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    James Dunk 

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    I am a historian and interdisciplinary researcher, and my research, teaching and writing explore how health and psychology are changing in the face of planetary crises. I am especially interested in how the lived experience of ecological change is beginning to reshape our psychological theories and therapies, with Australia at the forefront of new feeling and knowledge of living in a planetary age.

     

    Currently a Research Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, I lead the planetary mental health theme on the ARC Discovery Project Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts. I also co-direct the Ecological Emotion Research Lab and convene the Climate Distress, Art and Open Dialogue Community of Practice.

     

    My first book, Bedlam at Botany Bay, won the Australian History Prize at the 2020 NSW Premier's History Awards and was shortlisted for several other prizes. My research on planetary health, mental health and ecological distress has been published in The New England Journal of Medicine, Sustainability, History of Psychology, Australian Psychologist and Rethinking History, and my literary reviews and essays appear in Griffith Review, Australian Book Review, and other places.

     

    Academic Profile

    Contact
  • Reviews, essays & interviews

     

    morethanhumanworlds

    an interview with environmental anthropologist Sophie Chao

    unease and disease

    Redrawing the Boundaries of Colonial Madness | Griffith Review

    gaming in a crisis

    interview with Phil & Meredith Walker-Harding, founders of Joey Games

    writing the environment

    encounters, transformation and perspectives in multispecies storytelling

    narrowneck: a communal photo essay & a wordweave

    Emotional Ecologies | Network in Canadian History & Environment

    psychiatry and the burdens of freedom

    On Harri Yi-Jui Wu's history of mental health and the WHO | ABR

    spaceship earth

    'The Environment: A History of the Idea' by Paul Warde, Libby Robin, and Sverker Sörlin | Australian Book Review

    invited correspondence: Not Waving, Drowning

    Mental Illness and Vulnerability in Australia, Quarterly Essay 85, by Sarah Krasnostein

    nuclear winter and planetary suicide

    Pictures of Madness, by the Futures of Madness Network

    psychiatry and its discontents

    On Andrew Scull's latest book| Australian Book Review

    worth fighting for

    Physicians for Social Responsibility and the Nuclear Crisis | The Conversation

     

    the cabin in the woods

    article | SL Magazine

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    Bedlam at Botany Bay

    Winner, Australian History Prize, NSW Premier's Awards 2020
    Shortlisted, Ernest Scott Prize 2020
    Shortlisted, Queensland Literary Awards 2020
    Shortlisted, Kay Daniels Award 2020

     

    "Bedlam at Botany Bay offers readers a strikingly original re-reading of early colonial Australia. Beautifully crafted and deeply empathetic, this is a book with genuine literary and scholarly merit. It makes a significant and invigorating impact on the field of Australian history, and deserves to be read and discussed for many years to come." – Judge's Comments, New South Wales Premier's Awards 2020

     

    "by insisting that we should examine trauma and madness in their wider social contexts, by voyaging into emotional history and the predicaments of both the insane and the people who cared for them, James Dunk has opened promising new ways to understand the histories of empires and colonies." – Grace Karskens

     

    Reviews | Buy Now

  • News

    February–March 2025

    Together with Prof Danielle Celermajer (Sydney), I'll be convening a pair of workshops exploring the rapidly expanding ethical work around planetary health, focusing on its intersection with personal experience, multispecies justice, and Indigenous knowledges.

     

    12–13.11.2024

    Writing the Planetary

    Ruth Morgan and I are convening a workshop for those wrestling with the planetary in their storytelling, particularly in historical writing, with discussants Libby Robin (ANU), Tom Griffiths (ANU), Warwick Anderson (Sydney) and Sverker Sorlin (KTH Stockholm). Find the full call here.

     

    8.10.2024

    Centre for the History of Science, Technology and Medicine, Manchester University

    I'll be visiting colleagues at the Centre and giving a seminar on climate psychology, discussing potential collaborations.

     

    2–4.10.2024

    Imagining Planetary Health

    I'll be presenting at Imagining Planetary Health, Well-Being, and Habitability: Perspectives from the Environmental Humanities, a very exciting workshop hosted by the Rachel Carson Centre in Tutzing, Germany . This is the first largescale humanities gathering focused on the emerging field of planetary health.

     

    22–26.7.2024

    Planetary health ethics: In search of a new paradigm

    At the end of July I'll be participating in a focused, intensive workshop exploring the present and future landscape of planetary environmental ethics. This will be a fascinating and widely interdisciplinary meeting held in Prato, Italy.

     

    5.7.2024

    All history is history of the present

    Together with Dr Lilian Pearce (Centre for the Study of the Inland, La Trobe) and Associate Professor Ruth Morgan (Centre for Environmental History, ANU), I'll be convening a one-day workshop on the current prospects for Environmental History: All history is history of the present: The craft of environmental history now. Read more and submit an EOI here.

     

    1–4.7.2024

    Australian Historical Association

    In 2024 I'll be convening the Green Stream (Australian & Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network) at the annual conference of the Australian Historical Network, hosted this year by Flinders University, in Adelaide, together with Lil Pearce (La Trobe) and Claire Brennan (JCU). I'll be giving a paper entitled 'Psychology and Planetary Crisis, 1945–65'.

     

    19.2.2024

    St Paul's College, University of Sydney

    In February I'll be giving a dinner seminar at Graduate House, St Paul's College, on the theme Ecological anxiety and planetary mental health.

     

    15–19.9.2023

    Meetings on ecological distress and open dialogue, Helsinki

    In September I'll have meetings in Helsinki with leading figures in open dialogue, a therapetuic method developed in Helsinki for use with voice hearers, and with prominent researchers working on ecological anxiety and climate distress, including eco-theologian Panu Pihkala.

     

    9.2023

    Visiting Scholar, KTH Stockholm

    I'll be a visiting scholar with the KTH Environmental Humanities Lab in September 2023, collaborating with researchers on the ERC-funded project Study of the Planetary Human-Environment Relationships (SPHERE) on the psychological dynamics of the human-Earth relationship.

     

    7.9.2023

    Talk: Environmental Humanities Lab, History of Science, Technology and Environment, KTH Stockholm

    Environ/mental: Planetary Mental Health and the Ecological Self

    If planetary health is a new transdisciplinary agenda to attend to the ‘health’ of the planet and its living systems in order to preserve human health and life – is planetary mental health a simple extension? This paper surveys the emerging programme (or programmes) of planetary mental health. What constitutes planetary mental health? How does the systems approach implicit in planetary health intersect with ecological theories in psychology and psychiatry? How might the psychological frames implicit in mental health fields complicate the assumptions bound up in planetary health? Planetary mental health also demands a more thorough attention of the personal in the planetary health imaginary, bringing the history of deep ecology and ecopsychology to bear on planetary health literature dominated by public health and epidemiology, and looking to theories of ecological subjectivity and emotion advanced in the social sciences and environmental humanities. 12–1.30pm, Teknikringen 74D (floor 5). Register here.

     

    30.8–2.9.2023

    European Association for the History of Medicine and Health (EAHMH), Oslo

    I'll be presenting on the intersection of the experience of ecological distress and the planetary health frame: Ecological anxiety and planetary mental health: contemporary histories.

     

    29.8.2023

    Medical Humanities: Anthropology and History, University of Oslo

    I'll be speaking about planetary mental health in the Medical Anthropology and History Seminar Series at the University of Oslo.

     

    22–26.8.2023

    European Society for Environmental History, Bern

     

    21.8.2023

    Environmental Humanities, NTU

    I'll be speaking on the theme Person/Planet: Towards a Planetary Mental Health to the environmental humanities group at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore. Monday 21 August, 2.30–4pm, SHHK Meeting Room 2 (03-93) & online, register here.

     

    23.6.2023

    Almostice, Canberra

    Together with National Museum of Australia curator Kirsten Wehner and environmental historian Cameron Muir, (both editors, with Jenny Newell, of the wonderful book Living with the Anthropocene), I gathered friends and colleagues for an almost-solstice evening where we shared stories, poems, films and photographs on the theme of rhythm and arhythmia – on being out of step.

     

    6.2023

    Visiting Fellow, ANU Australian Studies Institute

    For the month of June I'll be a visiting fellow at the Australian National University, exploring Australian contributions to human ecology, environmental epidemiology and planetary health.

     

    9.12.2022

    International Council of Psychologists

    I'll be speaking on an Expert Panel on Climate Justice with Gonzalo Bacigalupe (University of Massachusetts Boston) and Erinn Cameron, a doctoral candidate in clinical psychology at Fielding Graduate University and behavioral resident-clinical psychology intern at the University of New Mexico School of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences.

     

    6.12.2022

    Art, Play, and Ecological Emotion

    We're returning to the Royal Hotel, Darlington, for a night of short film, poetry, photography and live performance: New Feels New Forms: Art, Play and Ecological Emotion. It was my pleasure to curate a vibrant and wonderful set of artistic engagements of ecological emotion. Films by Rowena Potts and Ceridwen Dovey and The Parallel Effect. Wordplay by James Dunk, Freya MacDonald, Christine McFetridge, Cameron Muir, Anastasia Murney, Lynda Ng, Kate Stevens, and Jamie Wang. Poems by Frances Grimshaw. Multispecies drag performance by Laurie Form. Photography by Lena Schlegel.

     

    5–8.12.2022

    Ecologial Emotion

    In December I'll be convening a large interdisciplinary symposium at the University of Sydney together with Dr Blanche Verlie and others: Nature Feelz: Perspectives and Reflections on Ecological Emotion. Sponsored by the Sydney Environment Institute and RMIT.

     

    8.9.2022

    NSW Parliament

    I'll be speaking about colonial suicide on a panel with Kirsten McKenzie and Penny Russell, 'Politics and the People: Interpersonal Politics, the Courts and the Press’, at the State of the Colony: People, Place and Politics in 1823, Legislative Council of New South Wales Bicentenary Seminar, NSW Parliament, Sydney. Watch the panel here.

     

    27.4.2022

    Deakin

    At the end of April I'll be giving a paper called ‘Planetary Boundaries and Planetary Psychology: Beyond the Limits to Growth' to the Contemporary Histories Research Group at Deakin University.

     

    11.4.2022

    Adelaide

    In April I'll be deliving a paper entitled ‘Psychology as if the Whole Earth Mattered: Cold War, Climate Change and the Human Psyche, 1982–92,’ to the History Seminar at the University of Adelaide.

     

    8.2.2022

    Historians on Planetary Futures

    In February I'll be presenting my work to the Historians on Planetary Futures seminar series run out of New Earth Histories and the Laureate Centre for History & Population at the University of New South Wales.

     

    1.12.2021

    Keynote Panel: Innovation in Health and Medicine
    Delighted to be invited to speak about planetary health on a keynote panel with Charlotte Greenhalgh, Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen and Tatjana Buklijas at the ANZSHM Biennial Conference, 'Innovation in Health and Medicine,' at the University of Newcastle, 1-4 December 2021.

     

    19.11.2021

    Australian Academy of Humanities Annual Symposium

    The Australian Academy of Humanities Annual Symposium is an important annual meeting of Australian humanities scholars. This year’s theme is Culture, Nature, Climate: Humanities and the Environmental Crisis, and I'll be talking about my research on mental health and ecological distress.

     

    28.10.2021

    Emotion, Anxiety, Environmental History

    Together with wonderful colleagues in environmental history Margaret Cook, Nancy Cushing, and Rebecca Jones, I'll be talking about histories of ecological anxiety at the panel Anxiety and Emotion in Environmental History. Moderated by Andrea Gaynor and sponsored by the Sydney Environment Institute and Australian and Aotearoa Environmental History Network.

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    Overwhelm: Ecological emotions and the climate crisis

    SEI Magazine Issue 7 (2022–23)

     

    Following the Nature Feelz symposium which my Sydney Environment Institute colleagues and I convened late in 2022, this issue of the SEI magazine explores the complex ecological emotions and feelings that drive climate crisis and action. It brings together a diverse range of contributions and disciplines, both critical and creative, to highlight the cutting-edge ecological emotion research and responses focused in and around Australia. From reflections on environmental fiction as it becomes more aligned to reality, and photographic explorations of climate loss, to a manifesto for resilience as form of activism, Overwhelmed delves into loss and hope, witnessing and action as we collectively experience the affective impacts of the climate crisis.

  • An Earth Lexicon for Children

     

    I asked friends and colleagues, all environmental researchers and writers, to share some words with the coming generations – old words, borrowed words, and made-up words. Georgie Igoe has created art to accompany the definitions which we have worked up together.

     

    Read by Aubrey and Ira Dunk. Film by Lisa Grant, featuring Hazel and Wilder Grant. Film editing by Stephanie Dunk. Word editing by James Dunk. Words and definitions by: Glenn Albrecht, James Bradley, Danielle Celermajer, Sophie Chao, Andrew Errington, Billy Griffiths, Rohan Howitt, Rachel Douglas Jones, Jamie Lorimer, Ruth Morgan, and Emily O’Gorman.

  • Stories of the City

    I worked with students from my urban history course to tell their stories of Sydney in an online event, with a reading by acclaimed poet Toby Fitch from his book Sydney Spleen. Thanks to Peter Adams for video editing.
  • Planetary health and history

    From settler psychology to new visions of health in the Anthropocene

    Video by Chaylon Fraser for the Faculty of Science, University of Sydney

  • Current projects

     

    By Joseph Martin Kronheim and Company (National Library of New Zealand) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

    At a loss for words of loss

    An experiment in slow, transformative collaboration

    See our photo essay, 'Narrowneck,' and audio poem published in the NiCHE series Emotional Ecologies.

    By Joseph Martin Kronheim and Company (National Library of New Zealand) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

    Psychology as if the whole earth mattered

    Towards a planetary psychology

    Research article published in APA journal History of Psychology

    Image: Wikimedia Commons: Atomic_cloud_over_Hiroshima_(from Matsuyama) 509th Operations Group

    By Joseph Martin Kronheim and Company (National Library of New Zealand) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

    Mapping the conceptual history of planetary mental health

    Within the ARC Discovery Project Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts, led by the University of Sydney, Monash University, and KTH Stockholm

    Image: NASA/USGS Landsat; Geoscience Australia. Source: Landsat gallery.
    By Joseph Martin Kronheim and Company (National Library of New Zealand) [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons

    Climate Distress

    An open intergenerational dialogue between young people, scholars, writers, artists, and clinicians

    more information

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    Psychology as if the whole earth mattered: towards a planetary psychology

    This article traces a genealogy for the various strands of contemporary psychology which are concerned with global environmental change, including conservation psychology, ecopsychology, and climate psychology. Focusing on a network of psychiatrists, psychologists, and other researchers based at a research center founded in Cambridge, Massachusetts in 1982, the article explores what those who first turned to the psychological causes and implications of climate change and other kinds of global environmental disruption had learned from their studies of nuclear-era psychology. The explorations of these researchers and practitioners in systems psychology, depth psychology, and political psychology, elicited by the first truly planetary crisis of the modern world, the threat of general nuclear war, were applied to a new planetary crisis already unfolding: global environmental degradation.

     

    As they completed this pivot from the nuclear threat to the environmental crisis, at the end of the Cold War, using the language of the psychology of survival, these researchers displayed the form and function of what might be called a planetary psychology – of psychological theory and practice which broaches the planetary context of the individual psyche.

     

    Dunk, J. (2022). Psychology as if the whole earth mattered: Nuclear threat, environmental crisis, and the emergence of planetary psychology. History of Psychology, 25(2), 97–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000208

  • Academic books & articles

     

    Books

    Bedlam at Botany Bay (NewSouth, 2019).

    Knowledge Making: Historians, Archives and Bureaucracy, with Barbara Brookes (Routledge, 2020).

    Articles & Book Chapters

    (In press) Warwick Anderson, James Dunk and Connie Musolino, ‘Settler Colonial Social
    Medicine and Community Health: Australasian and Pacific Adaptations, Reinventions, and Denials,’ in Global Social Medicine: Intersecting Histories, ed. Jeremy Greene, Anne Kviem Lie, and Warwick Anderson (Cambridge University Press, forthcoming 2024).

    James Dunk,Andrea Gaynor, Nancy Cushing, Margaret Cooke, and Rebecca Jones, ‘Eco-anxiety
    and Environmental History: A Forum,’ International Review in Environmental History 10, no. 2 (forthcoming, November 2024)

    Jordan Koder, James Dunk and Paul Rhodes, ‘Climate Distress: A Review of Current Psychological Research and Practice,’ The Psychology of Sustainability: Expanding the Scope, Sustainability 15, no. 10 (2023), 8115. doi.org/10.3390/su15108115.

     

    James Dunk, ‘Nuclear Winter: Science, Fiction, and Temporal Violence,’ in Anticipatory Environmental (Hi)Stories from Antiquity to the Anthropocene, edited by Christopher Schliephake and Evi Zemanek (Lexington Books, 2023).

     

    Paul Rhodes and James Dunk, ‘Eco-Psychology: A Critical Paradigm in the Climate Emergency,’ Australian Psychologist, 22 January 2023. doi.org/10.1080/00050067.2022.2157240.

     

    James Dunk, Kirsten McKenzie and Penny Russell, ‘Politics and the People,’ in The Stateof the Colony: New South Wales 1823 (New South Wales Parliament, 2023).

    Warwick Anderson and James Dunk, ‘Planetary Health Histories: Toward New Ecologies of Epidemiology?’ Isis 113, no. 4 (2022): 767–88. doi.org/10.1086/722308.

     

    James Dunk, ‘Psychology as if the Whole Earth Mattered: Nuclear Threat, Environmental Crisis, and the Emergence of Planetary Psychology,’ History of Psychology 25, no. 2 (2022): 97–120. doi.org/10.1037/hop0000208

     

    James Dunk, ‘Wrongful Confinement and the Spectre of Colonial Despotism: The Political History of Madness in New South Wales,’ History Australia 19, no. 1 (2022): 34–53. doi.org/10.1080/14490854.2022.2028557.

     

    James Dunk, ‘Psychology as if the Whole Earth Mattered: Nuclear Threat, Environmental Crisis, and the Emergence of Planetary Psychology,’ History of Psychology 25, no. 2 (2022): 97–120. https://doi.org/10.1037/hop0000208.

     

    ‘Assembling Planetary Health: Histories of the Future,’ with Warwick Anderson, in Planetary Health: Protecting Nature to Protect Ourselves, edited by Samuel S. Myers and Howard Frumkin (Island Press, April 2020): 17-35.

     

    ‘Sounding the Alarm on Climate Change, 1989 and 2019’, with David S. Jones, New England Journal of Medicine (11 December 2019). doi:10.1056/NEJMp1913916.

     

    ‘Human Health on an Ailing Planet — Historical Perspectives on Our Future’, with David S. Jones, Anthony G. Capon, and Warwick H. Anderson, New England Journal of Medicine 381:778-82 (22 August 2019): 778-82. doi:10.1056/NEJMms1907455.

     

    ‘Work, Paperwork, and the Imaginary Tarban Creek Lunatic Asylum, 1846’, Rethinking History 22, no. 3 (2018): 326-55. doi:10.1080/13642529.2018.1486956.

     

    ‘The Liability of Madness and the Commission of Lunacy in New South Wales, 1805-12’, History Australia 15, no. 1 (2018): 130-50. doi:10.1080/14490854.2017.1413942.

     

    ‘Authority and the Treatment of the Insane at Castle Hill Asylum, 1811-1825’, Health and History 19, no. 2 (2017): 17-40. doi:10.5401/healthhist.19.2.0017.

    Co-edited Special Issues & Sections

    'Covid and the Historians,' Health & History 25, no. 1 (2023).

     

    'From the Margins: Madness and History in Australia' [with Catharine Coleborne], History Australia 19, no. 1 (2022).

     

    ‘Bureaucracy, Archive Files and the Making of Knowledge’ [with Barbara Brookes], Rethinking History 22, no. 3 (2018): 281-88. doi:10.1080/13642529.2018.1489578.

     

    ‘Incarceration, Migration, Dispossession and Discovery: Medicine in Colonial Australia’ [with Angeline Brasier], Health and History 19, no. 2 (2017): 1-16. doi:10.5401/healthhist.19.2.0001

    Book and Exhibition Reviews

    ‘Admissions: New Voices in Mental Health edited by David Stavanger, Radhiah Chowdhury, and
    Mohammad Awad (Upswell, 2022)] [Book Review], Health & History 24, no. 2 (2022): 205–7.

    ‘A Science of Our Own: Exhibitions and the Rise of Australian Public Science by Peter H. Hoffenberg (University of Pittsburgh Press, 2019)’ [Book Review], Isis: Journal of the History of Science Society 112, no. 1 (March 2021): 193-94.

     

    ‘The Anthropocene and the Humanities: From Climate Change to a New Age of Sustainability by Carolyn Merchant (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2020)’ [Book Review], Social History of Medicine (27 January 2021).

     

    ‘Colonizing Madness: Asylum and Community in Fiji by Jacqueline Leckie (Honolulu: University of Hawai‘i Press, 2020)’ [Book Review], Journal of Pacific History (2 February 2021).

     

    ‘The Routledge History of Madness and Mental Health’, edited by Greg Eghigian (Routledge, 2017) [Book Review], Health and History 21, no. 1 (2019): 90-94. doi:10.5401/healthhist.21.1.0090.

     

    ‘Louella McCarthy and Kathryn Weston, curators, “Caring for the Incarcerated”, University of Wollongong Library, Wollongong [Exhibition Review]’, History Australia 14, no. 4 (2017): 662-65. doi:10.1080/14490854.2017.1389255.

     

    'Insanity, Identity and Empire: Immigrants and Institutional Confinement in Australia and New Zealand, 1873-1910', by Catharine Coleborne (Manchester: Manchester University Press, 2016), in Social History of Medicine (23 June 2016), doi 10.1093/shm/hkw069.

     

    'Illness in Colonial Australia', by F. B. Smith (North Melbourne: Australian Scholarly Publishing, 2011), in Journal of Australian Colonial History, vol. 15 (2013), pp. 226-27.

  • Essays & literary reviews

    Essays and other writing

    'Languages of Loss and Renewal: A Wordweave' (an audio poem with Freya MacDonald, Christine McFetridge, Cameron Muir, Anastasia Murney, Lynda Ng, Kate Stevens, and Jamie Wang), Emotional Ecologies, Network in Canadian History & Environment, 25 July 2023.

     

    'Narrowneck: A Communal Photo Journal' (with Christine McFetridge, Cameron Muir, Anastasia Murney, and Jamie Wang), Emotional Ecologies, Network in Canadian History & Environment, 25 July 2023.

     

    Interview with environmental anthropologist Sophie Chao, more-than-human worlds (August 2022).

     

    'Designing Australian Games in an Ecological Crisis’ (with Meredith Walker-Harding and Phil Walker-Harding), Sydney Environment Institute (5 July 2022).

     

    Invited correspondence: Waving, Not Drowning: Mental Illness and Vulnerability in Australia, by Sarah Krasnostein, Quarterly Essay 86 (July 2022): 117–19.

     

    ‘Writing Life No. 16: An Interview with Warwick Anderson,’ Somatosphere: Science, Medicine, and Anthropology, 10 February 2022.

     

    ‘Writing the Environment: Encounters, Transformation, and Perspectives in Multispecies Storytelling,’ (with Sophie Chao and Hannah Della Bosca), Sydney Environment Institute (6 October 2021).

     

    'Reaching Across Disciplinary Boundaries to Consider Ecological Futures,’ Sydney Environment Institute (19 August 2021).

     

    ‘Unease and Disease: Redrawing the Boundaries of Colonial Madness,’ Griffith Review 72: States of Mind (May 2021): 149–58.

     

    ‘Planetary Health Histories,’ interview with Warwick Anderson, James Dunk and Marcos Cueto for História, Ciências, Saúde – Manguinhos blog (October 2020).

     

    ‘How Doctors Convinced the World the Planet Was Worth Fighting For,’ The Conversation (26 August 2019).

    Book Reviews

    'Mad by the Millions: Mental Disorders and the Early Years of the World Health Organization by Harry Yi-Jui Wu (MIT Press, 2021),’ Australian Book Review, no. 434 (September 2021).

     

    ‘Psychiatry and its Discontents’ by Andrew Scull (University of California Press, 2019), Australian Book Review, no. 421 (May 2020).

     

    ‘Wind Turbine Syndrome: A Communicated Disease’ by Simon Chapman and Fiona Crichton (Sydney University Press, 2017), Australian Book Review, no. 415 (October 2019), pp. 27-28.

     

    ‘The Environment: A History of the Idea’ by Paul Warde, Libby Robin and Sverker Sörlin (Johns Hopkins, 2018), Australian Book Review, no. 408 (January 2019).

     

    ‘The Memorandoms of James Martin: An Astonishing Escape From Early New South Wales’ ed. Tim Causer (UCL Press, 2017), Australian Book Review, no. 397 (2017).

     

    ‘Dr. James Barry: A Woman Ahead of Her Time’ by Michael du Preez and Jeremy Dronfield (Oneworld Publications, 2016), Australian Book Review, no. 388 (2017), p. 49.

     

    “A vision of past savagery that lies maddeningly between truth and fiction”: James Dunk reviews Sarah Drummond’s 'The Sound', Rochford Street Review, no. 19 (September 2016).

     

    'Finding Sanity: John Cade, Lithium and the Taming of Bipolar Disorder', by Greg de Moore and Ann Westmore, in Australian Book Review, no. 386 (2016), p. 66.

     

    'The Profilist' by Adrian Mitchell, in Australian Book Review, no. 378 (January-February 2016), p. 47.

     

    'Seasons of War' by Christopher Lee, in Australian Book Review, no. 370 (March 2015), p. 60.

     

    'The Man Who Thought He Was Napoleon' by Laure Murat, translated by Deke Dusinberre (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), in Australian Book Review, no. 369 (March 2015), p. 58.

    Film Reviews

    Partisan, dir. Ariel Kleiman, in Arts Update, no. 101.

  • Brief resume

    BA (Adv Hons I) PhD (Sydney)

    2022–23 Research Fellow & Janet Dora Hine Postdoctoral Fellow, School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Sydney

    I am currently a full-time researcher in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney, and a collaborative fellow at the Sydney Environment Institute, where I co-lead the Ecological Emotions Research Lab with Associate Professor Paul Rhodes. I sit on the SSPS Research Committee and am the School ECR Representative on the Faculty EMCR Committee.

    2018–22 Research Fellow, School of Humanities, University of Sydney

    I was a research fellow in the School of Humanities at the University of Sydney, working on histories of planetary health, depth psychology, and human ecology.

    2013-18 Research Assistant/Research Associate, University of Sydney

    I managed the the laureate research program Race and Ethnicity in the Global South, led by Professor Warwick Anderson.

    Awards

    Australian History Prize, NSW Premier's History Awards 2020 (Bedlam at Botany Bay) [$15,000].

     

    Charles Perkins Centre Exceptional Contribution Award, 2019 [$2000].

     

    Jill Roe Prize, Australian Historical Association, 2016.

    Grants and Fellowships

    ANU Australian Studies Institute Visiting Fellowship, 2023 [$5,000]


    Co-Chief Investigator, ‘Young People and Climate Distress: Developing Clinical Tools for the Climate Crisis,’ Collaborative Fellowship, Sydney Environment Institute, 2022 [$32,000]


    Co-Chief Investigator, ‘At a Loss for Words of Loss: Philosophical and Historical Perspectives on New Earth Lexicons,’ School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry Project Grant, 2022 [$4,867]


    School of Philosophical and Historical Inquiry, Research Support Scheme, 2022 [$7,509]

     

    Harvard Mobility Scheme Grant, Office of Global Engagement, University of Sydney, 2019 [$8,108].

     

    AHA-Copyright Agency Early Career Mentorship Scheme (with Catharine Coleborne, University of Newcastle), 2018 [$1,500].

     

    EU Erasmus+ Mobility Grant, 2016 [EUR 2,780].

  • Contact

    School of Social and Political Sciences
    Social Sciences Building A02
    University of Sydney NSW 2006
    james.dunk@sydney.edu.au
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