The 2025 Iain McCalman Lecture

Co-creating futures: embedding Indigenous knowledges in environmental research

The 2025 Iain McCalman Lecture features Dr Mitch Gibbs as he reflects on his journey as an Indigenous researcher, exploring how collaboration with First Nations communities can transform environmental research. How can trust, collaboration, and co-designed strategies transform our relationship with the environment, fostering genuine Caring for Country in practice?

The Iain McCalman Lecture celebrates SEI co-founder and former co-director Iain McCalman’s dedication to fostering and pioneering 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.

This year, Dr Mitch Gibbs will present the lecture entitled, Co-creating futures: embedding Indigenous knowledges in environmental research.

Abstract

First Nations' knowledge and understanding of the environment are increasingly being recognised by governments and researchers as essential for transforming society’s relationship with the natural world and envisioning a just and sustainable future. Many First Nation communities have been historically left out of the decision-making process for both land and sea country - but with changing attitudes and growing concern about the environment, what role can First Nations communities play?

In this lecture, Dr. Mitch Gibbs reflects on his journey as an Indigenous researcher within the Australian academic system, highlighting the changes he's witnessed as First Nations communities share their knowledge and receive the respect and recognition they deserve. He will explore how to meaningfully collaborate with First Nations communities, illustrating how these relationships can transform environmental research and deepen our understanding of environmental interconnectedness by restoring cultural practices lost or inhibited by colonisation.

Read more about Dr Mitch Gibb’s research in these two academic articles Recognising the importance of shellfish to First Nations peoples, Indigenous and Traditional Ecological Knowledge in aquaculture and coastal management in Australia (2024) and Extending conservation of coastal and oyster reef restoration for First Nations cultural revitalization (2023).

Speakers

Mitchell Gibbs is a proud Dunghutti man through kinship, and Lecturer, Postdoctoral and Fulbright Fellow at The University of Sydney in the Schools of Geosciences. From Indigenous Traditional Owners and knowledge holders, he learns about our environments and ways to manage those environments using shellfish-associated practices handed down through oral and lived histories and putting this into practice with habitat restoration work with the Gamay Rangers and the La Perouse Local Aboriginal Land Council.

Please join us for networking and canapes after the event at 7:30pm.