Since Feb 2022
Alexander von Humboldt Professor of Environmental Humanities, Director of Multidisciplinary Environmental Studies in the Humanities (MESH), University of Cologne

2016-2022
Professor of Environmental Humanities, Research and Graduate School, Bath Spa University

2016-2022
Adjunct Professor, Literary Studies, Monash University

2013-2016
Professor of Environmental Humanities, Monash University

2006-2012
Associate Professor in German Studies and Comparative Literature

1997-2005
Senior Lecturer in German Studies and Comparative Literature, Monash University.

1990-1996
Lecturer in German Studies, Monash University

• Alexander von Humboldt Professorship (2022-27)
• Marie-Curie FCFP Senior Fellowship, FRIAS (Oct-Dec 2021)
• Rachel Carson Center Fellowship (Sept-Dec 2020)
• Participant in an AHRC-funded research network on ‘Religion and Extinction’ (2019-20).
• Participant in LUCE-funded research network, based at Duke University, on ‘Facing the Anthropocene’ (2018-20).
• Marie Curie FCFP Senior Fellowship and Alexander von Humboldt (return) Fellowship, Freiburg Institute of Advanced Study (2015-2016).
• AHRC Caring for the Future (Early Career Researcher) grant, ‘Troubled Waters, Stormy Futures: Heritage in Times of Accelerated Climate Change” (International Co-Investigator; 2014-2016).
• Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Imagining the Great South Land: Utopia, Dystopia and Science Fiction in Australia’ (Co-Investigator; 2007-09).
• Australian Research Council Discovery Grant, ‘Demanding the Impossible: Utopianism in Literature, Philosophy and Science Fiction’ (Co-Investigator; 2005-08).

• Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (2005-)
• Executive Committee Member, European Forum for the Study of Religion and Environment (2015-)
• Key Researcher, Mellon Australia-Pacific Observatory in Environmental Humanities (2013-16)
• Founding Director, Forum on Religion and Ecology, Monash (2011-2016)
• Founding President, Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture-Australia-New Zealand (2004-2008)
• Co-editor, ‘Under the Sign of Nature’ book series, University of Virginia Press (2016-)
• Advisory Board Member, Rachel Carson Centre, Ludwig-Maximilians-University, Munich (2016-19)
• Editorial Board Member, Philosophy Activism Nature (of which I was founding co-editor), Green Letters: Studies in Ecocriticism, Ecozon@, and the book series, Environmental Humanities, Metzler/Palgrave-Macmillan, and Transnational Approaches to Literature book series, De Gruyter.
• Expert Reviewer for Arts and Humanities Research Council (U.K.), European Science Foundation, European Research Council, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, Leverhulme Trust, Institute of Advanced Studies (U of Edinburgh), Humanities Research Centre (Australian National U), FRIAS, Rachel Carson Center (Ludwig-Maximilians U).

Environmental literary, historical, philosophical and religious studies, with a particular interest in:

• Multispecies studies
• Decolonial studies
• Disaster studies

(with Roman Bartosch and Ursula Heise): co-edited volume exploring diverse approaches to mass species extinction, depletion of wildlife populations, the emergence of novel ecologies, and their entanglement with forms of environmental injustice, within the environmental humanities

(with Evi Zemanek): co-edited volume for Metzler Environmental Humanities series exploring perspectives from environmental literary and cultural studies to the  multidisciplinary field of resilience research, focussing on the role of narrative in enabling, impeding, and/or complicating notions and practices of  'resilience'.

(initiated on Marie Curie Co-Fund Fellowship at FRIAS) incorporating a ‘multispecies ethnography’ of the ‘greening’ of sacred spaces in Cologne and London to render them more hospitable for flowering plants, pollinators, birds, and other forms of wildlife in the horizon of ecological and climate crisis.

(with Sigurd Bergmann and Peter Scott): co-edited volume for Routledge Environmental Humanities series that explores how debates concerning the new materialisms impinge upon religious traditions and the extent to which religions are already materialist and so have a creative contribution to make to debates about ecological materialisms.

(initiated on a Rachel Carson Fellowship) revisiting the long-standing but neglected tradition of meditations on the six days of creation, this project entails a cross-disciplinary approach, utilising three primary methods: historical and interpretative; social-ecological; and literary-creative. Case studies include Christian conservation initiatives in Kenya, South India and Amazonia (with a focus on Brazil).