Staff Directory

Professor Glenn Albrecht

Position: Director: Institute of Sustainability and Technology Policy
Email: G.Albrecht@murdoch.edu.au
Phone: 9360 6103
Room: SS3.023

Qualifications:

B.A.Curtin, PhD Newcastle

Teaching:

STP206/606 Sustainability Ethics
STP108 Introduction to Sustainable Development
STP212/612 Sustainability Ecology and Communities

Research Interests:

Glenn Albrecht undertakes internationally relevant transdisciplinary research in the domain of sustainability and ecosystem health and has also produced research papers/publications in environmental history, transdisciplinarity, sustainability, environmental politics, environmental and animal ethics. Dr Albrecht has publications in international refereed journals where the focus of his work has been complexity in relation to human and ecosystem health. In 2001, with co-authors, he produced a major international publication: Health Social Science: A Transdisciplinary and Complexity Perspective with Oxford University Press. His most recent publications have presented the new concept of 'solastalgia', a form of human distress related to the lived experience of negatively perceived environmental change. This concept is now well established internationally and produces, in a Google search, over 5,000 hits in many languages. Glenn Albrecht has been interviewed, both nationally and internationally, by radio, television and print journalists about the concept of solastalgia and its applications, particularly those that relate to industrial development, mining, drought and to climate change.

His recent ARC funded research projects include a collaborative study into the relationship between human and ecosystem health in the coal mining region of the Upper Hunter of NSW and the ethics of feral buffalo control in Arnhem Land. Current ARC funded research projects include, the geographies and bioethics of the thoroughbred horse industry and ecological footprint analysis for policy makers. In 2008, along with colleagues Linda Connor and Nick Higginbotham he has commenced a four year Australian Research Council Discovery Project to study the lived experience of climate change, using the Hunter Valley as a case study. New initiatives at Murdoch include a "resilient regions" research project that will examine the resilience of various regions within Western Australia. An ARC Linkage grant on animal ethics in the commercial animal context will be submitted in 2009.

Select Recent Publications:

BOOK

Higginbotham, N., Albrecht, G. and Connor, L. (2001) Health Social Science: A Transdisciplinary and Complexity Perspective, South Melbourne, Oxford University Press.

BOOK CHAPTERS (2008)

Albrecht , G.A. (2008) Solastalgia, in Gage, H. Ice: A Passage Through Time, Alaska, Ampersand Press.

Albrecht, G., Higginbotham, N., Connor, L. and Freeman, S. (2008) Human Health and Ecosystem Health: A Social Perspective. In Heggenhougen, K. (ed) Encyclopaedia of Public Health, San Diego CA, Elsevier.

JOURNALS (selection)

Albrecht, G., McMahon, C. Bowman, D., Bradshaw, C. (2009) Convergence of culture, ecology and ethics: management of feral swamp buffalo in northern Australia. Journal of Agricultural and Environmental Ethics, (accepted for publication January 2009).

Sartore G.M, Kelly B, Stain H, Albrecht G, Higginbotham N. (2008) Control, uncertainty, and expectations for the future: A qualitative study of the impact of drought on a rural Australian community. Rural and Remote Health 8 (Article 950) pp. 1-14.

Connor, L., Higginbotham, N., Freeman, S., and Albrecht, G. (2008) Watercourses and Discourses: Coalmining in the Upper Hunter Valley, New South Wales. Oceania, Vol. 78, No. 1, pp.76-90.

Albrecht, G, Sartore, G et. al. (2007) Solastalgia: The distress caused by environmental change, Australasian Psychiatry. Vol. 15, Special Supplement, pp. 95-98.

Higginbotham N, Connor L, Albrecht G, Freeman S, Agho K. (2006). Validation of an Environmental Distress Scale (EDS). EcoHealth Vol.3 No. 4, pp. 245-254.

Albrecht, G. (2006) The Ethics of Climate Chaos, Journal of the Asia Pacific Centre for Environmental Accountability, Vol. 12, No. 2, June 2006, pp. 19-21.

Albrecht , G. (2006) Environmental Distress as Solastalgia, Alternatives, 32 (4/5) pp. 34-35.

Albrecht, G.A. (2005) Solastalgia: A New Concept in Human Health and Identity, in PAN (Philosophy, Activism, Nature) Issue. 3, 41-55.

Connor, L, Albrecht, G., Higginbotham, N., Smith W., & Freeman, S. (2004) Environmental Change and Human Health in Upper Hunter Communities of New South Wales, Australia, in EcoHealth Vol. 1, Supplement 2, pp. 47-58.

Albrecht, G.A., Higginbotham, N., Cashman, P. and Flint, K. (2004) Evolution of Transdisciplinarity and Ecosystem Health at the University of Newcastle, NSW, in EcoHealth Vol. 1, Supplement 1, pp. 23-29.

Other:

Glenn is on the editorial board of the international journal Ecohealth and is a member of the International Association for Health and Ecology. He has been the J.W. McConnell Visiting Professor in Ecosystem Health at the Schulich School of Medicine and Dentistry at the University of Western Ontario in 2003, 2005 and 2007 where he has conducted research and teaching.