Charles Bayliss, Junction of Darling and Murray Rivers, Taken from Victorian Side (1886).

National Library of Australia, PIC/9228/34 LOC PIC Album 76.

About

A project that approaches Australian and New Zealand settler literature as a form of environmental knowledge to understand how colonial society defined the limits of its responsibility to the natural world.

Project Leaders

Philip Steer

Associate Professor of English | Massey University

Philip's research focuses on the culture, economics, and environments of settler colonialism, especially in nineteenth-century Australia and New Zealand. He is author of Settler Colonialism in Victorian Literature: Economics and Political Identity in the Networks of Empire (Cambridge, 2020), and co-editor of Ecological Form: System and Aesthetics in the Age of Empire (Fordham, 2019).

Image credit: Luke Anderson

Teresa Shewry

Associate Professor of English | University of California, Santa Barbara

Teresa's research areas include Pacific and Pacific Rim cultures, environmental humanities, and water and the ocean. She is author of Hope at Sea: Possible Ecologies in Oceanic Literature (University of Minnesota Press, 2015), and co-editor of Environmental Criticism for the Twenty-First Century (Routledge, 2011). 

​​Image credit: Esron Gates

Margaret Forster (Rongomaiwāhine, Ngāti Kahungunu)

Associate Professor of Māori Studies | Massey University

Marg's research focuses on cultural and social sustainability, including Māori relationships with whenua, Māori-state resource management relations, and cultural and ethical issues related to engagement with Māori.

Project Team

Leon Prenter

Web Administrator

Leon completed a Bachelor of Arts in Computing and a Certificate in Arts in Information Systems at Massey University in 2004.

Danielle Duff (Ngāti Tūwharetoa)

MA Scholarship (2022-23)

Danielle has a Bachelor of Arts in English

Simon Tyler

MA Scholarship (2020-21)

Simon has a Bachelor of Arts in English and Bachelor of Business Studies in Accountancy, and is a Massey Scholar. His thesis is titled “Climate Change and Genre in the Contemporary Novel.”

Albany Murdoch

Summer Scholarship (2021-2022)

Albany will complete her Bachelor of Arts in English at Massey University in 2021.

Sara Doherty

Summer Scholarship (2020-21)

Sara completed a Bachelor of Arts in English and Psychology at Massey University in 2020.

Julia Braybrook

Summer Scholarship (2020-21)

Julia completed a Bachelor of Communication in Journalism at Massey University in 2016, and a Graduate Diploma in Arts in 2020. She was recipient of the Massey University Innovation and Academic Excellence Scholarship in 2012.