Attempts to metricise what impact looks like in academia typically fails to reflect the realities of radical work. Where feminist geographies are committed to social and environmental justice, broadening participation in intellectual/activist spheres, the dismantling of all structures of oppression and the radical transformation of the systems that constitute our worlds, ‘impact’ is unlikely to be measurable in grant success or contributions to policy. In an attempt to reconstitute alternative approaches to thinking about impact, we reflect on our experiences working on Radio Reversal, a conversational radio program on 4ZZZ (a Brisbane community radio station) that subjects everyday matters to critical, feminist, socio-economic, cultural and political analysis. Radio creates ephemeral spaces, forming, reforming, and disbanding within hours, spanning physical spaces of studios and cafes, and less tangible spaces of the airwaves and online streaming. Radio Reversal’s conversational, warm, often uncertain approach to its varied subject matter does translational work, and builds relationships that can translate into broader participation in other radical projects. In this talk we will consider the contour lines connecting a radio station on Barry Parade, Fortitude Valley to a boat-building yard, and consider how the ephemeral spaces conversational community radio creates can reimagine ‘impact’ in feminist work.

Our use of digital media has ecological implications both in terms of our physical reliance on infrastructure and tools to connect to digital spaces, and what we do within digital spaces. However, the contribution of digital spaces to the Anthropocene is not yet well-explored and digital activism in particular may play a role in working towards more just futures. In bringing together geographies of digital change and the Anthropocene, this paper focuses on interventions originating in digital spaces and networking through, around and beyond these. This paper will consider issues of justice and the Anthropocene within the context of change originating from digital spaces. By exploring a case study of online digital action as manifest in the Climate Council’s creation and continuation, important aspects of what is made possible from within digital spaces will be highlighted.

During the White Australia Policy period, eight national censuses were conducted by the Commonwealth Bureau of Statistics. Included in the censuses were questions regarding the sex, birthplace, nationality, and ‘race’ of respondents. The racial classifications in the censuses can be seen as central and official acts of colonisation, that is, a means to document, classify and exclude non-White ‘Others’ that persisted in the national space. In addition, censuses and their data, like other official documentation, have been produced and stored by society’s elites (generally White, literate men in positions of authority). As such, they are limited in their ability to contribute to reconstructing geographies that include women and other groups who have previously been marginalised. In this paper I will demonstrate how tensions between such ‘colonialist’ tools and postcolonial feminist agendas can be fruitfully negotiated. A postcolonial feminist reading of the historical census data will be presented, with a particular focus on data pertaining to females racially defined as ‘Chinese’. This data will be used to illustrate that documentation of people and places that have been used for the purpose of exclusion and other colonialist motives can be used to present a more inclusive understanding of Australia’s national historical geography.

While writing and presenting within the mining industry, my personal strategy has been to temper and avoid the language of feminist geographies in order to remain palatable to an industry that shuns subjectivity. Taking this practice as a jumping off point, I have begun to identify this same transformation of language and approach taken by stakeholders throughout the closure of the Leigh Creek coal mine, South Australia. Through this presentation I contemplate the existence of a feminist geographies framework perpetuated by stakeholders and made visible through the mine closure process. Developing this idea theoretically, I have evaded the traditional gender focus of feminism and instead adopt the principles of Donna Haraway’s situated knowledges with a refocus on soliciting minority experiences. Applying this, I trace the existing ontological multiplicity of the landscape, exploring the experiences and relationships of those deeply involved in the site, and highlighting the genuine impact of these experiences on the official planning process. In doing so I look to re-view the event of mine closure and ask whether it can be restructured in a way that acknowledges its socio-material context and locates embodied experience as the underlying framework facilitating relationships with and through the site.