School of Geosciences

Glenn A. Albrecht is an Honorary Associate in the School of Geosciences, The University of Sydney, New South Wales, Australia. He retired as Professor of Sustainability, Walter Murdoch University, in mid-2014. He continues to work as an environmental philosopher and published a book, Earth Emotions, with Cornell University Press in 2019. Earth Emotions was published in French and Spanish in 2020, Dutch in 2024 and Polish (2026-7).

In numerous publications and public talks over the last two decades, Dr Albrecht has developed the theme of the psychoterratic (psyche-earth), or negative and positive emotional states connected to the state of the Earth. New concepts, developed by him, are now becoming well established in the international scholarly literature, new research theses and as inspiration for many creative people in the arts and music.

While he is best known for creating and developing the concept of solastalgia, or the lived experience of negative environmental change, his most recent work forwards the paradigm of the 'Symbiocene', a future state where humans symbiotically re-integrate with the rest of life in nature. 

In anticipation of his next book, 'The Symbiocene: Our Only Future' (CUP 2027), Glenn is contributing to national and international public debate on key issues connected to the human-nature relationship. As the concept of the Symbiocene is now in international 'take-off' phase, he is in regular demand for both in-person and on-line talks as a keynote speaker at international forums. For example, in April 2024, he gave the prestigious annual Frederik van Eeden Lecture, 'Transformation to The Symbiocene', at the International School for Philosophy (ISVW) in the Netherlands. He was a guest of Nantes University in January 2025 and was a keynote speaker at the Green-Blue festival in Milan in June 2026. In October 2026 he was invited to give the Bi-Annual Erich Fromm Lecture at Columbia University NY.

The Symbiocene is now an inspiration for architects and designers as the task of transitioning from the Anthropocene to the Symbiocene becomes a practical necessity. Glenn is actively collaborating with key innovators in this transition, and his own creative contributions are being acknowledged as inspirational by those at the leading edge of their fields.

Dr Glenn Albrecht is now in regular demand for interviews by futurists and social media leaders to explain to international audiences how his psychoterratic approach to the key issues of the early twenty-first century will assist in our transition from an extractive, parasitic society to genuinely symbiotic forms of human living in the Symbiocene.

Glenn currently lives at Blackheath on Gundungurra land in the Blue Mountains of NSW, Australia. He describes his philosophy as ‘sumbioism’, the transdisciplinary engagement of humans ‘living together’ (sumbios) with the totality of life.

Ariella Arzey is a Research Associate working with the Geocoastal Research Group (GRG) in the School of Geosciences. She investigates past climates and environments of reefs, with her current focus on Hawaiian drowned reefs.

She was a PhD candidate at the University of Wollongong where she investigated the palaeoenvironment of the Great Barrier Reef over the Holocene using coral records.

Elaine is the Director of the South East Asian Marine Resources Initiative - an Australian Government funded project extending our partnership with neighbours to address global priority issues. The programme supports the sustainable development of marine resources, delivering demand driven activities in partnership with scientists and policy makers from five countries in the region (Indonesia, Malaysia, Vietnam, the Philippines and Brunei).  

In the Pacific Professor Baker is a co­founder of the Pacific Maritime Boundaries collaboration, which includes the University of Sydney, GRID­ Arendal, SOPAC/SPC, Geoscience Australia, the Pacific Forum Fisheries Association, the Australian Attorney Generals Department, the Commonwealth Secretariat and 14 Pacific Islands States. Since 2008 scientific, technical and diplomatic personnel have been meeting twice a year at the University to prepare claims for extended continental shelf under article 76 of the United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea and more recently to negotiate and prepare national legislation for shared maritime boundaries.

Elaine is also a director of the GRID-Arendal office at the University. GRID, an Norwegian environmental organisation, is an official collaborating centre of the United Nations Environment Programme (UNEP).

Gavin Birch has been successful in competitive grant applications from many granting bodies including, Australian Research Council (five large ARC grants, three small ARC grants and a large equipment grant), two Environmental Trust grants, four Australian Institute of Nuclear Science and Technology grants, three National Heritage Trust grants, one industrial research grant and a number of smaller grants ($2.2m) as well as numerous other grants ($2.5m).

Gavin Birch has supervised 83 postgraduate and Honours students, comprising 39 Honours students; 30 Applied Masters students; and 14 MSc/PhD students. He currently supervises 3 PhD; 1 MSc, 2 Honours and 4 MApplSci students.

He has attracted PhD students from Brazil and Korea and visiting professors from China, Iran, United Kingdom, Canada and the US. Gavin has supervised students from the UK, France Germany, New Zealand and the US on extended work experience arrangements.

All environmental students have been successful in attaining quality employment in industry and academia, locally and overseas.

Dr Samuel C Boone is an ARC DECRA Fellow and Lecturer in Geology in the School of Geosciences, where he works to better understand Earth’s dynamic evolution by studying the thermal and tectonic history of the crust in relation to the growth and breakup of continents. To do this, he integrates field observations and structural geology with low-temperature thermochronology, geochronology, geochemistry and numerical modelling techniques. 

He completed his PhD in Geology at the University of Melboure in 2019, where he combined thermochronology, geochemistry and structural geology to investigate intracontinental rift inception and propogation processes in East Africa. Since his PhD, Sam worked as a postdoctoral research fellow at the Johannes Gutenberg University of Mainz Institute of Geosciences, the University of Adelaide School of Earth Sciences, and the University of Melbourne School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences where he spearheaded the Melbourne Thermochronology Research Group, prior to joining the University of Sydney in 2024.

Sam is a founder of QuESt (Quantitative Earth Systems) Lab, a member of the EarthByte and Sydney Geology groups, and works closely with the Melbourne Thermochronology Research Group and the University of Adelaide Tectonics and Earth Systems Group. He is a member of the University's Net Zero Initiative, serves on the Geological Society of Australia Governing Council and the Editorial Board of the Journal of the Geological Society of London, and leads the University of Sydney EarthBank Node.

​

Website: www.samuelboone.com
Google Scholar:https://scholar.google.com.au/citations?user=V_d3NwsAAAAJ&hl=en
Research Gate:https://www.researchgate.net/profile/Samuel-Boone-3
OrcID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2274-7933

Based in the School of Geosciences, University of Sydney, Eleanor is Co-director of the USYD Marine Studies Institute, Assistant Director of the ARC Training Centre for CubeSats, UAVs and Their Applications, and holds a UNESCO Chair in Marine Science. She uses multiple exploratory tools including spatial modelling, geographic information science, emergent remote sensing technologies and in situ field observation to research key drivers of coastal change.

In collaboration with partners in the South Pacific and Southeast Asia, she has led research projects focusing on coastal livelihoods and use of geospatial technologies and marine spatial planning. This involved the development of an open-source decision support tool for monitoring coastal smallholder agricultural landscapes that aided recovery efforts in Tonga following the 2022 volcano and tsunami. Her recent research involves the use of semi-automated geospatial methods for characterising coastal habitats.

Christina is a quantitative ecologist with expertise in modelling coastal ecosystem change to inform conservation and management. She is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the School of Geosciences and a member of the Thriving Oceans Research Hub.

Vasilis is a Senior Lecturer in Geology in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney.  His research focuses on developing a quantitative understanding of the multiscale structure and petrophysical properties of Earth’s lithosphere, the layer that sustains life, drives plate tectonics, and provides essential resources.  He coordinates core units in the Geology and Geophysics major and leads innovations in teaching, including the digital transformation of field geology and the development of 3D geological learning resources.  Vasilis also contributes to academic leadership through governance roles such as Associate Head Education, driving initiatives that enhance student experience and curriculum quality.

Originally from Greece, Vasilis earned his PhD in Structural Geology and Tectonics at the University of Patras, followed by five years of postdoctoral research at Boston College, the University of Wisconsin–Madison, and Utrecht University before moving to Australia.  He has secured competitive funding from the Australian Research Council (Discovery Projects), the European Union (Marie Curie International Outgoing Fellowship), and the US National Science Foundation.  His research collaborations span Australia, the USA, Germany, France, New Caledonia, and Greece.

FASSA, FQA

I am a geographer who studies human-environment interactions on tropical coasts. My passion is sustainability-focused research at the intersection of social science and ecology. I frequently collaborate with ecologists to uncover the complex linkages between social and ecological systems, such as: defining the conditions that lead to sustainability; locating and learning from conservation 'bright spots'; and examining how coastal societies and ecosystems respond to global environmental change. I began my career in marine conservation while serving as a Peace Corps volunteer in Jamaica. I have worked in Australia, Jamaica, Mexico, Papua New Guinea, Kenya, Madagascar, Tanzania, Mauritius, Seychelles, Indonesia, Mozambique, and the USA, where my research has had impacts on policy and on-the-ground conservation. I have published more than 190 scientific articles, am an Australian Laureate Fellow, Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, and Fellow of the Queensland Academy of Arts and Science.

I study the causes and consequences of human behavior in forests, rangelands, and coral reefs. This work ranges from local to global scale, with local and regional projects primarily focused on southern and eastern Africa. As a postdoc in the Thriving Oceans Research Hub, my main focus is using a global dataset on fisheries biomass and species composition from 3,000+ coral reefs to understand global trends in how reef fisheries are responding to human activities such as overfishing, conservation, and increasing atmospheric CO2. After identifying these general trends, we can assess nested locations (reefs, reefscapes, and ecoregions) that are doing better than expected over time (bright spots) and conduct in-depth fieldwork in those places to figure out what makes them different.

Before coming to the University of Sydney, I worked as a postdoc/research associate in the Catalyzing Conservation group at the Centre for Environmental Policy at Imperial College London, working in close collaboration with Conservation International and the Nature Conservation Foundation. This research broadly focused on how and why conservation initiatives do or do not 'go to scale.' See a press release about some of this work here.

I completed my PhD in the Human-Environment Systems research group at Boise State University, while spending a significant amount of time as a visiting researcher at the Max Planck Institute for Evolutionary Anthropology, department of Human Behavior, Ecology and Culture. My research with these collaborators used cultural evolutionary theory to understand the processes that lead some groups to sustainably manage common-pool resources and others to outstrip the environment. The empirical backdrop for this research is the small-scale fishing and agricultural communities of Pemba Island, Tanzania where our research group operates a long-term field site. See a press release on some of this work here.

Neil joined the School of Geosciences in July 2022, after ten years in the Department of Geography at the National University of Singapore, where he was Head of Department from 2012-18. Prior to that he spent twelve years in Geography at the University of Manchester.

John Connell is a social geographer with a longstanding interest in migration and development issues in the island Pacific, notably in Bougainville and Tuvalu.  

Dr Rebecca Cross is lecturer in Geography in the School of Geosciences, Faculty of Science at the University of Sydney. She is a rural and environmental geographer with a keen passion for understanding how local knowledge and innovation can be harnessed for sustainable, regenerative and Indigenous transitions in agriculture and natural resource management. She employs a participatory, bottom-up community approach to her research.

Rebecca conducts collaborative, interdisciplinary and transdisciplinary research, particularly with colleagues in agricultural and environmental sciences. She has also collaborated with Landcare, Local Aboriginal Land Councils, Local Land Services and Department of Primary Industries to conduct research in NSW on regenerative farming, landholder cross-property collaboration, carbon farming and Indigenous Grasslands for Grains. She has also worked internationally via ACIAR to research intensification, diversification and gender inclusion in Cambodian rice production and social inclusion in small ruminant production in Fiji and Samoa. Rebecca is also passionate about decolonising science curricula and has published in this space.

Rebecca coordinates Environmental and Resource Management GEOS 2121/2921 and teaches into Environmental Law and Ethics (ENVI 3111/3931) and Earth, Environment and Society (GEOS1001/1901).

Ana is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the University of Sydney, where she studies the eco-morphodynamics of coral reefs and islands, with emphasis on storm dynamics and projected changes in wave climate. She has broad experience across diverse coastal environments and timescales, combining field data, GIS, and numerical modelling to investigate the processes driving coastal change. 

Ana holds a Ph.D. in Coastal Oceanography (Griffith University, Australia), where she investigated the dynamic and climatic conditions driving sediment bypassing around Fingal Head, NSW, Australia. She also holds a Master of Science in Oceanography/Coastal Dynamics and a Bachelor (Hons) in Oceanography from the Federal University of Santa Catarina (UFSC), Brazil. Before joining the University of Sydney, she experienced the higher latitudes coastal research as a Postdoctoral Fellow at the Université du Québec à Rimouski (UQAR, Canada) in 2022-2023 involved in a project focused on coastal erosion of the Canadian High Arctic.

Professor John Dodson has worked in the fields of climate change and human impact on environmental systems in Australia, New Zealand, Ireland, China and Pacific Islands. He co-led the Science Program of the Climate Change Section of the International Year of Planet Earth, and the Australasian Transect of the PAGES Global Changes program of the International Geosphere Biosphere Program. He has held professorial positions in Perth, London and Wollongong, was until recently Head of the Institute of Environmental Research at the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation in Sydney. He is currently a guest professor of the Institute of Earth Environment in Xi’an (Chinese Academy of Sciences) and at the College of Earth Sciences at Jilin University in Changchun.

Adriana Dutkiewicz is a sedimentologist and Earth scientist whose research spans sedimentary rocks and marine sediments from the Archaean to the present day. Her current research focuses on the synthesis of large sedimentological, geochemical and geospatial datasets to provide new insights into fundamental processes governing the composition of marine sediments, ocean chemistry and the deep-time carbon cycle. Her research is highly multidisciplinary, combining legacy geological observations with computational methods, geoinformatics and quantitative Earth-system approaches. Her research has attracted broad international media attention, with coverage in outlets including The New York Times, The Sydney Morning Herald, National Geographic, Der Spiegel and New Scientist.

Adriana completed her PhD at Flinders University before working as a project geologist with CSIRO. She subsequently joined the University of Sydney, where she held ARC Australian Postdoctoral (APD), QEII and Future Fellowships before being appointed Associate Professor. Her contributions to sedimentary geology and geoinformatics have been recognised through several major awards from the Australian Academy of Science, including the Mawson Medal and Lecture in 2024, the J. G. Russell Award and the Dorothy Hill Award. In 2026, she received the Geological Society of America’s M. Lee Allison Award for Geoinformatics and was elected a Fellow of the Society. She has served on the Editorial Board of Geology since 2022.

Bob Fisher is an anthropologist. His PhD research was a study of human ecology, focusing on strategies for adapting to drought in the Thar Desert in Rajasthan. He specialises in social and political ecological aspects of natural resource management, particularly involving community forestry. After working in Nepal with the then Nepal-Australia Forestry Project in the late 1980s, he taught at the University of Western Sydney, Hawkesbury, before becoming Deputy Director of the Regional Community Forestry Training Center in Bangkok from 1997 to 2001. Bob has carried out research or consultancies in a wide variety of countries, including Nepal, India, Mozambique, Iran, Kyrgyzstan, Mongolia, Papua New Guinea, Pakistan, Thailand, Laos, Vietnam, Cambodia, the Philippines, Liberia and Ghana. Major publications include "Villagers, forests and foresters: The Philosophy, Process and Practice of Community Forestry in Nepal" (D.A. Gilmour and R. J Fisher, Sahayogi Press, Kathmandu 1991), "Linking Conservation and Poverty Reduction: Landscapes, People and Power" (Fisher et al, 2008. Earthscan) and the edited volumes "Adaptive Collaborative Management of Community Forests in Asia: Experiences from Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines" (Fisher et al 2007, CIFOR) and "Community Forestry in Nepal: Adapting to a Changing world" (Twaites, Fisher and Poudel, 2018, Earthscan).

He aims to combine theoretical and applied interests and has a strong interest in action research. Bob is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Geosciences.

Bradley Garrett is a cultural geographer, writer, and photographer whose work investigates humanity's relationship with subterranean space. He is the author of five books translated into multiple languages, including Explore Everything: Place-Hacking the City (Verso, 2013), Subterranean London: Cracking the Capital (Prestel, 2014), London Rising: Illicit Photos from the City's Heights (Prestel, 2016), and Bunker: Building for the End Times (Penguin/Scribner, 2020). His forthcoming book, Groundbreaking: A Cultural History of Earth's Tunnels (St. Martin's Press, 2028), offers the first comprehensive cultural history of tunnels, spanning two millennia and eight countries.

Garrett earned his PhD in geography from Royal Holloway, University of London, after an early career in archaeology with the United States Bureau of Land Management. He has held posts at the University of Oxford, the University of Southampton, the University of Sydney, and University College Dublin, where he was Associate Professor of Geography.

From 2017 to 2020, Garrett was a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Sydney, affiliated with the Sydney Environment Institute. He rejoined the School of Geosciences in 2025 as an Honorary Associate. His research sits at the intersection of geography, anthropology, and architecture, with particular interests in the underground, spatial politics, visual methodologies, and exploration.

Beyond academia, Garrett's work reaches wide public audiences. He has written for The Atlantic, The Guardian, Vox, and GQ; appeared on 60 Minutes, 99% Invisible, and The Joe Rogan Experience. His research has also been featured by Smithsonian Magazine, Foreign Policy, National Geographic, the BBC, and ABC. His photography has been exhibited internationally, and his public scholarship continues to bridge academic research with cultural debate.

I am currently working as a Senior Research Fellow in the School of Geosciences at the University of Sydney. I hold a PhD degree in Marine Biology/Biochemistry. I am a Thunghutti man through kinship of the Dunghutti nation.

Jo is an academic in the field of environmental legal geography.  Her research unpacks environmental law and policy impacts for place/s throughout the Australasian region. Jo is especially concerned with assessing protected area and biodiversity conservation regimes, together with reflecting on environmental rights, rights-of-nature and multispecies justice perspectives.

Jo holds a PhD in Geography and Law, a Bachelor of Laws and a Bachelor of Arts (Honours, Geography). Before returning to the university sector, Jo worked in the law as a Judges Associate in both State and Federal jurisdictions across Australia. She is a Commissioner on the IUCN Commission on Environment, Economic and Social Policy, a member of the Geographical Society of New South Wales  and the Legal Geography Study Group of the Institute of Australian Geographers. She is also a member of the U21 Nature Positive Coalition and a Research Integrity Adviser. 

Daniel Harrison is an Oceanographer who somewhat unusually began his career with a degree in Civil Engineering. He quickly realised his passion was under the sea and has spent the last 10 years conducting oceanographic & engineering research in industry, non governmental organisations, and academia, including with the University of Sydney, the Sydney Institute of Marine Science, and as a visiting scholar to the University of Southern California, as well as various not for profits. He has worked on collaborative projects with the Royal Australian Navy, CSIRO, NASA, NOAA, the Inter American Tropical Tuna Commission, Australian Bureau of Meteorology, as well as with many other university collaborators. Along the way he obtained a Masters of Philosophy in Oceanography and has submitted his Doctorate at the University of Sydney in Biological Oceanography. He is also employed as a principal investigator at the Sydney Institute of Marine Science. His research interests are varied and include technologies to enhance carbon storage in the ocean, GIS applications in fisheries management, and biogeochemistry of trophic level relationships in pelagic ecosystems.