Coexistence and collaboration: Our Institute’s 2023 conference in Perth

I am writing this editorial on a very wintery day in Hobart, Tasmania, after returning from a convivial and interesting week at the Institute of Australian Geographers’ annual conference, held on unceded lands of the Whadjuk people of the Noongar Nation at the Bentley campus of Curtin University in Perth. Organised by a team from Curtin and the University of Western Australia and led by Tod Jones and Kirsten Martinus, the conference theme was coexistence, collaboration, and geography. For Jones and Martinez, “the theme recognises that the planet’s health and the human race’s survival are inextricably linked and that research outcomes are enriched by diverse partnerships and the contribution of individuals from many specialities” (see Miller, 2023). In 220 sessions over four days, over 235 attendees from 13 nations met in pre-conference workshops, plenaries, and study group and independent sessions to deliberate on that theme and other concerns central to our discipline and the professions it underpins. We were all privileged to be welcomed to Country by Kim Collard, an Elder and Balladong/Wilmen man of the Noongar Nation, who spoke to us about NAIDOC Week, the lands upon which we were meeting, and the special meeting of song lines on the Bentley campus. I note in passing and with gratitude that Wiley has selected three of our journal’s articles to feature in its own NAIDOC tribute (see here; Clements et al., 2023; Rawluk et al., 2023; Rogers et al., 2023).

The team at Geographical Research, supported by Wiley and the Institute’s Council again hosted two lectures in Perth. First, Professor Mark Gahegan gave the Wiley Lecture, and it was riveting. A computer scientist and geographer based at the University of Auckland, Mark’s research includes geovisualisation, spatial analysis, geocomputation, and remote sensing. On this occasion, he shared fascinating insights on ChatGPT and artificial intelligence (AI) and, crucially, invited geographers to apply our interdisciplinarity capacities to help ensure AI futures involve empowering outcomes. Second, Dr Emma Ligtermoet gave the Fay Gale Memorial Lecture, and it was just as compelling. A CSIRO post-doctoral fellow and human-environment geographer from the University of Western Australia and Australian National University, Emma investigates how people navigate social-ecological change in freshwater and coastal environments. In this instance, her focus was on collaborative work in Pilbara communities committed to deepening coexistence work between Country and people.

Thanks to Connor Goddard (Curtin) and Linda Wilson (University of Western Australia), I was privileged to host a conversation about writing and publishing with a group of around 50 higher degree research candidates. Some of the topics we explored included (a) why publishing matters intrinsically, strategically, and tactically; (b) how writing helps academics think, feel, speak, read, and plan careers—and how we can write and still balance work and life; (c) what it means to start the writing and publishing journey; (d) how a little insider knowledge about the higher education sector and academic practice can help that journey; and (e) why journal publishing matters but is not the whole story. At the end of our conversation, I elicited feedback and ideas about what else we can do to support candidates. Among the ideas are the following: What is the lived experience of sustained writing like in terms of process? How can we start and continue to write while living with the realities of precarious and challenging employment contexts? Does everything we write have to be accessible to the general public? How can we better reach out to diverse publics? What are the blessings and challenges of co-authorship and how do we retain agency in those relationships? How can I become a remarkable editor of my own writing? These are intriguing questions indeed, and I hope we can begin to address some of them in our webinars, co-hosted by the Institute and Wiley (see here for past episodes).

Last but not least, I am delighted to report that the 2022 Wiley prize recipients for highly esteemed papers were also announced at the conference dinner. The three papers, all available in our journal website, are by Hine et al. (2022), Roelofsen and Carter-White (2022), and Tan and Liu (2022). Our warmest congratulations to all three writing teams, and our thanks to Wiley as well.

As has become a practice for our journal, we begin this third issue of the year with a commentary by one of our associate editors, Clare Mouat (2023). Her focus is upon the ways in which regenerative—indeed loving—interventions are urgently needed to support radically positive pedagogies, policies, and geographical practices. Pushing back against tendencies to despair, Mouat invites readers to consider love as a critical lens in contemporary geography and to interrogate what that might mean in methodological terms for research, learning and teaching, and engagement. We would welcome more work on such agendas in this journal.

Next is an important and deeply synthesising editorial by Rogers and Kearnes (2023), included in this issue but/and/also fronting our recent virtual issue on COVID-19—a collection of papers published since the pandemic’s outbreak that have been brought together in one convenient place. Beyond summarising the 18 papers included in the virtual issue, Rogers and Kearns carefully show how different papers are aligned to particular themes related to the geographies of COVID-19 mobilities COVID-19 governance; the urban geographies of the pandemic; its material geographies; its spatio-temporalities; and its pedagogic affects and effects. These foundational papers will be added to in coming months as we finalise a second tranche of papers on “legacies and anticipatory geographies of the pandemic including a few papers already published in the journal and assigned to issues but not yet in a virtual issue.”

In this third issue, we also feature our 2022 Wiley Lecture, given by Gemma Sou (2023) and entitled “Communicating climate change with comics: life beyond apocalyptic imaginaries.” This paper includes both sophisticated analysis of complex challenges related to climate change and a video abstract that bring to life Sou’s comics and conceptual and empirical insights about the power of anti-essentialist representations of people’s experiences of extreme weather events.

A series of fascinating original articles follow Sou’s work. We lead with “Tomorrow’s country: practice-oriented principles for Indigenous cultural fire research in south-east Australia” by Andrea Rawluk et al. (2023). The paper models how a group of Indigenous and settler academics, practitioners, and experts have worked to identify a range of practice-oriented principles to support cultural fire management and research. Those principles include trust, reciprocity, and an acknowledgement of power relations and differing values.

Consideration is then given by Ryan van den Nouwelant et al. (2023) to crucial questions about “Private rental investment and socio-spatial disadvantage in Sydney, Australia.” The work is based in Sydney, Australia, and focuses on small-scale rental property owners who, over the period from 1991 to 2016, sought high rental yields from low capital outlays. Analysing the spatial correlation between tenure and suburbanisation, the authors show how owners’ actions are linked both to uneven growth rates of private rental and to region’s geographies of social disadvantage.

In work by Angus Dowell et al. (2023), readers are next invited to consider “Experimentation as infrastructure: enacting transitions differently through diverse economy-environment assemblages in Aotearoa New Zealand.” Their study deploys social studies of economisation and marketisation (SSEM) to consider economic development initiatives in New Zealand. Importantly, it taps into geographers’ interests in experimentation, agency, and practice in relation to emergent forms of environmental economy.

Then, Maria Ribeiro et al. (2023) report on work to understand the “Spatial and temporal dynamics of the urban heat island effect in a small Brazilian city” of Sacramento in western Minas Gerais. Noting how urban growth and climate change are predicted to increase substantial warming in inland cities, they deploy a local climate zone (LCZ) system approach to data about the city’s climate and weather. In the process, they identify factors driving thermal changes and argue that the approach is replicable in other South American cities so that urban planning can account for emergent challenges across the region.

Last, Busola Adedokun et al. (2023) document how, on the Central Plateau of Tasmania, there has been “A long entanglement with nature: flyfishers in the wild.” Flyfishers there can be described as having “membership” of groups with varied motivations and attitudes related to their social, trophy, outdoor enthusiast, and hunter-gatherer proclivities. Overarching those differences, however, is a common love of wild nature; a concern for the negative effects of social and environmental challenges such as weeds, dogs, trampling, and fire; and a preparedness to help keep such areas unspoiled. Such qualities suggest they have potential to support park management.

As always, thanks to everyone on the team, our board, our reviewers, authors, publisher, and Institute. And that, as they say, is that … until our final issue of 2023, due in November. Until then, stay safe and well.