WORKSHOP 1 of “Re-imagining Quality of Life” Webinar Series (on YoutTube)

The recording of the very first webinar from the webinar series organized by the UON Alternative Futures Research Network and New Economy Network Australia (NENA) is now available on YouTube. We are very thankful to many participants who attended the webinar and granted us their support and encouragement.

In this webinar, we launched the series and introduced the project and its purposes. Dr Michelle Maloney, director of NENA and a leading intellectual and a phenomenal activist, Ms Shelly McGrath, PhD candidate and a young scholar from Wollotuka Institute, and I presented our views about why and how wellbeing discourses are being fundamentally revisited (in our very chaotic time where life is under severe assault from many angles and the civilizational foundations of capitalist modernity are being shaken deeply)

The webinar series is part of a project proudly partnered with the nationwide community organization, under the title of Re-Imagining Quality of Life.

Gratitudes also go to our research team, A/Prof. Daniela Heil, A/Prof. Penny Buykx, and Dr Chris Krogh from the University of Newcastle, Australia.

We are looking forward to the second webinar this coming Wed 14 July that is allocated to Indigenous visions of good quality of life. Daniela, Eija Maria Ranta and Mary Graham will share their interesting insights.

In solidarity,

Dr S A Hamed Hosseini

Speakers in this session were:

(1) Dr Michelle Maloney (NENA) and Dr Hamed Hosseini (UON) introduce the NENA-UON joint project;
(2) Dr Hosseini’s presentation: “From Wellbeing to Well-Living: On the urgency of a transformative approach to Quality of Life”;
(3) Ms Shelley McGrath’s presentation (UON) on “Reimagining social change through connection”; Open Discussion.

Dr Michelle Maloney is the Co-Founder and Director of New Economy Network Australia (NENA), the Co-Founder and National Convenor of Australian Earth Laws Alliance (AELA), and Adjunct Senior Fellow of Law Futures Centre at Griffith University. She has more than 25 years of experience in designing and managing climate change, sustainability and environmental justice projects in Australia, the United Kingdom, Indonesia and the USA, and this includes ten years working with indigenous colleagues in Central Queensland on a range of community development, sustainability and cultural heritage projects.

Ms Shelly McGrath is a PhD candidate and lecturer at the Wollotuka Institute, University of Newcastle. Her research examines how systemic modes of criminalisation and containment impact the socio-political positioning of First Peoples in settler states. She is primarily concerned with state-sanctioned violence and the corresponding reproduction of racialised hierarchies.

Dr S A Hamed Hosseini, PhD in “Sociology and Global Studies” from the Australian National University (ANU), is a Senior Lecturer and at The University of Newcastle, Australia. He is the founder and principal investigator of UON Alternative Futures Research Network (AFRN), Co-founder and chief editor of Common Alternatives initiative, a leading international team/website engaged in studying post-neoliberal, post-capital, post-carbon, progressive alternatives.