Conference Theme, Location, and Information

Where does a place begin and where does it end? Places hold knowledges that are local and specific. When we respond in a meaningful way to (re)discovery of place through shared storytelling we go beyond thought and language to reconnection with the Earth and the world. When we find ourselves on a boundary between places, we recognise how edges exist to create and connect difference. They show us our interdependence, while also causing us to question where we are and where we are going.

In 2025, COCE travels to the terra edge of Australia, to nipaluna/Hobart in lutruwita/Tasmania¹. We invite you to find your place here, in the convivial and creative encounters that we need to maintain, continue, and repair our world. We foreground ways of knowing that imbricate us in an ethics of care, such as those of Aboriginal Australians for whom place is a living entity holding knowledge that comes with responsibility, for whom places carry their own creation stories, patterns of connectivity, obligations, and laws to avoid transgression and achieve balance, and for whom dialogues and exchanges promote porous borders through which the world is revealed as a constant state of process.

Communication’s role in this process, with the tangible shift in perspectives of bringing COCE to the Southern Hemisphere for the first time, also brings forward a shared sense that the field of environmental communication is on the cusp of change with all its transformative potential. As the environmental communication field and the state of our wider world evolve, we are shifting from the familiar centers to immerse in what long have been considered the edges, where possibilities lie in wait. In the edges of living systems, overlap and diversity is nurtured. In the edges, different perspectives and ways of being dynamically endure and emerge. These can include ancient continuing knowledges (represented in Australia in 65,000+-year-old Aboriginal Australian custodianship of Country), new collaborations and ways of working (such as the Australia-founded permaculture movement), corrections of previous missteps (such as Australia-born Deep Ecology ecological identity retreats), and intentionally diverse global perspectives (Australia is one of the most culturally and linguistically countries in the world). In the edges, what was deemed ‘core’ can be questioned and, if necessary, even transformed. The role of a convivial community becomes paramount in such spaces and moments. As a collaborative ethic, conviviality supports co-creative ways of turning around environmental and social problems with transdisciplinary thinking and praxis, humility, and care.

In line with the theme, Environment and Communication: Shifting Perspectives, Creativity, and Conviviality from the Edge, COCE 2025’s location embodies a geographical shift from north to south, with COCE held in lutruwita/Tasmania, an Australian archipelago of more than 300 islands, a powerful place of transformation, creativity, debate, contest, and extraordinary histories. The ancestral land and home of Palawa and Pakana people, this island state is known for its rugged alpine environments, abundant wildlife, ancient old growth rainforests that home some of the world’s largest trees, glacial lakes, rocky and lichened coastlines, and the Aurora Australis. In addition to being the ground for the earliest roots of permaculture, lutruwita/Tasmania is also birthplace of the world’s first Green party and iconic environmental campaigns, and is now 50% protected in the form of national parks and reserves and 25% as designated UNESCO World Heritage areas. Its city of nipaluna/Hobart, a gateway to Antarctica, brims with historic 19th century sandstone architecture, contemporary and playful creative endeavors and spaces, and robust inquiry into ties between communication and environment.

COCE 2025’s virtual event environment, powered by FourWaves, also provides rich opportunities for creativity and conviviality, accessible from anywhere in the world. Through engaging discussions, networking opportunities, video streaming and recorded sessions, breakout rooms, and more, FourWaves allows virtual attendees to connect, learn, and exchange insights.

Conference attendees can look forward to a traditional Welcome to Country, high levels of experiential, interactive, and hybrid engagement, and unconventional intellectual and creative experiences. COCE 2025 will feature alternative session formats that encourage transdisciplinary and cross-sector conversations, and multiple opportunities for creativity and idea and praxis sharing. In-person COCE attendees can also elect to participate in an immersive 2-day Deep Ecology post-conference retreat facilitated by John Seed and integrated with local community members, several during-conference hosted experiential excursions into the bush and urban environments, and a ‘COCE conference pre-party’ in the form of the Dark MOFO Festival, which ends the day before COCE begins. In addition, graduate/postgraduate students can elect to join a co-supportive and fun 1-day pre-conference camp on the land.

At COCE 2025, all participants will be invited to consider how approaches to communication about/with/on/in environments could be ‘un-conventionalized’ by calling in more community, diverse perspectives, and play as forms of research and praxis. While we will engage conviviality to usher in impactful sharing of ideas, the conference simultaneously welcomes approaches to the theme that carefully regard opposition and incompleteness in present or historical environmental relations. Throughout the conference, participants will be invited to engage in dialogue and explore questions including but not limited to:

•How can environmental communication research and praxis respect and amplify multiple ways of knowing the world and/or draw out and tend to shifting and diverse perspectives around environmental relations?

•In what ways can creative and/or convivial approaches to environmental communication illuminate or manifest ways forward to restorative futures?

•How can environmental communication research and praxis responsively generate conviviality in a world of symbolically and materially constructed inequity, especially in instances of anthropocentrism, historical and present-day colonialism, and other inequitable power structures?

•How can environmental communication research and praxis navigate the tensions - and edges - between individual responsibility and collective/political action?

•How can edges of community and other non-academic knowledges interact with edges of environmental communication research and praxis to usher in or amplify diverse collaborations and activism?

•What care responsibilities do environmental communication researchers and practitioners have to the planet and how can we most supportively engage with the fertile edges?

_{1. As palawa kani is a unique language of lutruwita, distinctive rules apply. Capital letters are generally only used for people's names and the names of family/Ancestral collectives. Place names aren't capitalised and capitals are not used at the beginning of sentences.}