Futures Forum

22nd October 2025

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There is a moment in David Attenborough’s 2021 documentary called: Breaking Boundaries: The science of our planet when the planetary boundaries discourse, often narrated by Johan Rockström, transitions from the scientific analysis of the planetary boundary hypothesis (in which 6 of the 9 boundaries have now been crossed), to the solution, which is a global awakening of planetary consciousness, leading to the repairing and containing of the tendencies as described by the progressive boundary hypothesis. David and Johan frequently speak directly to the camera, reassuring the audience that even though the tipping points are irreversible, there is still time to save us. I would like to suggest that this documentary demonstrates the essential contradiction, conundrum, and situation, i.e., the spacetime, that we find ourselves in. The science of the Anthropocene is well-known; we have moved from the stable environmental conditions
of the Holocene, which lasted from 11,700 years ago to 1952, and in which human civilisation thrived, to the unstable Anthropocene, which threatens to entirely destabilise the living conditions upon which we rely.

The problem is: What is the best course of action in the Anthropocene? In this talk, I outline two nexus points that should lead to action and can be meaningfully addressed in and through education: 1) The emotional-reactive state that discourses about the Anthropocene and the tipping points often produce can be countered and alleviated through teaching and learning about the complex ways in which humans live, dwell, and become in the Anthropocene. This point will be contrasted with the near universal state of stupidity, fake news, and misunderstanding as perpetrated by global media and the culture that feeds on and from it; 2) Unique human creativity is still alive, yet frequently drowned out by perpetual calls for
productivity, and the performance-driven environments in which most of us find ourselves, and that lead to a mode of burnout through over-production in an attempt to survive. In education, we need to oppose and rethink any universal curriculum that is dictated by central bureaucracies and reinvent pedagogic ecological localism that infuses environmental work with creativity and imagination.

David R. Cole

Associate Professor in the Philosophy of Education and Cultural Analysis, Western Sydney University.
Website

David runs a research program called ‘Education in the Anthropocene’ and is a coordinator of the ‘Education in the Anthropocene’ network of the World Education Research Association. He has been working on funded international research projects since 1996 and has contributed 18 books and 130+ other significant publications to the field. His latest book is called Educational Research and the Question(s) of Time, and he is currently working on a collection that puts creative philosophy to work in the Anthropocene.

21st October 2025

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This Futures Forum was presented by Amanda Page, a Melbourne-based artist working with transformation and making artworks that reference processes in the natural world, such as melting and decay. In this artist talk, she shared some of her recent works, which include works made from a self-directed research trip to Antarctica and from residencies in Svalbard and Finland. Some of her recent works document glacial activity and reference a seed deposit made from the Australian Grains Genebank in Horsham to the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

Amanda Page

Website

Amanda is an Australian artist working with transformation. She records changes of state in materials and processes. Her works develop from observing atmospheric activity in natural systems, such as temperature and weather, erosion and decay, metamorphosis and phenomena. The cycles of life and death, and the coalescing and dissipation of natural systems, are explored in her work. She works across drawing, printmaking, analogue and digital photography, video and sculpture.

3rd October 2025

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This presentation shares preliminary findings from qualitative research examining online individual commitment-making and peer-to-peer engagement in environmental behaviour change among youth aged 16-30 across Australia, Vietnam, and the Philippines. It explored youth participation through the 2024 Stories to Action online video competition, which engaged youth across South East Asia to create environmental videos that inspire local action. Initial analysis demonstrates how participatory videos can serve as catalysts for youth environmental engagement, transcending cultural and geographic boundaries to support peer connections and sustained commitment to environmental action. The
presentation will showcase winning videos from the Stories to Action competition alongside methodological insights into how digital storytelling platforms facilitate transboundary collaboration and enhance youth agency in environmental contexts. Discussion explored implications for designing culturally sensitive, effective online youth environmental programs across the Australia-Asia Pacific region, contributing to our understanding of how participatory media can advance regenerative futures through authentic youth voices and collaborative action.

Joseph Paul Ferguson

Lecturer in Science & Environmental Education, School of Education, Deakin University.

Joe is a lecturer in science and environmental/climate education at Deakin University. He teaches and researches in primary science and technology education as well as environmental/climate education in both the primary and secondary education contexts. Joseph is committed to working with pre-service and in-service teachers to make science and environmental/ climate education inclusive and transformative for all young people.

John Micael Callao

John is a research professional who earned his Master of Communication (Specialising in Journalism) from Deakin University, graduating with a High Distinction thesis on youth engagement with phygital media. His experiences include working as a Research Assistant at the School of Education, publishing in the Deakin-funded book: Communication Concepts, serving on the Postgraduate Communication Advisory Board and supporting the Stories to Action global environmental storytelling project. Alongside this, John is also a Casual Research Officer at
Monash University on an ARC-DECRA project investigating the digital divide, while continuing his freelance work as a journalist.

Dr Michael Chew

Michael is the Stories to Action project founder whose work explores creativity and participation in social and environmental contexts. He has run community storytelling projects across the Asia-Pacific region, and his PhD explored how participatory photography and other creative practices can inspire youth environmental behaviour change
across cities in Bangladesh, China and Australia

30th July 2025

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In this Futures Forum, Bronwyn Sutton shared the ecology of “curious practices” that supported her to enact a complex and deeply transformative, practice-led and arts-based PhD research project. She described the progression from ‘accidentally theorising’ a creative practice as multispecies collaborative inquiry to critical embodied relational work as a located, regenerative approach to leadership development through multiple waves of emergent, collaborative inquiry. She spoke about how these “constant companions” supported a shift beyond reflective and reflexive practice and inquiry in autoethnographic research and explained how they became crucial in her articulation of the type of leadership the planet needs, including supporting a shift towards living, learning, and leadership for planetary wellbeing.

Bronwyn Sutton

Bronwyn is a storyteller, artist, researcher, and educator with extensive experience in designing and delivering programs to engage communities in change through education, engagement, and communication. She has led the co-design of award-winning initiatives that inspire community and cultural change by connecting deeply through story across the breadth of formal, informal, non-formal and community spaces of learning. Bron advocates for located, regenerative, and relational approaches to research, education, and leadership and those that value and celebrate embodied ways of being, knowing, and relating. For the past few years, she has been drawing on her professional experience to reimagine sustainability leadership through her recently completed PhD research at Deakin University. She is fascinated by learning that takes us places we might not otherwise venture by ourselves, and by the affective dimensions of experience that move us in ways that are magical and surprising.

4th June 2025

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The current generation of Australian school students has known nothing other than escalating disaster risk. Across the continent, systemic drivers—including climate change, urban expansion, socio-economic inequality, environmental degradation, and the enduring impacts of colonisation—are exposing increasing numbers of people to the damage and disruption caused by natural hazards and disasters. As a ‘silenced group’ with limited political and economic power, school students are particularly vulnerable to the physical, psychosocial, and educational impacts of disasters, which can have profound and lasting effects on their well-being.

Through socially critical, place-based pedagogies that engage students as essential partners in disaster risk reduction and resilience, our work seeks to challenge and transform the structures and systems that marginalise children and young people from policy, research, and practice. In our new series of Practice Briefs, we invite Master of Teaching students to critically engage with the status quo and consider the role they can play—as both educators and citizens—in strengthening disaster risk reduction and resilience in school communities.

Briony Towers

Co-Director, LEADRRR / Senior Research Fellow, School of Education, Deakin University.

Briony Towers is the founder and co-director of Leadrrr and a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Education at Deakin University. For the last 20 years, Briony’s research and practice have focused on building capability and capacity for effective and sustainable models of school-based education for disaster risk reduction. Since completing her PhD on child-centred disaster risk reduction in 2011, Briony has collaborated with schools, emergency management agencies and non-government organisations on programs and initiatives that position students as genuine participants in the development of disaster risk reduction strategies, plans and standards. Briony is a dedicated advocate for the rights of students in disaster risk reduction, and she is strongly committed to amplifying student voice in research, policy and practice.

Joseph Ferguson

Lecturer in Science & Environmental Education, School of Education, Deakin University.

Joseph Paul Ferguson teaches and researches in primary science and technology education as well as environmental/climate education
in both the primary and secondary education contexts. Joseph’s current research explores pragmatist semiotic approaches to teaching and researching science and environmental/ climate education and the use of video methodologies (including film) to undertake design-based research with teachers in schools. He is passionate about the power of theory/ philosophy to inform educational practice. Joseph is committed to working with pre-service and in-service teachers to make science and environmental/climate education inclusive and transformative for all young people.

28th May 2025

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The focus on physical literacy in physical education is a welcome corrective to more traditional approaches to movement pedagogies, yet mainstream concepts of physical literacy remain unduly narrow, as rooted in colonial logics that continue to separate humans from the Earth while locating dominant categories of the human in hierarchical positions of power. This presentation explores the research project, Decolonising Physical Literacy,
designed to disrupt universalising models and modes of physical literacy set in dominant Western constructs and foster culturally relevant and meaningful physical literacy that supports the holistic health and wellbeing of Indigenous, or specifically, Red River Métis teachers and learners, in Winnipeg, Canada. Bringing Western and Métis embodiments of physical literacy into entangled/differentiated relationships, physical literacy is
(re)conceptualised through movement with Land; and thus, strengthens physical education pedagogies to more adequately address social (human) and ecological (Earth) flourishing in the context of global social and ecological injustices and threats.

Kathryn Riley

PhD

Kathryn is an Assistant Professor in Curriculum, Teaching and Learning with the Faculty of Education at the University of Manitoba (Winnipeg, Canada). As a past teacher of Physical, Health, and Outdoor Environmental Education, Kathryn’s research is primarily focused on relational ontologies, pedagogies for (w) holistic wellbeing, and an anticolonial praxis for social and ecological justice. Kathryn is currently the Principal Investigator for the Movement as ArKvism (University of Manitoba, 2023-2028) and Decolonising Physical Literacy (Research Manitoba, 2024 – 2026) projects. Kathryn recently co-Guest-Edited a Special Issue, Relational Ontologies and Multispecies Worlds: Transdisciplinary Possibilities for Environmental Education, with the Australian Journal of Environmental Education (AJEE). Kathryn is also an Associate Editor with AJEE.

20th May 2025

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In this Futures Forum, I will share the story of a participatory action-research project to support elementary school students (ages 9-12) in building reciprocal relationships with the land, enhancing collective wellness. This work, enacted with teacher Neva Whintors, built on a previous project guided by local Elder, Rick Bailey, to care for Salmon like Family. Our project unfolded on the unsurrendered territories of the Katzie, Kwantlen and Semiahmoo First Nations, and we are grateful to the caretakers of these lands since time immemorial.

During our weekly gatherings over the lunch hour, children gravitated to an emergent “pond” near the school. They were delighted to discover tadpoles there in the spring, and it became the focus of much of our learning. When the pond suddenly began to dry up due to unseasonably warm temperatures, the children jumped into action and worked tirelessly to care for the tadpoles. Encouraged by our colleague, Dr. Ching Chui Lin, to enhance our project through digital storytelling, we worked with the children to document our time in the forest. We intended to create a video about their work to care for the tadpoles, but this was not sufficient for the children, who felt called to do something more. Guided by the children, we created a film festival to raise awareness about global warming and other environmental issues within the community and collect donations to support the work of Elder Rick and his NaKon to restore creeks in their territories.

Through this project, we learned how impactful environmental education can be when it is guided by love (versus logic), involves thinking with (rather than about) more-than-human kin, and when children actively participate in knowledge creation and mobilisation through digital storytelling. The project was not without challenges, however, and our work to navigate enabling constraints and bureaucratic systems will also be discussed.

Cher Hill

Cher is an assistant professor, teacher-educator, and practitioner-scholar in the Faculty of Education at Simon Fraser University. She is deeply invested in researching educational experiences that contribute to more connected, thriving, and just communities. Cher is a passionate supporter of relational, land-centred, and community-based educational initiatives. Her current research involves working collaboratively with Elders, land guardians, environmentalists, teachers, and students to educate citizens about the impact of colonisation on the Fraser watershed, to restore local creeks, and to care for Salmon like family. She has moved much of her teaching into the forest to enhance collective wellness and anti-colonial pedagogies. She has recently begun to explore her Finnish ancestral roots, including traditional knowledge and earthly practices.

7th May 2025

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In this FF, Ruth Irwin spoke about how Economic growth has been understood as progressive. With each year, working-class families can save more and eventually buy a fridge, a car, and a house. But young people today no longer have such expectations. Seventy-five years of economic growth have increased prices beyond their earning capacity.

At the same time, economic growth is 95% correlated with emissions growth. So what can we do about it? This talk is based on the new book Economic Futures; Climate Change and Modernity. It examines the drivers of growth and how to safely take the puff out of the system.

Ruth Irwin

Ruth writes on climate change, sustainability, philosophy, economics, and education. She has written five books and over sixty research articles. She is currently running a large Project called “Beyond the Metacrisis” with Professor Sandra Wooltorton for the Australian Journal of Environmental Education. She was the Dean of Education at the University of Aberdeen and Head of Education at the University of Fiji. Her new book is “Economic Futures, Climate Change and Modernity” (Routledge).

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We are excited to announce the launch of the Critical Forest Studies Collaboratory! This FF Forum, hosted by the Centre for Regenerating Futures, is an opportunity to share work from the Collaboratory with the public. On November 8th we hosted two online Wild Seeding events. These were opportunities to seed connections across our work and digital plantings.

Check out the Portfolio | Critical Forest Stud website

19th November 2024

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Scholars conducting critical place-based methods that incorporate art outcomes argue that these activations create ecological literacies that are empirically grounded, embedded, and embodied. Indigenous scholars
reiterate the need to listen to stories of place and our deep and continuing relations with the multiple ecologies within it. Think Like a Worm was a multidisciplinary place-based art event held at a local Community Garden in Boorloo/Perth, Western Australia. The project investigated techniques to galvanise forms of place-based literacies and learning through expanded art practice within the local community. These involved working and learning alongside the garden members, researching environmental factors specific to the garden, and learning about the people who came to garden every Sunday morning. These multiple social, environmental, and cultural aspects were integrated into the final art event through multi-modal means. This included the sensorial relations created by being in the place alongside animals, soils, plants, and humans. The artworks responded to the research, with the grounding premise being to ‘think like a worm’. Think Like a Worm was guided by the scholarship of place-based, embodied learning in making the art event, and worked towards a framework for a relational and
interdependent pedagogy. Its position was to see place as lively and agentic, and in doing so, aimed to develop techniques to activate situated practices, which will be demonstrated in this presentation.

Cassandra Tytler

Cassandra is an artist and researcher. She works across digital media, performance, and site-specific practice. Her research interests lie in the performance of video and its encounter within place, to create a
relational and aware politics of resistance to normalising narratives of exclusion. She completed her practice-led PhD within the Faculty of Art (Theatre Performance) at Monash University in 2021. She has screened, exhibited and performed nationally and internationally. She is currently a Forrest Creative and Performance Fellow, living in Boorloo (Perth) and working at Edith Cowan University with the Centre for People, Place & Planet within the School of Education and Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts.

17th October 2024

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Drawing on current research that explores children’s relationships within the natural world, specifically, with animals, in international school contact zones (Pratt, 1992), this session explored how animal-child encounters
within multispecies assemblages (Deleuze & Guattari, 1987) give force to matters of power, boundaries, exclusions and care. Employing a range of creative inquiry apparatuses to enact a curious practice (Despret, 2015, Haraway, 2016), ‘multispecies moments’ (Hankin, 2021) is an inquiry approach that considers a variety of material-discursive encounters in schools, exploring how children’s relationships with animals are shaped by mundane, happenstance, every-day experiences. These moments illuminate how anthropocentrism may emerge and galvanise, creating harmful behaviours and attitudes towards the more-than-human world/s we find ourselves enmeshed within. These insights provide implications for how schools could engage in fairer treatment of multispecies, responding to
encounters with greater notions of partnership rather than dominance and extraction.

Charlotte Hankin

PhD student in the Department of Education, University of Bath

Charlotte is currently living in Bali, Indonesia, where she researches with posthumanist and feminist materialist theories, drawing inspiration from
Haraway, Barad, Deleuze & Guattari, Despret, Bennett and many more concepts from this fascinating and generative field. Charlotte’s doctoral study employs ‘multispecies moments’, a post-qualitative inquiry that
explores tiny, happenstance encounters between animals and children in international schools where mundane, everyday moments reveal asymmetric relationships of power. Charlotte employs arts-based approaches such as poetry, crafting, painting, photography, and sound expressions to consider how relationships are formed and maintained in the ‘intangible space/s between’ human and non-human animals. These approaches may illuminate anthropocentric attitudes and behaviours, providing alternative ways for international schools to shift from human-centric to more regenerative pedagogical practices. Additionally, in attempts to decentre her researcher-adult human voice, Charlotte explores how to co-create with animals and children through noticing and attending to multispecies expressions in co-worlding contact zones.

17th September 2024

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Seismic blasting of fossil-fuel-rich geological strata chokes the ‘life force’ (Wanambi, 1990, 105) of oceans that wash the shores of settler colonial Australia, postcolonial India and post-apartheid South Africa. I argue, however, that energetic waves of feeling, sacred storytelling, coalition-building and activism have the capacity to arrest plunder, agitate cross-border state-corporate collusions and oxygenate planetary suffocation. I therefore ask: How can energetic waves or modes of ocean activism that emerge from the Global South travel in ways that might amplify a revolutionary praxis that is human, more-than-human, oceanic, transoceanic and planetary. My thoughts on revolutionary praxis in the Global South, in particular settler colonial Australia, are sparked by Larrakia Sea Country, Yolgnu oceanic philosophies, Gunditjmara-led rallies/ceremonies and youth-led School Strikes for Climate Change in Australia. The paper engages with the ‘oceanic turn’ and the ‘decolonial turn’ in geography, but also radical Indigenous, Black, Brown, Southern and feminist intellectual traditions that offer possibilities for revolutionary
thought and action that compose “dream books of exisLng otherwise” (Hartman 2019, xiv) with the planet. My engagement with these intellectual traditions values the agitation of thought amid dehumanisation, trauma, racial injustice and inequality in the ‘many souths’ of the world that include settler colonial Australia, my ‘home’ in postcolonial India and post-apartheid South Africa. Transoceanic revolutionary praxis is urgent given that Indigenous, Black and Brown worlds in the Global South show the duress of intolerable burdens of climate change and exclusion that fail to be addressed by Western institutions with colonial intellectual legacies.

Michelle Lobo

Australian cultural geographer and honorary fellow at the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, Deakin University

Michelle’s research engages with Brown, Indigenous and Black thought and living worlds to invigorate debates on racial justice, oceanic justice and planetary justice. She is editor of Social & Cultural Geography, reviews editor of Postcolonial Studies and Chair, Institute of Australian Geographers Equity Reference Group (IAG-ERG). She has held three prestigious national grants, published 4 books and more than 60 journal articles. See: Bristol University Press | Planetary Justice – Stories and Studies of Action, Resistance and Solidarity, edited by Michele Lobo, Eve Mayes and Laura Bedford.

28th August 2024

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In this FF, we looked at how interdisciplinary and literary research-led teaching can help to prepare students for a world facing the increasing effects of climate change. Susan talked about her experiences as a researcher and teacher, with a focus on master’s (MA) level courses on which she’s taught students from Natural Sciences and Business Studies, as well as from Arts and Humanities. Climate fiction is writing for our time, but in what ways can fiction produce understanding of the crises that we face and encourage positive action? Can fiction be a distraction, and is there a risk that suspending disbelief will lead to complacency or a sense of escapism? Is speculative fiction necessarily too detached from the hard facts of climate science? Are there benefits to teaching interdisciplinary courses? After Susan’s introductory talk, we discussed these issues and others, especially relating to the call for papers for the forthcoming special issue of the Australian Journal of Environmental Education.

Susan Oliver

Professor of Literature and Environmental Humanities at the University of Essex, UK.

Susan’s main interests are late-Eighteenth Century and Romantic period literature through to the 1860s, transatlantic studies, periodical culture, ecocriticism and environmental writing, and Scottish literature. Susan directed Essex’s pioneering interdisciplinary MA Wild Writing: Literature and the Environment in its early years and currently teaches MA courses on Literature and the Environmental Imagination and on Climate Fiction. She is a Panel Member of UKRI’s Interdisciplinary Assessment College and the Arts and Humanities Research Council Peer Review College and serves on the editorial boards of several journals. Susan’s most recent book is Walter ScoX and the Greening of Scotland: Emergent Ecologies of a Nation (Cambridge University Press, 2021).

22nd August 2024

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Driven by an unsustainable dependency of the capitalist socio-economic system on growth, humanity is facing a polycrisis of existential sustainability challenges, from climate change and ecosystem collapse to
growing systemic tensions tearing into the social fabric and the global world order. This polycrisis is a symptom of a much more fundamental metacrisis of the human psyche within capitalist modernity. Responding to the metacrisis and, consequently, the various components of the polycrisis is the most significant challenge humanity currently faces. Education is crucial for shaping the trajectories of human culture, values, ethics, and behaviour. Therefore, education has a leading role in guiding humanity
through the precarity of the metacrisis. Drawing on findings from research with climate activist teachers, this session argues that it is of paramount importance to equip teachers and educational leaders with the personal capacity and skills to centralise education in the metacrisis context. Embracing the precarious and unknown future with abandon as an unprecedented and liberating opportunity for fundamental innovation in educational praxis and theory may evoke lines of flight to a future beyond the metacrisis.

Thomas Everth

Lecturer at EcoQuest, Centre for Indigeneity,
Ecology and Creativity in New Zealand.

Thomas obtained a master’s degree in physics in Germany, had a career in the IT industry, and worked as a science and mathematics teacher in New Zealand before completing a PhD in Education at the University of Waikato, undertaking research on climate activist secondary school teachers. His research output includes publications on the application of Deleuzo-Guattari’s philosophy on climate change education, the assemblages of school leadership, and the application of quantum decoherence theory to Barad’s Agential Realism.

21st August 2024

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The term “Metacrisis” describes our current historical moment, where a complex web of interconnected, large-scale crises threatens the stability and potential survival of human civilisation. There are parallel 8 of 12 crises in climate change, plastic pollution, ecosystem threats and extinction levels, peak oil, toxic forever chemicals, homelessness, drought, flooding, soil runoff, anxiety, suicide, and the refugee crisis. Each of these specific problems magnifies or dampens the others at a variety of levels. Unlike a single or isolated crisis, the Metacrisis has the following features: interconnectedness of issues, existential threat, and the failure of old systems to provide solutions. The “metacrisis” is not about each specific problem, but rather how, in such a short time, modernity has created these unprecedented global and existential threats.

Ruth Irwin

Ruth Irwin has been a Professor of Education at the University of Aberdeen and the University of Fiji. She has published two monographs and three edited collections, along with the joint book Wild Pedagogies. Heidegger, Politics and Climate Change was published with Bloomsbury in 2008. The collection Climate Change and Philosophy came out with Bloomsbury in 2010. A co-edited book with Martin Thrupp called A Handbook of New Zealand Educational Policy came out the same year. In 2014, Ruth coedited Beyond the Free Market, published with Dunmore Press. Her latest book is in press with Routledge and is titled Economic Futures: Climate Change and Modernity. Her next book is called Nihilism: On Climate Change. She has written over 60 articles that have been published in 4* peer-reviewed journals or books.

24th April

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Centre for Regenerating Futures (CRF) and Centre for Sustainable Bioproducts (CSB) futures forum/seminar, Prof Stephen A. Matlin’s presentation explored the value of systems thinking in chemistry to help achieve the goal of sustainability for people and planet. It discussed the nature of sustainability and resilience as system properties, the role of chemistry in achieving human security goals and the need for chemistry to adopt material stewardship as a core mission.

Prof Stephen A. Matlin

Educated in chemistry at Imperial College London, Professor Stephen Matlin worked in academia in the UK for over 20 years in medicinal, biological and analytical chemistry. He was Professor of Biological Chemistry at City University London and Warwick University. He subsequently served as Director of the Health and Education Division of the Commonwealth Secretariat in London, Chief Education Adviser at the UK Department for International Development and Executive Director of the Global Forum for Health Research, Geneva. He was a cofounder and co-chair of Global Health Europe and has served as Kelvin Lecturer of the British Association for the Advancement of Science, Vice-President of the Royal Institution, and Chair of the Commonwealth Association
of Science, Technology and Mathematics Educators. He is currently a Visiting Professor in the Institute of Global Health Innovation, Imperial College London, a consultant to i5-Governance, Geneva, on polio eradication, and a contributor to M8 Alliance Expert Meetings on Migration and Refugee Health. Professor Matlin is Vice President and Secretary of the International Organisation for Chemical Sciences in Development, where he leads the group Chemists for Sustainability, and he is a co-chair of IUPAC projects on systems thinking in chemistry for sustainability.

17th April 2024

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Plant for Spaces (P4S) includes 13 academic institutions (including 5 Australian universities), international space agencies and enablers, vertical farming companies, education providers, and a range of government and technology partners (Including Australian Space Agency and NASA). P4S will use the amazing properties of plants as food, materials and medicine to help establish a human presence in Space. Innovations developed by
P4S to re-design plants and nutritious future foods will have benefits for sustainability on Earth. During this FF, we discussed the challenges and research to enable plants to grow off-Earth, and how this research can solve sustainability and agriculture issues on Earth. Missions include: Zero-waste plants, On-demand medicines and Complete nutrition foods. P4S offers fertile ground for critical thinking about Plants, Technology, Humans, Sustainability and their intersections. P4S’s learning experiences share P4S transdisciplinary research to navigate and enrich curricula,
connect with researchers and the ways of thinking, and spotlight STEM careers. We described the development and success of learning and engagement strategies and experiences and how they support teachers to provide rich and meaningful learning opportunities.

Check out the Home | Plants for Space ARC Centre for Excellence website!

Dr. Frazer Thorpe

Education and Engagement Manager at ARC Centre of Excellence Plants for Space

Frazer has a PhD in molecular plant biology. He has extensive experience as a teacher in school classrooms and in non-classroom-based learning environments, offering unique learning experiences to primary through to tertiary students and teacher professional learning and coaching. Frazer uses multimodal approaches to navigate STEM education and showcase career pathways. He builds partnerships and shares contemporary research to enrich the curriculum and enhance critical thinking, enabling students to solve authentic problems. He has previously taught in schools, the Gene Technology Access Centre, Zoos Victoria, Museums Victoria, and the iMOVE CRC.

28th March 2024

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Matthew offered a Futures forum for the philosophical. He challenged our thinking while explaining what he is doing about the climate crises. He lives in Brussels and was in Australia (WA) at the Bme of this forum. There are possible future alliances with Matthews’ work and the CRF.

26th March 2024

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Michael described the CUHRE and their work in Denmark. The second half of the session was an opportunity to engage in ideas and pose some collaborative possibilities. Our centres align well and we are excited about planning future projects.

7th March 2024

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14th November 2023 – online

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We invited Emeritus Professor Rich Lehrer (from Vanderbilt University – USA) to join us for our final Futures Forum for 2023, focused on how we, as a Centre, can impact our lives, academic achievements, and futures. We
plan to mirror our first Futures Forum with Prof Maria Forsyth, where she reflected on our Centre proposal and articulated opportunities for futures-focused academic work in the corporate university. We will share our Centre highlights from this year with Rich and then consider his reflections as he offers international perspectives and thoughts. Rich is visiting Australia to collaborate on a recently completed ARC project, finalising publications, etc. He will be offering several presentations about science education and mathematics education, and interdisciplinary education.

9th November at the Geelong Corporate Centre -Waterfront and online via Zoom

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Associate Professor Guantai is a scholar based at the University of Leeds and is the Dean of Equity and Inclusion and the Decolonising Lead for the
Business School there. She joined us and presented her work in the decolonial space. As part of this presentation, she detailed how the University of Leeds is managing and engaging with decolonial practice in the centre of the colonial empire. Her work provides us with some
considerations around how decolonisation might differ between the CRF and the colonial empire, and also what aspects might be helpfully similar.

5th May 2023

This FF was hosted by Arts, Activism and the Anthropocene & Intergenerational Education for Environmental Justice Strands. Tanja Beer of Griffith University’s Performance + Ecology Research Lab (P+ERL)) presented on ‘The Living Stage ’ and joined us in conversation about the ways the arts can develop community, and respond and contribute to regenerating futures in times of climate and ecological crises. It was a wonderfully generative conversation.

28th April 2023

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Thanks to Prof Travis Rector for a stimulating discussion about climate change.

23rd March 2023

We had a great conversation and paid attention to three big questions:

What do we have to think about to ensure our research is ethical, not only for the human participants, but for the future of the planet?

What is the future? How do we live well into the future when we have clearly not lived so carefully in the past (hence we are in the Anthropocene)? Also, the social implications for diverse people? Circular economy, donut economics…

How does an institute lead or drive (make choices) for a better future? What does this mean for the Centre for Regenerative Futures?

23rd February 2023 – Panel discussion

Our first Futures Forum was held on the 23rd February 2023 with a panel presentation exploring Agency in the Anthropocene: New Visions for Education by Martha Monroe, Chris Eames, Nicole Ardoin, and Peta White. This panel discussion focused on what is needed for a science education that will prepare future generations for engaging with Anthropocene challenges. The panellists are members of a PISA 2025 environmental science expert group charged by the OECD to contribute a
strong environmental and social justice focus in the PISA 2025 Science Framework.