Monday 11th November 2024
Dear Centre Members, Aligned HDR Colleagues, and Allied Members,
The CRF reported our annual activities at the SoE gathering this week. With two slides and an audio report we represented the importance of building our community and strengthening our research capacity. We did not report the metrics – we did not conform to the neo-liberal rhetoric that more is better. We focussed on our community and capacity building strategies and we showcased the great On Country event we shared with Lowell Hunter.
The Centre for Regenerating Futures enjoys engaging 55 members from across our Faculty as well as 23 HDR Colleagues and 43 allied members with several partner organisations such as Nulungu Research Institute from the Broome campus of the University of Notre Dame Australia and CUHRE – Elite Centre for Understanding Human Relationships with the Environment from the University of Southern Denmark. We host 4 Strands: Socio-ecological Nexus, Decolonising Knowledges and Practices, Intergenerational Learning for Environmental Justice, and Arts, Activism, and the Anthropocene. Each offers a particular program – for example the Decolonising Knowledges and Practices hosts a regular Reading Group and the Socio-ecological Nexus hosts a Cat 1 research mentoring program. This year we built our researcher capacity through hosting a CRF Research Retreat, a Cli-Fi Retreat specifically in response to a Q1 Australian Journal of Environmental Education special issue call, 5 On Country Events, 5 Regenerators, 12 Futures Forum, 40 newsletters – 1/week, and we funded 8 Enabler grants – 4 of these to Post Doctoral colleagues collaborating with Centre members. We also collaborated on 4 manuscripts, one being submitted with 32 authors called Truth-telling in the Australian Curriculum. We hosted the Australian Climate Change Education Summit – with 268 people registered to attend the online event, 16 speakers in a webinar series, and 40 plus digital voices from across Australia – showcasing climate change education, and over 500 people participating in an online survey. This project is intentionally connected to our political leaders – inviting purposeful leadership around climate change education calling for the development of a policy and a strategy for Australia.. With three principles: addressing Anthropocene challenges, decolonising knowledges and practices, and building researcher capacity – the Centre for Regenerating Futures has enjoyed a successful year.
We proudly shared (again) our CRF representation created with Sarah Firth at our HDR Picture my Research event in 2023. Note that this event is being held again THIS WEEK. We celebrate 4 HDR colleagues who are nearing the end of their PhD journey. They will be working with Sarah Firth at Burwood Corporate Centre on Wednesday – come along to be involved.
As world politics hits us hard we need to look after ourselves and each other. Take time this week to ‘smell the roses’… and be in community.
Best wishes
Peta and Jo