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Prof. John Morrissey reports from his NLA Fellowship exploring the beginnings of climate action in Australia from the 1960s. John was a Stokes Fellow at the National Library of Australia for 12 weeks in the summer of 2025, working on the political ecology writing of Judith Wright. Until her death in 2000, Judith Wright worked tirelessly in disseminating what she called “a new kind of understanding” of “human life in the biosphere”, in an ecosystem of “living processes and interdependences”. She communicated this holistic understanding of the Earth in art and education, activism and government policy, all in an effort to transform how we see and live in the world.

John’s project is focused on uncovering how Wright’s committed public scholarship envisaged the then emerging trajectory of environmental crises in the Anthropocene, and how she considered the key challenge of communicating a pathway to a more ecologically responsible world. The culmination of John’s work will be a book that presents how Wright envisioned a transformative custodianship of the Earth. In illuminating her environmental writing and activism in protecting the Great Barrier Reef, defeating Concorde, biodiversity campaigns, industry pollution campaigns, household waste campaigns, supporting First Nations land rights and more, the book aims to historicise Wright’s lifework as an inspiring exemplar of past environmental activism that gives much needed hope to contemporary campaigns. [Further info]

For John’s NLA Stokes Lecture 2025, please see here.