The ANU Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) is pleased to welcome our next Visiting Fellow from our 2022-23 Visiting Fellowship Program, Dr James Dunk.

“We’re very glad to have James join us at AuSI as a Visiting Fellow throughout the next month. We’re also delighted to have him as the academic host for our upcoming Visiting Fellows Dinner, where he will lead the evening's discussion on his research on 'Planetary Health and Ecological Distress'.”

- Professor Paul Pickering, Director, ANU Australian Studies Institute

“I’m delighted to take up a Visiting Fellowship at the ANU Australian Studies Institute. The ANU has been an important site for the development of human ecology, environmental epidemiology and planetary health, and the fellowship will provide time and space to explore archival collections on and off campus and connect with key researchers and scholars in these fields. Australian scientists have made significant contributions to these emerging fields, and I’m eager to help draw attention to them within the Institute’s Australia-in-the-world frame.”

- Dr James Dunk, Visiting Fellow, ANU Australian Studies Institute

Dr James Dunk is a historian and interdisciplinary researcher whose research, teaching and writing explores how health, medicine and psychology are changing in the face of planetary crises. Working at the intersection of environmental history, psychology, and mental health, he is a research fellow on the ARC Discovery Project Planetary Health Histories: Developing Concepts, based in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. His first book, Bedlam at Botany Bay, won the Australian History Prize at the 2020 New South Wales Premier's History Awards and was shortlisted for the Ernest Scott Prize, UQ Non-Fiction Book Award, and Kay Daniels Award. His research on planetary health, mental health and ecological distress has been published in various international journals including the New England Journal of Medicine, Sustainability, History of Psychology, Australian Psychologist and Rethinking History, and his literary reviews and essays appear in Griffith Review, Australian Book Review, and other magazines. He is currently the President of the Australian and New Zealand Society of the History of Medicine.