Series 12 - 10.12.24 Waxing Gibbous 🌖 Performing Contemporary Ecofeminisms

19hrs AEST | 16hrs AWST | CET 9am or Your timezone here, to attend Register on low-traffic announcement list and recieve an email with video link close to ☲s12☲

The final ☲s12☲ Performing Contemporary EcofeministEducation CEE nanocreds softlight launch! WATCH THIS SPACE

Contemporary Ecofeminist Education CEE is a research initiative that investigates, analyses, reads, listens, and performs some of the legacies of Ecofeminism a mandate briefly outlined in ☲s5☲. This continuity is rooted in the influential work of Patsy Hallen (1944-present), who pioneered Australia’s first Environmental Ethics (1981) and Ecofeminism (1991) courses at Murdoch University.

CEE seeks to adapt the texts of this foundational curricula into nano-credentials tailored for 21st-century learners, thinkers, makers, add /your noun here. The particular push, pull, reach yield, also foregrounds the tacit nature of artistic sensibilities and diverse embodied knowledges into practice in these nano cred series of responses to the readers (and beyond).

The gifting of the hardcopies of Course Readers by the ecophilosopher Geoff Lumis to Jo Pollitt who then in turn reciprocally shared the repository with her peers, Maitland Schnaars, Kavita Naidu and Nancy Mauro-Flude. This propelled an ongoing iterative and a responsive project begun as performing ecofeminist futures supported by Centre for People Place Planet.

This seeded the ground for the development of CEE. We can’t outline an entire genealogy as that will be done soon if you are reading this before 3.12.24

We want to briefly define how CEE research is grounded in critical questions: What frameworks, theories, and methodologies activate, support, hinder, reveal, and/or erase ecofeminist knowledge systems? The inquiry extends into a transdisciplinary approach that considers the aesthetic relationship of feminism, environmentalism, and decolonial perspectives as connected forces within ecofeminism.

This standpoint enables us to address complex issues cooperatively, fostering learning environments that consider art as a valuable medium to thoughtfully adapt to emerging ecological and societal challenges. We envisage to codesign nano creds and CEE syllabi as part of a community of commons and set up platforms and Local Archives that are able to build in an iterative way for future co-creations and resilient participatory practices, somatic explorations and digital caretaking.

A core focus of CEE is the integration of Southern Oceanic Palawa and Noongar Indigenous Knowledge Systems (IKS). Recognising IKS as foundational, CEE highlights the importance of knowledge-sharing practices rooted in place and relationality, contrasting with extractive neocolonial digital frameworks.

Embracing a web of relations, the researchers of CEE emphasises practices that honour local contexts and seek to dissolve traditional hierarchies, building an inclusive space for marginalised and queer groups. Guided by ecofeminist and decolonial thought, CEE pedagogies also critique the universality assumed by certain digital technologies and their impact on local knowledge systems through self-determined holistic practices and processes of context-based knowledge transmission.

The CEE working group is currently led by Jo Pollitt, Nancy Mauro-Flude with whom the methods are shaped by improvised, inspired iterative, collaborative processes prioritising the value in what might be at times awkward social negotiation and shared decision-making, that generally abides by the aphorism “We reject: kings, presidents, and voting. We believe in: rough consensus and running code,” coined by David Clark in 1992.

In deep agreement with Hallen’s communally designed “bush schools” and the Kurrabup Manifesto, that means Place of the Black Swan. This is the local name for the Inlet at Wagyl Kaip and Southern Noongar region, Denmark Western Australia where the Manifesto was drafted

These are some of the tendrils that inform CEE, approaches that foreground sensory engagement and being “present” within the learning space, drawing from Hallen’s philosophy that “being there will allow subtle happenings that claim us” (Hallen, 2000, p. 156).

This perspective encourages both educators and students to perceive beyond the visible, acknowledging non-human contributions to knowledge as essential and engaging directly with a “more-than-human” world (Hallen, 2000, p. 153). Negotiations in politics of what is noticed and ignored and the ethics of acting upon what we thought we knew are also addressed. Namely, the experiential knowledge of people who may regularly encounter various forms of elitism is invited to challenge these as part of confronting supremacy. Additionally, CEE employs digital tools through a decolonial lens, reconfiguring digital spaces to accommodate local, situated knowledge-sharing. This practice includes setting up and maintaining online shared spaces with marginalised groups and promoting gradual, community-oriented technology adoption to foster an inclusive repository of open-source content. Materials include audiovisual media, field notes, and scores collected on a collaboratively designed web-to-print archive that is codesigned in a way so as to “resist the homogenising trajectories of techno-colonialism” (Mauro-Flude and Illyas, 2025).

The iterative process within CEE demonstrates that dissolving traditional notions of authority and replacing them with collective negotiation opens new pathways for inclusivity and adaptability. This approach enables CEE to address frequently overlooked issues and emerging possibilities. Reflecting Hallen’s legacy, the researchers found that these practices support creating an adaptive, transdisciplinary environment that emphasises cooperative learning for intergenerational communities, allowing diverse participants to learn, grow, and contribute collectively.

CEE contributes to ecofeminism and environmental education knowledge by investigating how non-hierarchical, transdisciplinary methodologies can support more holistic and sustainable learning environments. This approach challenges static educational models and reinforces the value of continuous adaptation. By situating ecofeminist learning within human and more-than-human contexts, CEE fosters a reimagining of environmental philosophy that values and practises interconnectedness.

CEE’s commitment to local and indigenous knowledge, digital reconfiguration, and shared learning spaces highlights ecofeminism’s potential to reshape education through inclusive, decolonial practices. The project’s framework, grounded in Hallen’s philosophy and expanded through community engagement, offers a model for transformative ecofeminist education that bridges historical legacies with future needs.

===References===

Patsy Hallen (2000) ‘Ecofeminism Goes Bush’, Canadian Journal of Environmental Education, 5, Spring.

Mauro-Flude, Nancy and Shahee Illyas (2025) “Thinking with Shells: Seashell Stringing and Decolonisation of Digital Culturescapes through codework.” In [Alternative Economies of Heritage: Studies in Heritage series](https://www.routledge.com/Alternative-Economies-of-Heritage- Sustainable-Anti-Colonial-and-Creative-Approaches-to-Cultural- Inheritance/Thwaites-Turner-Ireland/p/book/9781032269818), edited by T. Ireland, D. Thwaites, and B. Turner. New York: Routledge.