Upcoming events
SOAC 2025 HDR Symposium
We warmly invite PhD candidates conducting urban research to join the 2025 HDR Symposium, a two-and-a-half-day event preceding and complementing the State of Australasian Cities Conference. This year, the symposium will be held in Brisbane, Australia, and will continue its tradition of creating a collegial, inclusive, and supportive environment for candidates to share, refine, and receive valuable feedback on their research.
Since 2013, the HDR Symposium has brought together PhD candidates from across Australasia, fostering connections and relationships within the diverse PhD. This year, the symposium will be guided by the values of inclusivity, collaboration, and respect, ensuring a welcoming and culturally safe space for all participants.
SOAC 2025
State of Australasian Cities Conference 2025
Australasian Cities at the Crossroads: Navigating Legacy, Innovation & Sustainability
SOAC 2025 enquires how urban planning, design and policy address current challenges and global trends in urbanism with a focus on legacy, long-term sustainability, and innovation.
The interplay between global dynamics and local challenges presents a critical juncture for Australasian cities and regional centres. Phenomena such as climate change, pandemics, conflict, economic downturns, and political volatility are not merely external factors but are directly augmenting the complexity of local issues. These include environmental sustainability, urban sprawland transportation, housing affordability and homelessness, population growth and demographic shifts, the preservation and integration of indigenous communities and knowledge, economic diversification and employment, and addressing the digital divide and connectivity. These challenges necessitate a departure from reactive policies towards a more proactive and integrated approach to urban and regional planning.
Emergent geographers? Early Career advocacy in urban research
Panel discussion, featuring:
Alistair Sisson, Macquarie University
Laura Hammersley, University of Wollongong
Evan Abdullah, RMIT
Caitlin Buckle, UNSW
Alexandre da Silva Faustino, RMIT
Sabina Andron, University of Melbourne
Launch of AECURN: Australasian Early Career Urban Research Network
IAG 2025: Emergent Geographies
IAG2025, the Institute of Australian Geographers’ Conference, will be held at City Hall and NUspace Newcastle, NSW from 30 June – 5 July 2025.
The theme of the Conference is Emergent Geographies.
We are at a point in time where we must urgently address global challenges such as climate change, transition, biodiversity, the rights of nature, urbanisation, sustainability, the importance of Indigenous knowledge, and human-environment interactions.
An emergent geographies acknowledges the ways these challenges arise out of complex interactions and behaviours that require greater emphasis on interdisciplinary thinking and approaches. Emergent geographies allow us to interrogate both the fledgling ideas and the burning passions that make the study of all things geographic an exciting prospect for all of us.
We are ever mindful of the need to recognise and incorporate into our work respectful consideration of culture, justice, equity, gender, power, knowledge, and the relationships between and rights of humans and the more-than-human world. As such, we invite you to join us as we meet as a community of practice to think deeply about current and developing issues, and workshop ideas and solutions that allow us to stake our claim as important decision-makers.
Join us and be energised by the interdisciplinary qualities of geography. Uniquely situated for researchers, policy experts, spatial professionals, and many others, the discipline of geography can provide theoretical and practical ideas about how to build resilient communities into the future.