Category: News
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Sophie Chao and Blanche Verlie awarded prestigious ARC Future Fellowships
Congratulations to (Un)worlding Collaboratory co-convenors Sophie Chao and Blanche Verlie on being awarded ARC Future Fellowships. These awards, granted by the Australian Research Council, are the most prestigious mid-career research fellowships in the country. They are highly competitive and are awarded to emerging leaders in their research fields. Sophie and Blanche both received Future Fellowships…
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New Book: Worlds Beyond Bios
Congratulations to (Un)worlding Collaboratory co-convenor Sophie Chao on the publication of her co-edited book Worlds Beyond Bios: The Life of Matter and the Matter of Life (Duke University Press, 2026), co-edited with Christine J. Winter and David Schlosberg. This book builds on recent theoretical and ethnographic approaches to the more-than-human, exploring how entities not traditionally…
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Mourning in a time of planetary crisis: Making room for grief
by Thom van Dooren, Blanche Verlie and Zoë Sadokierski This essay was published in The Griffith Review, vol. 92 (2026). You can see the full issue here. — AS SPECIES DISAPPEAR and climate change accelerates, a small but growing group of activists, artists and writers across the world is embracing mourning as transformative ethical and…
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New book by Sophie Chao – Plantations Extraction, Extinction, Emergence
What is a plantation—and why does it matter so profoundly today? From oil palm and coffee to sugar, rubber, and timber, plantations have transformed landscapes, livelihoods, and ecologies across the globe. In her latest book, Plantations: Extraction, Extinction, Emergence (Cambridge University Press, 2026), anthropologist and environmental humanities scholar Sophie Chao offers a compelling and accessible…
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New multimedia essay
We have recently co-produced a multimedia essay on the decline of the critically endangered regent honeyeater. The piece is the product of a collaboration between scholars in the humanities, design, and biology: Thom van Dooren, Zoë Sadokierski, Myles Oakey, Timo Rissanen, Samuel Widin, and Ross Crates. You can read/view the full essay here. The south-eastern…
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New book explores hunger as a more-than-human phenomenon in West Papua
Environmental humanities scholar and anthropologist Dr. Sophie Chao (University of Sydney) has published a monograph with Duke University Press, titled Land of Famished Beings: West Papuan Theories of Hunger. The book draws on Chao’s ethnographic fieldwork in West Papua and examines how Indigenous Marind communities understand and theorize hunger in the context of mass deforestation…
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The radical work of mourning: the power of grief in a time of extinction
In April 2024, we co-organised a roundtable discussion on the role of mourning and grief in a time of extinctions. The panel comprised Unworlding Collaboratory members Blanche Verlie and Thom van Dooren with our colleague Zoë Sadokierski. The event was a collaboration with ABC Radio National’s Big Ideas program, produced by Natasha Mitchell. An edited recording of…