Jennifer Hamilton

Jennifer Hamilton has scholarly training in literary and gender studies and professional experience in creative practice and community arts. Her research focusses on the complex cultural significance and everyday implications of the environmental crisis, specifically regarding weather, embodiment, affect and justice. She’s the President of the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture (Australia and New Zealand) and co-convenor of the reading group COMPOSTING Feminisms and Environmental Humanities (with Astrida Neimanis). She also has a range of scholarly and community collaborations that examine grassroots modes of adaptation to climate change that seek to address extant socio-cultural injustices at the same time: co-facilitator of the Armidale Climate and Health Project supported by an AdaptNSW Increasing Resilience to Climate Change grant (with Sujata Allan), co-host of The Heteropessimists podcast supported by the Freilich Foundation (with Christina Kenny, Matt Allen, Felicity Joseph and Daz Chandler), and co-convenor of the Armidale Food Group for Sustainable Living Armidale with a collective of other community from inside and outside the University. Her research as part of the Weathering Collective was invited to be part of the 2022 Biennale of Sydney’s Water Lessons series. Prior to starting at UNE in 2018, she held a Seed Box Postdoctoral Research Fellowship from the MISTRA-FORMAS Environmental Humanities Collaboratory at Linkoping University hosted in Gender and Cultural Studies at University of Sydney (2016-2018), she taught ecocriticism at NYU Sydney (2013-2017), and holds a PhD in English from UNSW. Prior to becoming an academic she had a career as an arts worker, producing live theatre, facilitating community arts and as live art practioner and curator. She teaches in the English program at UNE and is a member of the Branch Committee of the NTEU.