Waking Up in Australia: Biodiversity, Sound, Temporality
Developing a novel approach to biodiversity by exploring its relationship with perceptions, experiences, and everyday structures of time.
Cluster
Research partners
Project team
Associate Professor Matthew Champion (Lead CI, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies, Faculty of Arts); Professor Robert Hassan (Co-Investigator, School of Culture and Communication); Dr Rachel Morgain (Workshop Participant, Melbourne Biodiversity Institute); Dr Kylie Soanes (Workshop Participant, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences); Professor Therésa Jones (Workshop Participant, School of BioSciences); Dr Charlotte Millar (Workshop Participant, School of Historical and Philosophical Studies); Ainslie Macdonald (Workshop Participant, PhD Candidate, School of Agriculture, Food and Ecosystem Sciences)
Contact
Project summary
The dawn chorus of birds shapes how many Australians begin their day, yet we know little about how these auditory experiences vary across communities or how they connect people emotionally to place. This project will develop a novel approach to biodiversity by exploring its relationship with perceptions, experiences, and everyday structures of time. A transdisciplinary workshop will bring experts from the biosciences into dialogue with historians and sociologists to develop a pilot survey of contemporary waking experiences and explore the possibility of a database of the sounds of waking.
What are we interested in?
Human experiences of biodiversity are shaped by sensory perception, locality, and particular times of day. The bioacoustics of waking, especially the dawn chorus, offer a window into human attachment to diverse environments. Understanding how these auditory experiences vary across the social spectrum can reveal emotional connections to places and species that might be leveraged in future advocacy work surrounding threatened and endangered species.
The goals of our project
This project will survey diverse contemporary experiences of waking and their relationships with bioacoustics. The workshop will integrate historical methods with the sociology of temporalities and the bioacoustic study of avian biodiversity to enrich understanding of how Australians perceive and experience biodiverse awakenings.
Outcomes / activities
Transdisciplinary pilot workshop bringing together key stakeholders and potential collaborators which will assist the development of a pilot survey of contemporary waking experiences. This will be accompanied by engagement in public forums through media articles and podcasts.