates and a map of the carpark zones, here: https://www.mq.edu.au/about/locations/parking
- Is the venue accessible?
This event will have the following accessibility features:
wheelchair access
Infrared (IR) assistive listening system
freedom to stand and move at rear of room as required
accessible parking
You can view an Accessibility Map of campus here.
Please provide any accessibility requests or questions during registration or feel free to contact
Tickets for good, not greed Humanitix dedicates 100% of profits from booking fees to charity
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