Centre for People, Place & Planet - ECU Strategic Research Centre

Cultural Weather Seminar Relational: Practice and the Conditions for Collaborative Climate Work.
Climate action unfolds within cultural and relational conditions that shape collaboration, knowledge recognition, and long-term sustainability. Referred to here as cultural weather, these often-invisible dynamics are frequently undervalued in climate research and policy, yet they play a decisive role in shaping collaborative climate work across disciplines and institutions. Drawing on over twenty years of transdisciplinary practice across art, culture, climate, and social justice, Dr Jen Rae (Centre for Reworlding and Creative Climate) explores how relational practice functions within complex research and policy environments. The seminar reflects on the role of artists and cultural practitioners as facilitators of collaboration, holders of context, and stewards of long-term relationships, particularly in settings marked by disciplinary silos, short funding cycles, and extractive research models. The seminar introduces BILYA, a relational mapping platform grounded in Indigenous Cultural and Intellectual Property principles. Together, the keynote and workshop invite participants to reflect not only on what climate work they do, but how they work, and how attending to cultural weather can strengthen the conditions for meaningful and collaborative climate futures critical for the wellbeing our future generations and relations. Workshop participants are encouraged to bring a laptop and copy of their CV or resumé.

This online webinar series attests to how transdisciplinary research is practiced through specific relationships, places, knowledges, responsibilities and forms of collaboration.

Across the series, researchers explore human–environment relations through place-based, just and collaborative processes, whilst showcasing their transdisciplinary projects. A central concern will be how research can respond to complex ecological and social challenges without separating environmental sustainability from questions of justice, governance, care and accountability.
The first online forum will be a panel discussion between CPPP Co-Directors , Professor Mindy Blaise (School of Education) and Professor Kathryn McMahon (School of Science), joined by CPPP graduate and Research Member Dr Karen Nociti (School of Education).

Conversations in Transdisciplinary Practice: Pathways, Provocations and Possibilities is an online webinar series that attests to how transdisciplinary research is practiced through specific relationships, places, knowledges, responsibilities, and forms of collaboration.

September's topic: Transdisciplinarity through Transformational Aboriginal Agricultural Methods (TAAM) Project

Presenters: Dave Blake, Janine Joyce and Clint Hansen (Maaman Marra Boodja)

The second online forum in the series will focus on the Transformative Aboriginal Agricultural Methods: Maaman Marra Boodjar project, presented by Professor Janine Joyce (School of Arts and Humanities) and Indigenous research fellow Clint Hansen from Maaman Marra Boodjar.

The session will explore how the project brings together Aboriginal knowledge systems, regenerative agriculture, applied field research and place-based collaboration to consider new ways of healing Country, improving soil health and strengthening drought resilience. Within the CPPP online forum series, the project offers an important example of transdisciplinary research grounded in trust, cultural knowledge, relationship and practical action.

The online forum will discuss how the project works on Country with farmers, researchers and Traditional Owners to respectfully understand and incorporate Aboriginal systems of knowledge into local agricultural practices. It will reflect on yarning, shared decision-making, landscape rehydration practices, soil health monitoring, drone surveys and sensor networks as part of a broader process of intercultural and intergenerational learning. In doing so, the session will highlight how transdisciplinary practice can support more just, sustainable and relational ways of working with people, place and Country.