Speakers – Degrowth Week Australia 2023

DR. ALEX BAUMANN (University of Western Sydney)

Dr. Alex Baumann lectures on Sustainable Futures at the University of Western Sydney. His publications focus on a key structural obstacle to degrowth and a way through this obstacle. Most of us are forced into markets to afford the cost of land for housing. This has been the case since capitalism's first privatisation, land privatisation.

The bottom line is that most of us have little choice but to find our place in the market economy, so we may pay the long-term cost of rent or a mortgage. To overcome this unsustainable reliance on consumer markets and consequent economic growth, Alex's work explores the idea of restoring land commons for housing and collaborative productivity. This focus has involved Alex with the "Neighborhood That Works" project, a project concept that is seeking to reframe public housing policy, providing an example of local collaborative development on public land. 

This link is a short 10min video Alex made with his students that was recently shown at the Degrowth Round Table in the UK. 

JASON BRADFORD (Post Carbon Institute & Crazy Town Podcast)

Jason grew up in the Bay Area of California and graduated from the University of California–Davis with a B.S. in biology before earning his doctorate from Washington University in St. Louis, where he also taught ecology for a few years. After graduate school he worked for the Center for Conservation and Sustainable Development at the Missouri Botanical Garden, was a Visiting Scholar at U.C. Davis, and during that period co-founded the Andes Biodiversity and Ecosystem Research Group (ABERG).

He decided to shift from academia to learn more about and practice sustainable agriculture, and in the process, completed six months of training with Ecology Action (aka GrowBiointensive) in Willits, California, and then founded Brookside School Farm. While in Willits, Jason also instigated the creation of Willits Economic LocaLization (WELL) and was on the board of the Renewable Energy Development Institute (REDI).

For four years he hosted The Reality Report radio show on KZYX in Mendocino County.In 2009 he moved to Corvallis, Oregon, as one of the founders of Farmland LP, a farmland management fund implementing organic and mixed crop and livestock systems, where he worked until early 2018.

He was formerly on the Economic Development Advisory Board for Corvallis and Benton County, currently serves as an advisor for the OregonFlora Project based at Oregon State University, and is on the board of Institute for Applied Ecology. He lives with his family outside of Corvallis on an organic farm, co-managing a CSA program with the Organic Growers Club at Oregon State University, and where he practices the land stewardship methods, applies the equipment sets, and cultivates the social organizations that work in “the here and now” and are aligned with a wildly different future.Dr. Jason Bradford has been affiliated with Post Carbon Institute since 2004, initially as a Fellow. He is currently Board President and a co-host of the Crazy Town podcast. In 2019, he authored The Future is Rural: Food System Adaptations to the Great Simplification.

BOON BREYNE (Friends of the Earth, Europe)

Boon Breyne is an intern on New Economies at Friends of the Earth Europe and climate justice activist with Fridays For Future. Boon, born in Ypres, Belgium, grew up as a car enthusiast, studied automotive engineering to become test driver and EV expert, but turned away from that world with an intense feeling of betrayal. He now aims to help unravel the greatest challenge human society has ever faced by focusing on mobilisation as a whole and on the underlying values of our socio-economic system in particular.

DR SABRINA CHAKORI (The University of Queensland)

Sabrina holds a BSc. in Biology (University of Geneva, Switzerland) and a MSc. in Environmental Economics (The University of Queensland, Australia). Her interdisciplinary Ph.D. research (The University of Queensland, Australia) analysed the drivers of packaged food. The results of her work showed the need to implement degrowth strategies in order to improve the sustainability of food systems. Currently, Sabrina is a postdoctoral researcher at CSIRO (Australia’s National Science Agency). In her research, called Navigating the Sustainability Transitions, Sabrina focuses on the complex social-economic-ecological interaction that can influence systemic change. From a cross-scale perspective, she explores beyond-GDP systems and food systems transitions. Sabrina is also an associate lecturer and mentor at The University of Queensland.

In 2017, Sabrina founded the Brisbane Tool Library, a community-driven circular organisation that seeks to reduce productivism and consumerism. The Brisbane Tool Library has been Australia’s first and only ‘library of things’ to be located within a public library – State Library of Queensland. Sabrina led numerous projects and collaborations in various countries (e.g. across Europe, Kenya, Ecuador, Mexico, and Australia), including an initiative with Queensland’s Environment Minister to introduce the law banning single-use plastic bags. She is the co-founder of the Degrowth Journal, an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and a former Post Growth Institute fellow. Winner of the 2020 Create Change: 7 News Young Achiever Award (QLD) and recipient of the Emerging Female Leader bursary from the National Council of Women of Queensland (2020), Sabrina is a multi-award social entrepreneur, researcher and educator

MARTA CONDE (Researcher & Activist)

Marta Conde is a researcher and activist. She studies social resistance to the expansion of extractive industries, especially mining. Observing the predatory nature of capitalism, pushed her to explore and link Degrowth with my research. She is a member of Research & Degrowth. 

ROB DIETZ (Post Carbon Institute & Crazy Town Podcast)

Rob Dietz is the Program Director at Post Carbon Institute, where he is responsible for guiding projects from conception to completion. With training and experience in ecological economics, environmental science, and conservation biology, he has built a career aimed at moving society in sustainable directions.

Prior to joining Post Carbon Institute, Rob worked as a project manager at Farmland LP, helping to transition conventional farmland to organic. He was also the first executive director of the Center for the Advancement of the Steady State Economy (steadystate.org), taking it from an unfunded start-up organization to an internationally respected leader on new economic thinking.  He is the lead author of Enough Is Enough, a popular book on steady-state economics that Noam Chomsky called “lucid, informed, and highly constructive.” Rob also has produced dozens of articles and presentations on a variety of topics related to sustainability.

Rob is a former Presidential Management Fellow, with appointments at the U.S. Geological Survey and U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. 

He was the first person at the Fish and Wildlife Service to serve as a Conservation Goals Coordinator, a position that combined long-range planning and landscape modeling for the National Wildlife Refuge System. He also did time as an economic analyst at two Washington, DC, consulting firms. His educational background includes a master’s degree in environmental science and engineering from Virginia Tech and an undergraduate degree in economics and environmental studies from the University of Pennsylvania.

Rob lives in Portland, Oregon, where he occasionally shuts down the laptop and ventures into the Cascadian wilds.

VICKY ELLMORE (Friends of the Earth)

Beginning in the zero waste movement and then going into the grassroots environmental activist space, Vicky Ellmore, who is currently one of the community organisers at Friends of the Earth’s Act on Climate collective, has a keen interest in helping people understand that we cannot continue on our current path of a growth economy and need to reduce our use of resources and energy.

TONIÉ FIELD (Degrowth Network Australia)

Tonié was until fairly recently a classically trained ARIA award-winning performer come gender-creative theatrical virtuoso guitarist striptease performing spectacularist !…. until they quit their job at the Victorian College of the Arts Melbourne University to pursue a simpler life.

Now they focus on building community resilience, renovating, downshifting, growing food and working at a local op-shop. Tonié is an active member of the Degrowth Network Australia (Melbourne branch) and is one of the organisers of this degrowth webinar series. In the future, Tonié intends to study food growing (horticulture) focussing on cultivating resilient food growing for the future. Tonié is particularly interested in building community skills and trust to enable a smoother transition to a downshifted steady-state truly sustainable economy in order to avoid ecological destruction and the worst effects of global heating. 

MARY GRAHAM (Future Dreaming Australia)

Dr Mary Graham is an Adjunct Associate Professor at the University of Queensland, and has written and spoken extensively about Aboriginal philosophy, ethics, politics and social issues.  Mary grew up in South-East Queensland, and is a Kombu-merri person through her father’s heritage and a Wakka Wakka clan through her mother’s heritage. With a career spanning more than 30 years, Mary has worked across several government agencies, community organisations and universities. Mary has been a dedicated lecturer with the University of Queensland, teaching Aboriginal history, politics and comparative philosophy. Mary has written and published many prominent works, including – publications in the Aboriginal Encyclopaedia, training modules for Cross Cultural Awareness and a host of academic papers. 

TAMMI JONAS (Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance)

Tammi Jonas is an agroecologist in principle and in practice, farming heritage-breed Large Black pigs, cattle, and garlic with her bricoleur husband Stuart and sharing land with the young First Nations and settler market gardeners of Tumpinyeri Growers on the unceded lands of the Dja Dja Wurrung. Their joyful community is lighting a beacon for agroecology to show a frugally abundant way to a world where there is radical sufficiency for all. Tammi is president of the Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA), co-editor and co-author of Farming Democracy: Radically transforming the food system from the ground up (2019), and nearing completion of a PhD at the University of Western Australia on the biodiverse, anti-capitalist, and anti-colonial practices and politics of small-scale farmers, and the impacts of the state on their efforts towards an agroecological transition in Australia.

Australian Food Sovereignty Alliance

Jonai Farms & Meatsmiths

Pandemic Research for the People (PReP)

Tammi Jonas: Food Ethics

JOSLIN FAITH KEHDY (Recycle Lebanon)

Joslin Faith Kehdy is a devoted steward of the environment. Living off-grid in the village of Baskinta, she is a hands-on unlearner and actively seeks out nature-based alternatives. She studied Mandarin Chinese in Guangzhou, managed operations of a design-build architectural engineering firm in Hawaii and organised food & travel conferences and tours between England & Lebanon prior to unpacking nature based consumption & production alternatives. Joslin's work has been instrumental in empowering individuals and communities to adopt circular practices and shift our collective role in consumption and production, promoting holistic system change.

The waste crisis was the last [plastic] straw in a crippling state where water, electricity, air quality, and basic rights dance in complacent corruption. With the ongoing challenges faced in Lebanon serving as a microcosm of the larger systemic ecological collapse facing the world, Joslin is driven to develop tools that empower interconnected action for communities and provide long-term solutions through creative ecology.

She co-published a journal on "Cultivating circular economies in the gaps of governance: lessons from Lebanon’s ecosystem of Circular Economy micro projects" with Rachel Rosenbaum, Published in Local Environment - The International Journal of Justice & Sustainability, Taylor & Francis Group. Most recently, Joslin was selected as an Echoing Green finalist - a fellowship for transformative leaders with bold ideas for solving the worlds most pressing challenges, creating a brighter and more equitable future.

Recycle Lebanon is a trailblasing Lebanese NGO advocating for system change towards regenerative and circular development. It operates through four main programmes: a circular economy data platform known as RegenerateHub.org, which seeks to strengthen nature-based solutions; an EcoSouk, the first zero-waste shop in the WANA region with access to local, traditional, refillable, unpackaged, bulk and toxic-free products; TerraPods, a bio-design makerspace, art residency and agro-ecology farm in Baskinta, Lebanon; and Dive Into Action, a policy and empowerment programme with zero waste clean ups, balaplastic (plastic free) transitions, food waste events and native planting initiatives. Learn more about TerraPods via their website here: https://terrapods.org 

You can help Recycle Lebanon by donating to their Terrapod Project here: https://www.sustainlebanon.com/projects/terrapods-is-an-eco-design-makerspace-art-residency-and-agroecology-farm 

TERRY LEAHY (Author)

Terry Leahy is now living in Melbourne, Australia, having retired from his academic position at University of Newcastle at the end of 2016. Between 1974 and 1988 he worked at the University of NSW in Sociology and from 1990 to 2016 at the University of Newcastle.   Terry Leahy’s current writing and research investigates three related topics. Sustainable agriculture and food security. The global environmental crisis. The philosophy of the social sciences. His work is framed by a critique of capitalism and patriarchy.   His most recent publications include a study of permaculture as a social movement The Politics of Permaculture, a sociological analysis of food insecurity in Africa Food Security for Rural Africa: Feeding the Farmers First, a documentary on a permaculture project in Zimbabwe – The Chikukwa Project – and a book on social theory ­– Humanist Realism for Sociologists. 

COLIN LONG (Victorian Trades Hall Council)

Colin Long is the Just Transitions Organiser at Victorian Trades Hall Council and is a founder and Board member of Earthworker Cooperative, CoPower, and Hope Cooperative. He is also a Board member of The Next Economy and the global advisory board of Trade Unions for Energy Democracy, an international alliance of trade unions advocating for a just energy transition.

NATALIE LOWREY (Aid/Watch)

Natalie Lowrey has been the Coordinator of Aid/Watch for the past 7 years.

For three decades, Aid/Watch has been the only independent monitor of Australia’s international aid and development. Through research, campaigns and advocacy cantered in justice and solidarity, Aid/Watch collaborates with frontline communities and networks to expose Australian foreign policy mechanisms and development aggressions that undermine their lives, lands and waters.

Natalie has over 20 years of working as a grassroots activist, organiser, campaigner, and networker on a range of justice issues with a strong focus on the rights of local communities and Indigenous Peoples resisting development aggressions. Natalie has held campaigner and communications positions with the Deep Sea Mining Campaign, Friends of the Earth International, Mineral Policy Institute, Conservation Council of Western Australia, and Union Aid Abroad-APHEDA.

DONNIE MACLURCAN (Post Growth Institute)

Donnie Maclurcan Ph.D. leads the Post Growth Institute, an international organization exploring how we thrive within ecological limits. Believing purpose-driven enterprise is at the heart of a healthy market economy, he has consulted to over 500 not-for-profit projects and businesses, across 32 countries, having spent time based in Egypt, South Korea, Kenya, Fiji, the U.S., Argentina and Australia. His own initiatives include leading the development of the Offers and Needs Market, the Post Growth Fellowship, the Post Growth Alliance, Free Money Day, the (En)Rich List, the Not for Profit Way training, and the globally active #postgrowth hashtag. Affiliate Professor of Economics at Southern Oregon University and a Fellow of the Royal Society for the Arts, Donnie is working on his fourth book: How on Earth: our future is not for profit.

MICHELLE MALONEY (NENA)

Dr Michelle Maloney (BA/LLB(Hons),PhD) is the Co-founder and Director of the New Economy Network Australia (NENA). Michelle has more than 30 years’ experience designing and managing climate change, sustainability and environmental justice initiatives in Australia, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and the USA, and this includes two decades working with Indigenous colleagues on a range of community development, sustainability and cultural heritage projects. Michelle began working with other colleagues to create the New Economy Network Australia in 2016, and since that time NENA has grown into a national network of thousands of individuals and organisations working to transform our economic system so that it supports ecological health and socially and economically just human societies.

PETER MYLIUS-CLARK (Primary Carer)

Peter Mylius-Clark is now a Primary Carer having resigned from paid work and PhD research into a sustainable future for work. He has been unemployed, a casual laborer and has experienced a public service career focussed on public finance and public policy on housing, skills and employment. He has academic qualifications in economics and management. He has had a long interest in alternative lifestyles that support ecological and social sustainability. He has lived in urban and rural communes and has been an avid mud brick self builder.

ANITRA NELSON (Scholar & Author)

Anitra Nelson is an activist scholar affiliated with the Informal Urbanism Research Hub at the University of Melbourne (Victoria Australia). She participates in the emerging Degrowth Central Victoria group. She is co-author (with Vincent Liegey) of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020); lead co-editor of both Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (2021/2022) and Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018); and co-wrote a degrowth article for Scientific American (October 11 2022). See more at her site: https://anitranelson.info/

ANISA ROGERS (DEGROWTH NETWORK AUSTRALIA)

Anisa is part of the new Degrowth Network Australia, and has been working on environment and climate change issues for almost a decade. They are particularly interested in how we can actually get to the world we need to avoid climate change and ecological destruction, and helping people work together to get there. 

CALLUM ROGERS (Caring Farms Co-Op)

Callum Rogers is a gardener, farmer and co-organiser of Caring Farms Co-Op. Located in the urban sprawl of the cities north east, Caring Farms Co-Op is dedicated to creating an inclusive and supportive workplace by building and running an  urban farm enterprise. They collectively run a market garden, food plant nursery, worm farm business and native revegetation works. They facilitate a workplace for people otherwise marginalized from the horticultural industry that sits outside profit driven or large de-personalised employment systems. Passionate about the revolutionary possibilities of community driven gardening Callum has been involved in setting up a number of horticultural co-operatives and has worked for amazing community led organisations like Cultivating Community and Farm Raiser.  

MARISOL SALINAS (Latin American Solidarity Network)

Marisol Salinas is a proud Mapuche activist. Coming from a part of the world still recovering from the decades-long ‘neoliberal experiment’ and still deep in the clutches of imperialism, the fight against destruction of land and human rights abuses is real and ongoing. Always denouncing the work of multinational and extractive companies, Marisol continues her fierce activism in spaces of autonomy, self-determination and justice.

Member of LASNET (The Latin American Solidarity Network), Friends of The Earth and 3CR Community Radio.