COCE 2025 Program

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Emily Montgomerie

Virtual Sessions

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Katie Hunt

Virtual Sessions

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Emma Francis Bloomfield

Virtual Sessions

This is a fully virtual session. Zoom Moderator: Steve Depoe This session will concentrate on In Search of Decoupling, an international and interdisciplinary research project funded by the Swedish Research Council. The session will begin with a brief introduction to the project, proceed to a summary of progress and key results to date, and then open a roundtable discussion among project participants both about progress on various elements of the project, and in response to questions from session attendees.

Virtual Sessions

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Katie Hunt This session features an interactive roundtable discussion with several Environmental Communication scholar-teachers, providing examples of critical, reflective, animal-centric curriculum they have developed and tested. Syllabi, assignments, excursion descriptions, case studies, facilitation guides, and other pedagogical materials will be shared with participants, who are encouraged to share their own pedagogical experiences and test new ideas for engaging learners in the consideration of (nonhuman) animals in environmental communication.

Hybrid Sessions

Given the immense scale of our interconnected environmental and social challenges, the question of how to most effectively translate environmental communication research into massive restorative change is urgent. In this workshop, we introduce an in-progress publicly transformative environmental communication praxis project titled (Daily) Delight~Disrupt (DDD) and engage workshop participants as co-creators. DDD aims to spark global restorative change through everyday, playful communication moments that challenge dominant anthropocentric paradigms and inspire, uplift, and connect people with each other and the more-than-human world. With its foundations in the crisis and care tenets of the environmental communication discipline (Cox, 2007; Pezzullo, 2023), and the field’s theories of ecocultural identity (Milstein & Castro-Sotomayor, 2020) and culture jamming (Milstein & Pulos, 2015), DDD emerged from Australia-based environmental communication scholars consulting with the North America-based Massive Change Network (Bruce Mau and Aiyemobisi Williams). The result, DDD, launched in 2024 in Sydney, Australia, as an invitational, co-creative, and experiential ecotopic project that is constituted and spread through public grassroots environmental communication. DDD provides a theme for each weekday (Minimalism Mondays, Tree-hugging Tuesdays, Wayfinding Wednesdays, Thankful Thursdays, Feast Fridays, Seek Your Own Adventure Saturdays, Screen-Free Sundays) and “easy” to “energetic” playful positive communication acts to integrate into daily routines. Anyone can become a delightful disruptor and, in process, co-create transitional spaces (Sandlin & Milam, 2008), manifest the change they want to see, shift individual and collective mindsets, amplify their capability to see themselves as regenerative changemakers, and, in the process, generate and inspire community

(Chair: Linda Hunt): In this panel of Antarctic studies scholars and creative practitioners, we look at the ways scientists, journalists, and creative writers communicate about Antarctica’s changing edges. Focussing primarily on the icescape - the sea ice, the ice shelves and the ice sheets - we discuss attempts (our own included) to communicate the fragility of the world’s most protected, yet most vulnerable, continent.

This panel will be in the format of a dialogue among a diverse group of emerging and senior scholars with papers motivated by the question of how different modes of climate communication either legitimize and entrench antidemocratic politics (e.g., reactionary backlash against climate activists, nativist demands for tighter borders, libertarian dreams of bunkers and space colonies) or open up the possibility for contestation and the consideration of alternative visions for how to comprehensively respond to the complexities of climate change via more inclusive, justice-oriented, pluriversal, decolonial (Castro-Sotomayor, 2019; Escobar, 2018; Teaiwa, 2020), sovereign, and robustly democratic decision-making processes.

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Kundai Chirindo This panel considers the edges of rhetorical fieldwork, positing that attempts to analyze the unseeable and the unsayable requires a turn to aesthetics.

Hybrid Sessions

Want to publish your research in book? Come along and pitch your book idea to a publisher! This tea break will also feature a table where Lucie Bartonek from Taylor & Francis/Routledge will hold five minute meetings for prospective authors to pitch their work and ask questions about publishing processes.

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Katie Hunt In this double-workshop offering, presenters will take attendees through two interactive talks and activities investigating gender and environmental communication. 1. Beyond Bias: Gender-sensitive communication in environmental communication and education This workshop is to equip participants with essential tools and reflections. These resources will enable them to communicate their research and advocacy activities effectively, responsibly, and in a manner sensitive to the equity demands of today’s society. 2. Climate justice and gender: possible engagements The workshop will address this context through immersion in storytelling of people who already intensely feel the effects of climate change. After all, it is undeniable that women are highly vulnerable to the effects of climate change in ways that differ from men. However, the term “gender” in climate discourse often refers primarily to women, which neglects other dimensions of gender, sexual orientation, and sexual identity. Consequently, we are overlooking essential ways that gender impacts people’s experiences with climate change. Following natural disasters, which are expected to become more frequent and severe as the climate changes, members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer, and intersex (LGBTQI+) community are routinely excluded from response, relief, and recovery efforts (Thuringer, 2016).

Hybrid Sessions

As copy editors, we assume the writer means what they say—we allow the writer their premise. But when it comes to unconscious bias, being passive doesn’t work… If the writer doesn’t know they’re being biased, and copy editors assume the writer means what they say, nothing changes. Because of this, I now encourage my team to take an active posture in copy editing: We assume bias is there and look for it. To make this process easier, we had an idea: A proofreader’s mark for equality, or eq. In practice, if someone writes the word “girl” when we suspect they mean “woman,” for instance, we cross out “girl,” and replace it with “[eq] woman.” This immediately orients the author of the work to the nature of the edit. It doesn’t require long explanations. The mark, like all proofreaders’ marks, is very efficient. Since its inception, I’ve rolled out Editing for Equality to all of Droga5’s global offices and throughout Accenture (that’s something like 700,000 people). The program has won awards, stopped problematic work from leaving the building, and helped to ensure that historically marginalized people have more visibility and more work, as well as reduce our contribution to negative societal narratives.

This interdisciplinary panel explores how creative practice can reveal and nurture more-than-human relations essential to Private Land Conservation (PLC).

Chair: Mariko Thomas

THIS SESSION IS NOW FULLY VIRTUAL. The session's purpose is to examine the intersections of digital technologies, credibility, and public trust, focusing on institutional and individual scientists. The panelists will connect the role of technoscientific credibility in environmental and science communication research and praxis by combining disparate definitions, examining the myriad ways it emerges and operates, and identifying avenues to evaluate and increase credibility. The session will be an interactive discussion, encouraging dialogue among panelists and audience members.

Virtual Sessions

Grab lunch on Level 4 and then head over to the Vanessa Goodwin Room for the IECA Member Meeting. This is the official business meeting of the association--this meeting is open to all IECA members.

Hybrid Sessions

THIS SESSION HAS BEEN MOVED TO THE RECITAL HALL. Join DJ Possum Magic for a special immersive session as she takes you through a visual and audio experience with the more-than-human world.

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Kundai Chirindo This panel spotlights scholarly journal and book editors, as well as researchers invested in publishing negotiations and critically discussing the limitations and possibilities of academic publishing today.

Hybrid Sessions

Join Drag King, Milton Mango (aka Lee Constable) and environmental journalist and author, Zoe Kean for a comedic discussion about climate change, adaptation and being a “bloke-in-the-know”. This comedic ‘in conversation’-style performance will be followed by an exegesis where Zoe Kean interviews Lee Constable out of drag to discuss: - The rationale behind using Milton Mango as a comedic device for climate conversations - How Drag Kings connect with conservative male Australian audiences often not reached by mainstream climate communications - Quintessential Aussie white ‘bogan’ masculinity as it relates to perceptions of nature, the environment and sustainability - The power of comedy for environmental communications

This panel will educate the audience on how communication-based research applications using qualitative and quantitative techniques can illustrate a holistic understanding of environmental issues to bolster impact. The panel showcases the journey of how human-nature connection data is analysed scientifically, produced in partnership with community and taken up by governments to impact policy.

This panel/workshop session will look at equity, inclusion, and diversity in environmental communication from different perspectives by hearing from working practitioners’ perspectives in Australia and the Pacific region, and an academic researcher in the field. The session would combine a panel and interactive workshop format to include audience participation and discussion.

Take a break from the lectures and join Ruby and Mark for an interactive game about plant blindness! A series of images will be displayed of plants in various life history stages including adults, seedlings and seeds. Participants will be encouraged to identify the species. A leaflet question sheet will be provided for participants to fill out their answers. One point will be given for family, two points for genus and three points for species. One point will also be given for common names. These leaflets will contain information on plant blindness and how documenting all life history stages of plants can help in understanding recovery after disturbance. It will also provide information on how to contribute to documenting seeds and seedlings through a project on iNaturalist I have set up (Seedling Images). Participants can submit their answer sheets with their names and contact details if they’d like a chance to win a prize. I will mark the sheets by the end of the conference and provide prizes (ID books such as Australian Rainforest Fruits), for the three participants with the highest scores.

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Kundai Chirindo This panel approaches landscapes as sensuous, ecological, political, and communicative formations. Each paper begins with a landscape-related undoing: the unplanned arrival of an invasive tree species in unexpected spots in Berlin, the deliberate and violent unmaking of Palestine’s landscape through targeted destruction of olive trees, and the unsettling effects that the eerie landscape of Iceland is thought to have on viewers.

Hybrid Sessions

The 3-part workshop is designed around co-creating an emergent methodological framework, represented by a growing tree of knowledge. Part 1: Plant the Tree: Conversation starters will offer 2-minute prompts, sketching the tree as they speak - with questions around burgeoning tenets, guidelines, lenses, and approaches. 2. Branch and Leaf Out: All workshop participants will discuss in world-cafe-format groups and sketch outcomes into the tree. 3. Mycelial and Fruitful: All participants will sketch what’s fulsome or missing, tending to methodological fruits and connections, and the chair will facilitate discussion on ways to further energize and activate a methodology, including through practice, activism, art, and publication.

Chair: Olli Hellman

Chair: Jessica Remcheck

Want to publish your research in book? Come along and pitch your book idea to a publisher! This tea break will also feature a table where Lucie Bartonek from Taylor & Francis/Routledge will hold five minute meetings for prospective authors to pitch their work and ask questions about publishing processes.

Chair: Jenny Sinclair

Chair: Amelia Pearson

This is a hybrid session. Zoom Moderator: Kundai Chirindo

Hybrid Sessions

This presentation explores the intersection of climate responsibility and Artificial Intelligence (AI) within educational contexts, and reflects upon the role of schools in addressing the ethical, ecological, and practical implications of both. As AI and sustainability shape innovations in global education, Sterling’s (2024) observation that “transformation implies critical examination of dominant assumptions, values, purposes, and practices” becomes highly relevant. Schools face the challenge and responsibility of increasing their understanding of AI in education while developing environmentally sustainable practices. Val Plumwood's (2008) concept of “shadow places” - revealing the hidden labour and ecological impacts often invisible to end users - provides one critical lens through which we can begin examining AI’s significant environmental footprint in the context of educational practices.

Chair: Euan Ritchie. In this shake-up session, researchers and practitioners engage with various approaches to communication and the public sphere.

Waterline Brooke Street Pier Lower Level 12, Franklin Wharf, Hobart TAS 7000 Emcee: Associate Professor Dara Wald (IECA Vice Chair). Christine Milne in conversation with Professor Libby Lester. Awards will be presented by Associate Professor Dara Wald

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Emily Montgomerie

Virtual Sessions

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Patrick Jamar

Virtual Sessions

This is a fully virtual session. Zoom Moderator: Katie Hunt

Virtual Sessions

This session is fully virtual. Zoom Moderator: Katie Hunt

Virtual Sessions