Emeritus Professor Libby Robin FAHA is an historian of science and environmental ideas. She is Emeritus Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University, independent writer and Curator-at-Large, focusing on museums and global change.

She is no longer available to supervise graduate students.

BREAKING NEWS: Libby's new book What Birdo is That? A Field Guide to Bird People was released on 30 May 2023

Details here: https://www.mup.com.au/books/what-birdo-is-that-paperback-softback  

Career highlights include Visiting Fellow, Oslo School of Environmental Humanities, university of Oslo (2022-- ), Guest Professor at  the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm in the Division of History of Science and Technology (2011-2014; affiliated professor 2015-2017) and Senior Fellow in the National Museum of Australia's Reseach Centre (2007-2015).

Libby has published widely in the history of science, international and comparative environmental history, museum studies and the ecological humanities. She has won national and international prizes in History (How a Continent Created a Nation), in Zoology (Boom and Bust), and in literature (Flight of the Emu, The Future of Nature).

She was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2013.

General themes: Birds and birding, Museums and Climate Change, Environmental humanities, Conservation history and policy; Interdisciplinary environmental studies; The scientific aesthetic; The role of humanities in Energy Transitions; History of Ornithology in Australia; History of Science in Australia and the region

Books (selected):

NEW:

What Birdo is That? A Field Guide to Bird People (Melbourne University Publishing, May 2023)

 

2018     Warde, Paul, Libby Robin and Sverker Sörlin The Environment: A History of the Idea Johns Hopkins University Press, Baltimore USA https://jhupbooks.press.jhu.edu/content/environment

 2017      Lukasiewicz, Anna, Stephen Dovers, Libby Robin, Jennifer McKay, Steven Schilizzi and Sonia Graham (eds.) Natural Resources and Environmental Justice: Australian Perspectives, Melbourne: CSIRO. 

2017      Newell, Jennifer, Libby Robin and Kirsten Wehner eds. Curating the Future, Abingdon, Routledge.

2013     Robin, Libby, Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (eds) The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change New Haven: Yale University Press

2009     Robin, Libby, Robert Heinsohn and Leo Joseph (eds) Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing 

2007     Robin, Libby, How a Continent Created a Nation, Sydney, UNSW Press.

2005     Grafton, R. Q.  Libby Robin and R. J. Wasson (eds), Understanding the Environment: Bridging the Disciplinary Divides, Sydney: UNSW Press.

2005     Martin, Mandy, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future, Mandurama: Mandy Martin with Land and Water Australia. Online: https://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/fenner-publications/books/pdfs/strata.pdf 

2005     Sherratt, Tim, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds) A Change in the Weather: Climate and culture in Australia, Canberra: National Museum of Australia.

2001    Robin, Libby, The Flight of the Emu: A hundred years of Australian Ornithology 1901--2001.  

 1998    Robin, Libby, Defending the Little Desert: The Rise of Ecological Consciousness in Australia, Carlton: Melbourne University Press.

1997   Griffiths, Tom and Libby Robin (eds) Ecology and Empire: Environmental History of Settler Societies, Edinburgh, Keele University Press. 

Projects:

Environmental Humanities

Co-convenor of Australian Environmental Humanities Hub www.aehhub.org (with Thom van Dooren, University of Sydney)

 

2023 NEW!

 

Alleway, Heidi, Emily Klein, Liz Cameron, Kristina Douglass, Ishtar Govia, Cornelia Guell, Michelle Lim, Libby Robin and Ruth Thurston, ‘The shifting baseline syndrome as a connective concept for more informed and just responses to global environmental change’, People and Nature (Wiley) DOI: 10.1002/pan3.10473 Published [Open Access] 15 May 2023, 1—12.

 https://besjournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1002/pan3.10473

 

 

 

 Other recent papers:

Robin, Libby ‘Depaysement: Review of Mandy Martin – A Persistent Vision (Geelong Art Gallery 2022-2023) in ABR Arts (20 December 2022): https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/arts-update/101-arts-update/9977-mandy-martin-a-persistent-vision-a-major-retrospective-at-geelong-gallery-by-libby-robin

Robin, Libby ‘#Arts_for_Survival’, Humanities Australia, 2021, 3-14. 

Online: https://humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/HA12-ROBIN-D.03.pdf

Robin, Libby ‘Environmental humanities and climate change: Understanding humans geologically and other life forms ethically’, WIREs Climate Change 2017 e499, doi: 10.1002/wcc.499

 

Expertise for the Future 

Histories of environmental prediction and policy (2011-2018) Libby Robin (ANU), Sverker Sörlin (Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Stockholm) and Paul Warde (Cambridge) (project leaders) Outcomes include The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change (2013, Yale UP) (Winner Best Anthology at New England Book Fair, USA) Website: http://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/ees/expertise_future.html

Related website: https://expertspastpresentfuture.net/the-environment-and-its-evolution-as-an-integrative-tool-e0caea898b99 

Also contribution to Past Futures: Experts Development and Sustainability (eds Rivera, Sum and Trentmann; Oekom)

Relevant online publication: Robin, Libby “Comments” in H-Environment Roundtable Reviews: Perrin Selcer, The Postwar Origins of the Global Environment: How the United Nations Built Spaceship Earth (New York: Columbia University Press, 2018) Editor: Keith Makoto Woodhouse ISBN: 9780231166485 Volume 10, No. 11 (2020) https://networks.h-net.org/henvironment December 29, 2020 

Workshops: December 14-16 2016 Environment, Society, and the Making of the Modern World The history and legacy of the UN Conference on the Human Environment held in Stockholm,  June 1972 Paper "Stockholm in Australia"

IASS Potsdam 28-29 April 2016 Futures Past: Experts, Development and Sustainability  Paper: Experts past and future:The Environment, Integrated Global Change Science and the Anthropocene

Wattles: invasives and symbols  2022 project with Stellenbosch University, South Africa and CABI. Also Robin, Libby, ‘Wattle’ (Chapter 14), in Melissa Harper and Richard White (eds) Symbols of a Nation: Imagining a Nation, Sydney, NewSouth, 2021: 189-214. See outcomes from The Culture of Weeds LP120400273 (2012-2018); Robin, Libby and Jane Carruthers 2012. ‘National identity and international science: the case of Acacia’, Historical Records of Australian Science 23(1): 34–54 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR12002 and Carruthers, J., Robin, L., Hattingh, J., Kull, C.; Rangan, H. and van Wilgen, B.W., ‘A native at home and abroad: the history, politics, ethics and aesthetics of Acacia’, Diversity and Distributions 17(5) Sept. 2011: 810-821. 10.1111/j.1472-4642.2011.00779.x, https://www.jstor.org/stable/i40056061 

Museums in the Anthropocene

Collaboration with Museums and Environmental Humanities: The Greenhouse, University of Stavanger, Norway (Dolly Jørgensen PI): 2019-2025

Jennifer Newell, Libby Robin and Kirsten Wehner (eds) Curating the Future: Museums Communities and Climate Change Routledge Environmental Humanities, London: 2017

Libby Robin, 'Anthropocene Cabinets of Curiosity: Objects of Strange Change' in Future Remains:  A Cabinet of Curiosities for the Anthropocene (eds. Gregg Mitman et al) (University of Chicago Press, 2018) pp. 205--18

Understanding Australia in The Age of Humans: Localising the Anthropocene ARC Grant DP 160102648 (2016-2018) (with Iain McCalman University of Sydney, Kirsten Wehner, Jennifer Newell,  and others)

The Anthropocene in Museums: Workshop Deutsches Museum Munich 3-4 December 2015 http://www.carsoncenter.uni-muenchen.de/events_conf_seminars/calendar/ws_anthropocene-in-museums/index.html

New Review 2022: Robin, Libby “Mickie and her Monkey: A complicated family history”, Australian Book Review, 440, March 2022, pp 49-50. Online: https://www.australianbookreview.com.au/abr-online/current-issue/975-march-2022-no-440/8884-libby-robin-reviews-delia-akeley-and-the-monkey-a-human-animal-story-of-captivity-patriarchy-and-nature-by-iain-mccalman

History of  Science 

2022     Robin, Libby ‘Soil in the Air’, Historical Records of Australian Science, 33(2) 2022 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR21014 https://doi.org/10.1071/HR21014 2022

“Soil in the Air” Dyason Lecture (keynote for Australasian Association of the History and Philosophy of Science), 25 November 2021. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MAP7yNrlSgk&ab_channel=AAHPSSSConferencesessionsandtalks  (lecture from 4.28 mins to 52.00 mins) in association with Anthropogenic Soils: A Science-Humanities-Arts Collaboratory on Soil Care in Contaminated Times (led by Ursula Münster and Daniel Münster, Oslo Environmental Humanities)

Robin, Libby with Stephen Boyden (2018), ‘Telling the Bionarrative: A Museum of Environmental Ideas’, Historical Records of Australian Science 29(2) pp A-O https://doi.org/10.1071/HR18007 Published online: 14 June 2018 (15pp)

Robin, Libby with Max Day, ‘Changing Ideas about the Environment in Australia: Learning from Stockholm’. Historical Records of Australian Science 28(1): 37—49. doi.org/10.1071/HR17004

Maroske, Sara, Libby Robin, and Gavan McCarthy, ‘Building the History of Australian Science: Five Projects of Professor R. W. Home (1980-present)’ Historical Records of Australian Science 28(1): 1—11. doi.org/10.1071/HR16018

Special Issue: Desert Science (eds Libby Robin, Steve Morton and Mike Smith) Historical Records of Australian Science 25(2) 2014: http://www.publish.csiro.au/nid/109/issue/7244.htm

Martin, Mandy, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future, Mandurama: Mandy Martin with Land and Water Australia. First published 2005 Online: https://fennerschool-associated.anu.edu.au/fenner-publications/books/pdfs/strata.pdf .

Environmental Humanities and Research for Australia's Energy Transition

Clarke, D., Baldwin, K., Baum, F., Godfrey, B., Richardson, S., and Robin, L. (2021). Australian Energy Transition Research Plan. Report for the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA), www.acola.org https://acola.org/wp-content/uploads/2021/06/acola-2021-australian-energy-transition-plan.pdf

Special Award for Public Environmental History

• ASEH 2019 Distinguished Career in Public Environmental History Award awarded by the American Society of Environmental History, Columbus Ohio, 13 April 2019. 

Citation: http://history.cass.anu.edu.au/news/2019-distinguished-career-public-environmental-history-awards

Emeritus Professor Libby Robin FAHA is an historian of science and environmental ideas. She is Emeritus Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University.

Career highlights include Guest Professor at  the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm in the Division of History of Science and Technology (2011-2014; affiliated professor 2015-2017) and Senior Fellow in the National Museum of Australia's Reseach Centre (2007-2015).

Libby has published widely in the history of science, international and comparative environmental history and the ecological humanities. She has won national and international prizes in History (How a Continent Created a Nation), in Zoology (Boom and Bust), and in literature (Flight of the Emu, The Future of Nature).

She was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities in 2013.

Climate Change and the humanities

Australian Academy of Humanities Symposium November 2021

Culture, Nature, Climate: The Humanities and the Environmental Crisis

https://humanities.org.au/events/52-symposium/

See: Robin, Libby ‘#Arts_for_Survival’, Humanities Australia, 2021, 3-14.  Online: https://humanities.org.au/wp-content/uploads/2021/10/HA12-ROBIN-D.03.pdf 

Curating the Future: Museums Communities and Climate Change (Newell, Robin and Wehner eds., Routledge 2017) 298 pp.

Museums and Climate Change Network: http://www.amnh.org/our-research/anthropology/projects/museums-and-climate-change-network

Robin, Libby 2020, 'Museums in the Long Now: History in the Geological Age of Humans', Journal of the Philosophy of History, vol. 14, no. 3, pp. 359-381pp.

Robin, Libby, Dag Avango, Luke Keogh, Nina Möllers, Bernd Scherer and Helmuth Trischler, ‘Three Galleries of the Anthropocene’, The Anthropocene Review Vol. 1(3) 2014. Pp 207–224 doi:10.1177/2053019614550533

Environment and Justice

Lukasiewicz, Anna, Stephen Dovers, Libby Robin, Jennifer McKay, Steven Schilizzi and Sonia Graham (eds.) Natural Resources and Environmental Justice: Australian Perspectives, Melbourne: CSIRO Publishing, 2017. 284pp

Environmental humanities:  

Co-convenor of the Australian Environmental Humanities Hub http://www.aehhub.org/news/

Environmental Humanities (foundation series editor with Iain McCalman), Routledge. (2015-2018)

Relevant Publications: 

Libby Robin 'Environmental humanities and climate change: understanding humans geologically and other life forms ethically' WIRES Climate Change 2018

Libby Robin, 'No Island is an Island', Aeon December 2014 http://aeon.co/magazine/science/no-island-is-an-island-in-a-cosmopolitan-age/

Bergthaller, Hannes, Rob Emmett, Adeline Johns-Putra, Agnes Kneitz, Susanna Lidström, Shane McCorristine, Isabel Pérez Ramos, Dana Phillips, Kate Rigby and Libby Robin, ‘Mapping Common Ground: Ecocriticism, Environmental History, and the Environmental Humanities’, Environmental Humanities Vol. 5 (November 2014), pp. 561-576.

Libby Robin 2012, 'Global Ideas in Local Places: The Humanities in Environmental Management', Environmental Humanities, vol. 1, pp. 69-84

Expertise for the Future (international project with KTH Environmental Humanities Laboratory, Stockholm):Conferences, workshops and two major books:

Libby Robin, Sverker Sörlin and Paul Warde (eds) The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change (Yale University Press, 2013) WINNER 2013 New England Book Prize for Anthology

Paul Warde, Sverker Sörlin and Libby Robin The Environment: A History (in prep).

Anthropocene: 

Libby Robin ‘Museums in the Long Now: History in the Geological Age of Humans’, Journal of the Philosophy of History 14(3) (2020) 359–381. doi:10.1163/18722636-12341448

Libby Robin 2013. ‘Histories for Changing Times: Entering the Anthropocene?’, Australian Historical Studies, 44(3): 329-340 DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2013.817455.

Libby Robin and Will Steffen, 2007. ‘History for the Anthropocene’, History Compass, 5(5): 1694–1719; doi:10.1111/j.1478-0542.2007.00459.x

Libby Robin  ‘The Future Beyond Numbers’ in Nina Möllers and Christian Schwägel (eds.) The Anthropocene / Anthropozien Munich: Verlag Deutsches Museum [English and German] [2014, in English 2015 in association with exhibition]

 

Member of the Anthropocene Curriculum Project HKW Berlin 2014.

The Observatory Project (Mellon Foundation) with Iain McCalman (University of Sydney)

Climate and Culture in Australia (ARC Grant 2002-2005) Tim, Sherratt, Tom Griffiths and Libby Robin (eds) A change in the weather: Climate and culture in Australia, Canberra: National Museum of Australia Press. 2005 http://www.nma.gov.au/about_us/publications/a_change_in_the_weather/

Biological invasions:

Culture of Weeds ARC Project LP120200472 (with industry partners National Museum of Australia and Royal Melbourne Botanic Gardens). Book in prep: Libby Robin  Fear of Ferals

see also 

Robin, Libby ‘Wilderness in a Global Age, Fifty Years On' (Special Wilderness Act Retrospective Forum) Environmental History, Vol 19(4), October 2014: 721-727

Comparative studies between Australia and South Africa (with Jane Carruthers, University of South Africa). See:  Libby Robin and Jane Carruthers 2012, 'National identity and international science: the case of <em>Acacia</em>', <em>Historical Records of Australian Science</em> 23(1) 34-54 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/HR12002 ; Jane Carruthers and Libby Robin, ‘Taxonomic imperialism in the battles for Acacia: Identity and science in South Africa and Australia’, Transactions of the Royal Society of South Africa 65(1), 48-64. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/00359191003652066

History of Arid Zone Science

Dickman, Christopher R. and Libby Robin, ‘Putting Science in its Place: The Role of Sandringham Station in Fostering Arid Zone Science in Australia’, Historical Records of Australian Science, 2014, 25, 186-201 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/HR14014

Robin, Libby, Steve Morton and Mike Smith ‘Writing a History of Scientific Endeavour in Australia’s Deserts’ Historical Records of Australian Science, 2014, 25,  143-152 http://dx.doi.org/10.1071/HR14011

Alive with the Dreaming!: Songlines of the Seven Sisters LP110200743 (with National Museum of Australia and nine Aboriginal corporations).

Also: Libby Robin, Robert Heinsohn and Leo Joseph (eds) 2009. Boom and Bust: Bird Stories for a Dry Country, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing. http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6009.htm  

Science and National Identity  Libby Robin 2007. How a Continent Created a Nation, Sydney, UNSW Press.  http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/0868408913.htm

Interdisciplinary environmental studies 

International bioregionalism: Libby Robin 2012. ‘Seasons and Nomads: Reflections on Bioregionalism in Australia’ in Tom Lynch, Cheryll Glotfelty and Karla Armbruster (eds.) The Bioregional Imagination: Literature, Ecology, and Place, Georgia FL, University of Georgia Press, pp 278-294.

Conservation history and policy Libby Robin, Christopher R. Dickman and Mandy Martin (eds) Desert Channels: The Impulse to Conserve, Melbourne, CSIRO Publishing. 2010 http://www.publish.csiro.au/pid/6406.htm

Australian cases: Grafton, R. Q.  Libby Robin and R. J. Wasson (eds), Understanding the Environment: Bridging the Disciplinary Divides, Sydney: UNSW Press. 2005  http://www.unswpress.com.au/isbn/086840912X.htm

The scientific aesthetic Mandy Martin, Libby Robin and Mike Smith, Strata: Deserts Past, Present and Future, Mandurama: Mandy Martin with Land and Water Australia. 2005 http://fennerschool.anu.edu.au/publications/books/strata.php

History of Ornithology in Australia

Libby Robin 2012, 'Conservation through Knowledge: A Short History of the First National Ornithologists' Society in Australia', in W.E. Davis, H.F. Recher, W.E. Boles (ed.), <em>Contributions to the History of Australasian Ornithology</em>, Nuttall Ornithological Club, USA, pp. 1-49.

Libby Robin, 2001. The Flight of the Emu: A hundred years of Australian ornithology 1901-2001, Carlton: Melbourne University Press.  http://catalogue.mup.com.au/978-0-522-84987-5.html 

 

As per the normal practice in the humanities, prospective students propose projects to me for consideration. I am now retired and not normally taking new students.

RECENT GRADUATES (ANU):

Elizabeth Boulton 'Climate and environmental change: time to reframe threat?' 2020

Sharon Willoughby 'Gardening the Australian Landscape' 2020

Lilian Pearce, 'Critical Histories for Ecological Restoration', 2019

Cameron Muir 'Broken Country: Science, Agriculture and the "Unfulfilled Dreams" of Inland Australia 1880-present' (Graduated December 2011) See also: Cameron Muir The Broken Promise of Agricultural Progress London: Routledge 2014.

Alan Williams 'Aboriginal Population Dynamics and their Response to Climate Change through Prehistory' [completed 2015]

Sonya Duus 'Controversies around coal mining in Australia' [completed 2015]

Kate Andrews 'Learning from the history of agricultural development in Northern Australia' [completed 2015]

Alison Pouliot 'A thousand days in the forest: An Ethnography of the Culture of Fungi' [completed 2016]

Edward Deveson 'Plagues and Players: An environmental and social history of Australia's Southern Locusts' [completed 2017]

Diane Erceg 'Explorers of a Different Kind: A History of Antarctic Tourism 1966-2016' [completed 2017]

Lilian Pearce 'Historicising Ecological Restoration:Cultural and Environmental Practice in Australia' [completed 2019]

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

Graduated (2012) Fei Sheng ('Fisher') 'Chinese environmental ideas in 19th century goldfields Australia' (Peking University)

Graduated 2012 UCL London, Susanna Lidstrom.

Please note that I am now retired not seeking new student supervisions.

Sharon Willoughby The Agius Evolution Garden (with Richard Wilford) Kew Gardens: Kew 2020. 

Alison Pouliot NEW in 2023:  Underground Lovers: Encounters with Fungi (New South, 2023) https://unsw.press/books/underground-lovers/ 

Also The Allure of Fungi CSIRO 2019; and (with Tom May) Wild Mushrooming: A Guide for Foragers  CSIRO 2021.

Cameron Muir “Ghost species and shadow places: Seabirds and plastic pollution on Lord Howe Island” (Griffith Review 63: Feb 2019)  

• FINALIST in the 2019 Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Science Journalism. 
• Runner up for the Bragg/UNSW Press Prize for Science Writing

Muir, Cameron, Deborah Bird Rose, and Phillip Sullivan. 'From the Other Side of the Knowledge Frontier: Indigenous Knowledge, Social–Ecological Relationships and New Perspectives.' The Rangeland Journal 32, no. 3 (2010): 259-65.

Muir, Cameron. 'Feeding the World.' Griffith REVIEW Edition 27: Food Chain (February 2010): 59-73 WINNER OF The GRIFFITH REVIEW EMERGING WRITER'S PRIZE FOR NON-FICTION in 2010

Muir, Cameron. 'The Opera House of the West.' Australian Humanities Review no. 47 (2009): 55-65.

Elizabeth Boulton, “Climate change as a ‘hyperobject’: a critical review of Timothy Morton's reframing narrative”, WIREs Climate Change 7(5), September/October 2016 pp. 772-785 https://doi.org/10.1002/wcc.410

Lilian Pearce Ken Inglis Postgraduate Prize 2016 for ‘Restoring Broken Histories’, later published as: Lilian Pearce, ‘Restoring Broken Histories’ Australian Historical Studies 48(4):Oct 2017, pp 569-591 DOI: 10.1080/1031461X.2017.1377739

Daniel Connell Water politics in the Murray-Darling Basin Federation Press 2007

George Main Heartland: the regeneration of rural place UNSW Press 2005

Bernadette Hince 'Environmental history of subantarctic islands' (Îles Kerguelen, Île Saint-Paul, McDonald, Heard, Macquarie, Auckland and Campbell Islands) (Unpub. thesis 2006)