School of Social and Political Science

Description

Since the devastating Black Summer fires of 2019-20, Australia has experienced multiple, overlapping environmental crises including floods, drought and COVID19. While the impacts of these crises upon infrastructure, economies and health are well-known, we are still learning to measure their impacts upon our personal and cultural worlds.  

This paper reports on research exploring the influence of environmental change upon ideas about and experiences of family. Through oral history interviews with Australian mothers, the research examines the impacts of climate change and climate-fuelled disasters upon childrearing in the present and the recent past.  

Dr Carla Pascoe Leahy is a Lecturer in Family History at the University of Tasmania, Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne, Joint Editor of Studies in Oral History and an Honorary Associate at Museum Victoria. Her research focuses on motherhood and family; children and youth; place, environment and sustainability; and oral history and qualitative research. Her publications include Spaces Imagined, Places Remembered: Childhood in 1950s Australia (2011) and Children, Childhood and Cultural Heritage (2013), Children's Voices from the Past: New Historical and Interdisciplinary Perspectives (2019) and Australian Mothering: Historical and Sociological Perspectives (2019).