Associate Professor Sarah Wright

How might deeply embodied student experiences and nonhuman agency change the way we think about learning theory? Pushing the conceptual boundaries of practice-based learning and communities of practice, this chapter draws on student experiential fieldwork 'on Country' with Indigenous people in the Northern Territory (NT), Australia, to explore the peculiar silence when it comes to more-than-human1 features of situated learning models. As students engage with, and learn from, Indigenous epistemologies and ontologies, they become open to the ways their learning is co-produced in and with place. The chapter builds a case for an inclusive conceptualisation of communities of practice, one that takes seriously the material performativity of nonhuman actors - rock art, animals, plants and emotions in the 'situatedness' of socio-cultural contexts. As a co-participant in the students' community of practice, the more-than-human forms part of the process of identity formation and actively helps students learn. To shed light on the student experiences we employ Leximancer, a software tool that provides visual representations of the qualitative data drawn from focus groups with students and field diaries. Copyright © 2014 by Emerald Group Publishing Limited.

© The Author(s) 2018. In this paper, we engage with the Go¿ Gurtha songspiral, shared on/by/with/as Bawaka Country in Yol¿u Northeast Arnhem Land, Australia, to provide a basis for re-thinking responsibility in the context of ongoing Eurocentric colonising processes. Go¿ Gurtha encourages us to consider two key aspects of responsibility ¿ response and ability. We argue that Yol¿u relational ontologies conceive response-abilities as requiring an ability to pay close and careful attention as part of more-than-human worlds, and an imperative to respond as part of these worlds. As such, rather than being responsible to or for others, we seek to respond as, emphasising our emergent co-becoming in more-than-human, situated, ethical ways. Go¿ Gurtha guides the paper through four aspects of these response-abilities: response-abilities as songspirals; response-abilities as continuity; response-abilities as academics and response-abilities beyond Bawaka. In doing so, we understand response-abilities as more-than-human co-becomings enacted in contingent ways that none-the-less need to be grounded in deep obligations of more-than-human kinship.

© 2017 South Asian Studies Association of Australia. The Vidarbha region in Maharashtra, India, home to 3.4 million smallholder farmers, is a major cotton-producing region in one of the wealthiest Indian states. However, between 1995 and 2013, more than 60,000 farmers took their own lives. Many of these suicides have been linked to extreme debt created by the expensive mono-cropping of Bt cotton. Some farming households have responded to these pressures by abandoning Bt cotton growing and turning to sustainable agriculture using traditional mixedcropping methods. Yet the question remains: have the changes produced better livelihoods in Vidarbha? Using a food sovereignty framework, we assess the impact of these changes through an analysis of a 200-household survey across six districts in Vidarbha. We also explore the meaning of food sovereignty for those who practise it, seeking to better understand some of the complexities and experiences associated with the term.

© 2015, © The Author(s) 2015. We invite readers to dig for ganguri (yams) at and with Bawaka, an Indigenous Homeland in northern Australia, and, in doing so, consider an Indigenous-led understanding of relational space/place. We draw on the concept of gurrutu to illustrate the limits of western ontologies, open up possibilities for other ways of thinking and theorizing, and give detail and depth to the notion of space/place as emergent co-becoming. With Bawaka as lead author, we look to Country for what it can teach us about how all views of space are situated, and for the insights it offers about co-becoming in a relational world.

© 2015 New Zealand Geographical Society. This paper investigates the writing of situated knowledge and explores the possibilities of enacting difference by writing differently. We present a selection of research stories in which carrier bags, sounds, baskets, gardens and potatoes are interpreted less as objects of research or metaphors to aid in analysing phenomena, than as mediators of the stories. Our stories emphasise the ontological politics of engaging with and representing the relational, the messy, the spontaneous, the unpredictable, the non-human and bodily experiences. These stories demonstrate how writing is performative and how it is integral to the production of knowledge.

© The Author(s) 2014 In this paper, we invite you night fishing for wäkun at Bawaka, an Indigenous homeland in North East Arnhem Land, Australia. As we hunt wäkun, we discuss our work as an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, human and more-than-human research collective trying to attend deeply to the messages we send and receive from, with and as a part of Country. The wäkun, and all the animals, plants, winds, processes, things, dreams and people that emerge together in nourishing, co-constitutive ways to create Bawaka Country, are the author-ity of our research. Our reflection is both methodological and ontological as we aim to attend deeply to Country and deliberate on what a Yol¿u ontology of co-becoming, that sees everything as knowledgeable, vital and interconnected, might mean for the way academics do research. We discuss a methodology of attending underpinned by a relational ethics of care. Here, care stems from an awareness of our essential co-constitution as we care for, and are cared for by, the myriad human and more-than-human becomings that emerge together to create Bawaka. We propose that practising relational research requires researchers to open themselves up to the reality of their connections with the world, and consider what it means to live as part of the world, rather than distinct from it. We end with a call to go beyond ¿human¿ geography to embrace a more-than-human geography, a geography of co-becoming.

Objectives: To determine age and gender distributions of prevalent diabetes and related risk factors for Northern Canadians. Study design: Cross-sectional study. Methods: The data used were from 78,549 people aged 40 years or more (including 1148 from Northern Canada) who participated in a national survey in 2005. The study questionnaire covered the information on diabetes and potential risk factors. Multiple classification analysis and a logistic regression model were used for multivariate analysis. Results: In Northern Canada, the prevalence of diabetes tended to increase with age more rapidly in women (P = 0.013), while the opposite was true for Southern Canada (P < 0.001). Compared with women aged 40-54 years, the adjusted odds ratio for diabetes was 3.31 [95% confidence interval (CI) 1.06-10.4] for women aged 55-69 years and 6.39 (95%CI 1.42-22.8) for women aged 70+ years living in Northern Canada. The corresponding odds ratios for men living in Northern Canada were 1.58 (95%CI 0.53-4.71) and 4.30 (95%CI 0.81-22.9), respectively. The prevalence of obesity was higher for women (28.2%) than men (22.5%) in Northern Canada (P = 0.041). Conclusions: The gender and age distribution of diabetes is unusual in Northern Canada, where the prevalence increases with age more rapidly in women than in men. Further study is required in order to gain an understanding of the possible genetic, cultural and other reasons for this pattern. © 2009 The Royal Society for Public Health.

This study examined stereotypes of older lesbians and gay men. Key findings are that older lesbians and gay men were perceived as similar to older heterosexual women and men with regard to aging stereotypes, such as being judicious. At the same time, sexual minorities were targets of unique stereotypes. Consistent with the implicit inversion theory, lesbians were conceived as similar to heterosexual men, and gay men similar to heterosexual women with regard to gender-stereotypic traits, and regardless of age. These findings suggest the persistence into late adulthood of the belief that lesbians and gay men are inverted females and males. © Taylor & Francis Group, LLC.

Objective: Self-reported height and weight data are commonly reported within eating disorders research, and often used clinically. The aims of this study are to demonstrate the accuracy of self-reported height and weight among a group of women with eating disorders, and to determine whether that accuracy is associated with clinical diagnosis or levels of eating psychopathology. Method: Sixty-four female patients (39 diagnosed with Anorexia Nervosa or atypical Anorexia Nervosa and 25 with Bulimia Nervosa or atypical Bulimia Nervosa) were asked to self-report their height and weight. They then completed the Eating Disorders Examination-Questionnaire (EDE-Q). Finally, they were weighed and their height was measured in a standardised manner. Accuracy scores for height and weight were calculated by subtracting their actual weight and height from their self-reports. Results: Both diagnostic groups were relatively accurate in self-reporting their height. However, women with Bulimia Nervosa or atypical Bulimia Nervosa significantly underestimated their weight while women with Anorexia Nervosa or atypical Anorexia Nervosa overestimated it. Weight estimation was associated with higher levels of restraint among the Anorexia Nervosa group only. Discussion: These findings highlight the importance of obtaining objective height and weight data both within clinical and research settings. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and Eating Disorders Association.