General themes: Conservation history and policy; Interdisciplinary environmental studies; The scientific aesthetic; Climate Change and the humanities; History of Ornithology in Australia; History of Science in Australia and the region

Projects:

Expertise for the Future Histories of environmental prediction and policy (2011-2016) Libby Robin (ANU), Sverker Sörlin (Royal Institute of Technology KTH, Stockholm) and Paul Warde (Cambridge) (project leaders) Outcomes include two books: The Future of Nature: Documents of Global Change (2013, Yale UP) (Winner of Best Anthology at the New England Book Fair, USA, 2013) and The Environment: A History (2016 in prep.)  Website: http://www.histecon.magd.cam.ac.uk/ees/expertise_future.html

Biological invasions and national identity ARC grant The Culture of Weeds LP120400273. Book in prep: Fear of Ferals

Museums in the Anthropocene

Jennifer Newell, Libby Robin and Kirsten Wehner (eds) Curating the Future: Museums Communities and Climate Change Routledge Environmental Humanities, London: 2016 (forthcoming)

National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh: Libby Robin Cabinets of Curiosity: Strange Objects in Uncertain Times http://www.nms.ac.uk/national-museum-of-scotland/whats-on/cabinets-of-curiosity/ Public lecture 25 November 2015

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

History of Arid Zone Science ARC Grant LP 110200742 Alive with the Dreaming! (2011-2015) 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

Environmental Humanities Hub (Co-convenor with Thom van Dooren UNSW) www.aehhub.org

Environmental History: President, International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations www.iceho.org ; Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network http://environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/; Centre for Environmental History http://ceh.environmentalhistory-au-nz.org/

Professor Libby Robin FAHA is an historian of science and environmental ideas. She is Professor at the Fenner School of Environment and Society at the Australian National University and affiliated professor at the National Museum of Australia's People and Environment Research Group and the Royal Institute of Technology (KTH), Stockholm in the Division of History of Science and Technology.

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).
Libby also coordinates (with Cameron Muir) the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network, and (with Thom van Dooren) the Australian Environmental Humanities Hub http://www.aehhub.org/news/. She is President of the International Consortium of Environmental History Organizations, and a member of the Executive of International History and future Of People on Earth (IHOPE), Stockholm. 

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

Climate Change and the humanities

Collecting the Future: part of Museums in the Anthropocene initiative (with Kirsten Wehner National Museum of Australia and Jennifer Newell American Museum of Natural History, and several other international partners).  Curating the Future (Newell, Robin and Wehner eds., Routledge forthcoming 2016.

See also:

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

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

Environmental humanities:  

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

Environmental Humanities (series editor with Iain McCalman), Routledge.

Relevant Publications:

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

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]

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

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.

Current ANU Doctoral Scholars

• Virginia Brunton 'A History of Compost'
• Ted Deveson 'Australian locust ecology. A history of outbreaks, government responses and ecological research'
• Diane Erceg 'Tourism in Antarctica'
• Rob Nugent 'The Anthropocene in film'
• Lilian Pearce 'Socio-ecological restoration for Australia'
• Alison Pouliot 'A thousand days in the forest'
• David Salt 'Resilience thinking in Agricultural Investments in Biodiversity' (supervisory panel, Crawford School)
• Sharon Willoughby 'Gardening the Australian Landscape' 

RECENT GRADUATES:

Cameron Muir 'Broken Country: Science, Agriculture and the "Unfulfilled Dreams" of Inland Australia 1880-present' (Graduated December 2011)

NEW BOOK: 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]

INTERNATIONAL STUDENTS

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

Graduated 2012 UCL London, Susanna Lidstrom.

Cameron Muir

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)