DrLian Sinclair

‘Just transmission: advancing coherence in Australia’s electricity policy’

(funded by the Australian Research Council, DP250103027)

This project aims to investigate how electricity transmission law, policy and practices in Australia can be redesigned to advance a just and coherent energy transition. The imperative to shift to renewable sources of energy has become increasingly urgent as the impacts of climate change intensify and ageing coal-fired power plants retire. The Hunter Transmission Project is set to transport renewable energy from the Central West-Orana and New England Renewable Energy Zones to the coastal urban and industrial centres. As part of a national comparative study, the Sydney University research team will codesign fieldwork methods with long-term partners in the Hunter Valley to understand community perceptions of interegional, multi-scalar and intergenerational justice surrounding transmission. We will also develop expanded, critical concepts of energy justice with a focus on community capabilities and geography. 

Critical Mineral Global Production Netwroks

Funded by the Faculty of Science

We are currently in the middle of new boom in critical minerals - all the specialty materials needed for technology to achieve net-zero carbon ambitions. Electric vehicles, lithium-ion batteries and renewable energy all require a rapid increase in extracting and refining lithium, nickel, rare earth elements and others. We must ensure that the costs and benefits of this new extractive drive are distributed fairly.

Lian's role at Sydney focuses on how industrial and development strategies in Australia plug into global production networks in batteries, electric vehicles and renewable energy. When, how and where do the 'industruial upgrading' strategies of Australian governments and industry groups complement or conflict with the supply chain management strategies of multinational corporations? What are the resultant contestations around land, labour and environment in mineral processing regions? Can Australia capture a fair share of value from this new boom? Can the windfall profits be used to create a prosperous, equitable and just society?

Working with colleagues in the School of Geosciences, and their considerable expertiese in economic geography, Lian is using the analytical tools of GPN theory to develop distinctive answers to the above questions and more.

Undermining resistance: Extractive accumulation, participation and governance in global capitalism

*Published by Manchester University Press in 2024, Papaerback available January 2026

Why and how do people affected by mining embrace or resist mining? Do the struggles of local communities, activists and NGOs matter on a global scale? Why are global private standards for social and environmental impacts of mining proliferating so quickly? Have multinational mining corporations fully shifted to participation as a strategy to undermine resistance?

Answering these questions requires a new political economy approach, placing company-community conflict in the context of shifting global crises in the social and environmental governance of mining. This book provides it, drawing on new evidence from three detailed Indonesian cases to explain how participatory mechanisms continuously reshape and are reshaped by community-corporate conflict.

Extractive accumulationis the collection of strategies and relationships at local, national and global scales that enable corporations to secure natural resources and profit from their extraction within global capitalist economies. Corporate social responsibility, community development, 'gender-mainstreaming' and environmental monitoring are neither simple outcomes of corporate ethics nor mere greenwashing strategies. Rather, participation is a mechanism to undermine resistance and create social relations amenable to extractive accumulation. Combining he 'modes of participation' approach, with social reproduction theory and Gramscian political economy, the book provides a fresh look at the institutions and ideologies shaping corporate management of social and environmental conflicts. Findings highlight feedback between local social relations, conflict, transnational activism, crises of legitimacy and global governance.

This book will simultaniously be published in bahasa indonesia as Di bawah tanah: Perlawanan pertambangan multinasional di Indonesia through Insist Press in Yogyakarta, 2025