News and Events
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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 in the 2026 round of funding. Further information on their planned research projects is provided below. Sophie ChaoCoffee lifeworlds in a changing climate. This project aims to uncover how multispecies approaches offer new ways of intervening in the relations between agriculture, sustainability, climate justice and…
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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 recognized as “alive” play active roles in shaping multispecies worlds. Drawing from Indigenous and Global South epistemologies as well as anthropology, the environmental humanities, and political theory, the contributors develop philosophies and practices of engagement with matter that are agentive and affective. Taken together, they…
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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 political work. Their approaches are wide-ranging, from public funerals and vigils for departed species to acts of civil disobedience that take the form of mass ‘die-ins’ representing the extinction crisis. What these disparate efforts share, however, is the goal of dwelling with ecological loss in…
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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 exploration of plantations as sites of colonialism, capitalism, environmental change, and multispecies life. Drawing on ethnographic research from around the world, this short book reveals how plantations are contested worlds where humans, plants, animals, microbes, and infrastructures continually reshape one another. It examines the enduring…
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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 corner of the Australian continent was once criss-crossed by the nomadic flight paths of the Regent Honeyeater. For hundreds of thousands of years, they winged their way up and down this vast continent. Today, however, the species is listed as critically endangered and is just…
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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 and industrial oil palm plantation expansion. Instead of seeing hunger as an individual, biophysical state defined purely in nutritional, quantitative, or human terms, Chao investigates how hunger traverses variably situated humans, animals, plants, institutions, infrastructures, spirits, and sorcerers. When approached through the lens of Indigenous…
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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 our discussion is now available from the ABC’s website. Join Natasha Mitchell and guests for a poetic discussion on the ways you can create space to grieve for species that are going, going, gone. Powerful interests collude to tell us that expressing emotion is hysterical, and that humans…