ICS Seminar Series

UPCOMING

More-than-human research methods with rivers and eels, life and death

Presenter: Jen Dollin

Discussant: Amanda Third

Chair: Helen Laird

Date & Time: 3 September 2026 | 11:30am - 1:00pm

Room: EA.G.26 Parramatta South Campus

Abstract

What does transdisciplinary research look like when we decentre, but not erase human perspectives? How can we undertake cultural, social and ethical research with ecological worlds when it is us humans that are doing the writing? This seminar explores these questions through multispecies ethnography. The research is grounded firmly in place and purposively foregrounds the aquatic world of freshwater eels (anguillid species) an often overlooked and globally endangered creature. Set with the Dyarubbin (Upper HawkesburyNepean) River in New South Wales and based on an emergent research design this work embraces diverse forms of being, knowing and doing and explores rivers, humans and eel connections and connectivity. This ‘slippery methodology’ is framed by post-qualitative, feminist and more-than-representational concepts accepting that methods, data and analysis emerge, diverge and converge as an entangled research encounter. Through caring as method, writing as a method of inquiry, walking, wading and weeding and diffractive modes of analysis this presentation shares pluriversal eel world encounters with an aquarium, a science laboratory, conservationists/fishers and fish markets. In doing so, the seminar offers tentative suggestions for further sensory, sensitive and caring investigations with rich but precarious ecological worlds.

Biography

Dr Jen Dollin is currently Senior Advisor with the Institute of Study and Development an international research and development advisory. She is also a Professor of Practice, Sustainability and Institutional Mentoring with Centurion University of Technology and Management in Odisha, India, an Adjunct Fellow with Institute of Culture and Society and a sessional academic with School of Education. Her previous role was as Director, Sustainability Education and Partnerships with Western Sydney University. She is obsessed with rivers and the watery beings that live within them and her research interests are multispecies ethnography and transdisciplinary and transformative learning.

If you have any accessibility requirements, please email Denise at: d.rezk@westernsydney.edu.au

Semester 2 Program

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Download 2026 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window)

Past ICS Seminars

ICS Seminar 2026 Semester 1 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window) [[link]]

ICS Seminar 2025 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (opens in a new window) [[link]]

ICS Seminar 2024 Semester 1 Program (PDF) (Opens in a new window) [[link]]

ICS Seminar 2024 Semester 2 Program (PDF) (Opens in a new window) [[link]]

Access all our previous ICS Seminars.