Join us on Thursday 13th August for this month's TASA Thursday session: Exposure and Embodiment in the Anthropocene
This panel will report on our workshop - generously funded through a TASA/Gary Bouma Memorial Award - on environmental exposures and their embodied health effects within the chemically saturated landscapes of contemporary living. The workshop drew together a broad range of inter-disciplinary scholars to interrogate dominant assumptions about health, illness and care in the Anthropocene, a time when toxic conditions have become increasingly ubiquitous through inescapable exposures to pollutants, ‘forever chemicals’, and climate change.
With a focus on local and global environmental and public health problems and the knowledge-, economic and political systems that have contributed to their emergence, the symposium questioned how we might generate contemporary research that can inform nationally significant policy agendas in areas such as environmental regulation, health equity, and climate adaptation. Emphasising the need to move beyond individualised approaches to risk and responsibility that remain dominant in Western framing of the self their surrounds, the workshop aimed to foster collective approaches that foreground alternative ways of knowing to advance environmental justice and health equity. Here we recap some of the conversational highlights that arose throughout the workshop as well as planned future directions for continuing this program of work.
Event Details:
Date: Thursday 13th August 2026
Time: 12:30pm - 13:30pm (AEST)
Format: Zoom Webinar
Webinar
Cost: complimentary
Your Speakers
Chair: A/Prof Katherine Kenny, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, The University of Sydney
Speakers:
A/Prof Nadine Ehlers, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, The University of Sydney
Dr Bhavna Middha, School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, RMIT Melbourne
Dr Henrietta Byrne, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, The University of Sydney
Discussant: Dr Roberta Pala, Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, The University of Sydney