Sarah Rogers
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china-geographies.bsky.social
Sarah Rogers
@china-geographies.bsky.social
300 followers 590 following 38 posts
Associate Professor | Asia Institute | University of Melbourne

Hydropolitics, climate, agriculture, agrochemicals, resettlement, Global China
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china-geographies.bsky.social
Sarah Rogers @china-geographies.bsky.social · Oct 14
We finally have an updated website! Some of the activities in the Environment & Energy stream at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies
arts.unimelb.edu.au/centre-for-c...
Environment and Energy Stream
Environment and Energy Stream
arts.unimelb.edu.au
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
natureandspace.bsky.social
OnlineFirst - "Living space and the struggle against geothermal energy projects in Flores, Indonesia" by @mleyeh.bsky.social, @cypripajudale.bsky.social, @afiomagr.bsky.social, and Shae Frydenlund:

@cseas.kyoto-u.ac.jp @cugeography.bsky.social

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
November 24, 2025 at 10:27 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
invisiblemapper.bsky.social
Publication Day for our Open Access book w/ Bristol Uni Press

"The Material Geographies of the Belt and Road Initiative: Infrastructures + Political Ecologies on the New Silk Road"

Edited w/ Elia Apostolopoulou, Han Cheng + Alan Wiig

Link here >> bristoluniversitypress.co.uk/the-material...
November 20, 2025 at 9:56 AM
china-geographies.bsky.social
Just finished reading 👏🙌
danieldenvir.bsky.social Daniel Denvir @danieldenvir.bsky.social · 12d
Pleased to post this new Dig ep w/ my partner in all things @triofrancos.bsky.social on her beautiful book Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. We go from Chile to Nevada, from dawn of colonialism to geoeconomic conflict between the US and China—and more www.thedigradio.com/podcast/extr...
Extraction w/ Thea Riofrancos
Featuring Thea Riofrancos on Extraction: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism. The green energy transition requires a vast array of inputs: copper, cobalt, rare earth elements, and the focus of this disc...
www.thedigradio.com
November 14, 2025 at 8:52 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
"The result is a treadmill of constant activity...whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging
with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks
intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision"
hansonmark.bsky.social Mark A. Hanson @hansonmark.bsky.social · 14d
We wrote the Strain on scientific publishing to highlight the problems of time & trust. With a fantastic group of co-authors, we present The Drain of Scientific Publishing:

a 🧵 1/n

Drain: arxiv.org/abs/2511.04820
Strain: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
Oligopoly: direct.mit.edu/qss/article/...
A table showing profit margins of major publishers. A snippet of text related to this table is below. 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. A figure detailing the drain on researcher time. 1. The four-fold drain 1.2 Time The number of papers published each year is growing faster than the scientific workforce, with the number of papers per researcher almost doubling between 1996 and 2022 (Figure 1A). This reflects the fact that publishers’ commercial desire to publish (sell) more material has aligned well with the competitive prestige culture in which publications help secure jobs, grants, promotions, and awards. To the extent that this growth is driven by a pressure for profit, rather than scholarly imperatives, it distorts the way researchers spend their time. The publishing system depends on unpaid reviewer labour, estimated to be over 130 million unpaid hours annually in 2020 alone (9). Researchers have complained about the demands of peer-review for decades, but the scale of the problem is now worse, with editors reporting widespread difficulties recruiting reviewers. The growth in publications involves not only the authors’ time, but that of academic editors and reviewers who are dealing with so many review demands. Even more seriously, the imperative to produce ever more articles reshapes the nature of scientific inquiry. Evidence across multiple fields shows that more papers result in ‘ossification’, not new ideas (10). It may seem paradoxical that more papers can slow progress until one considers how it affects researchers’ time. While rewards remain tied to volume, prestige, and impact of publications, researchers will be nudged away from riskier, local, interdisciplinary, and long-term work. The result is a treadmill of constant activity with limited progress whereas core scholarly practices – such as reading, reflecting and engaging with others’ contributions – is de-prioritized. What looks like productivity often masks intellectual exhaustion built on a demoralizing, narrowing scientific vision. A table of profit margins across industries. The section of text related to this table is below: 1. The four-fold drain 1.1 Money Currently, academic publishing is dominated by profit-oriented, multinational companies for whom scientific knowledge is a commodity to be sold back to the academic community who created it. The dominant four are Elsevier, Springer Nature, Wiley and Taylor & Francis, which collectively generated over US$7.1 billion in revenue from journal publishing in 2024 alone, and over US$12 billion in profits between 2019 and 2024 (Table 1A). Their profit margins have always been over 30% in the last five years, and for the largest publisher (Elsevier) always over 37%. Against many comparators, across many sectors, scientific publishing is one of the most consistently profitable industries (Table S1). These financial arrangements make a substantial difference to science budgets. In 2024, 46% of Elsevier revenues and 53% of Taylor & Francis revenues were generated in North America, meaning that North American researchers were charged over US$2.27 billion by just two for-profit publishers. The Canadian research councils and the US National Science Foundation were allocated US$9.3 billion in that year. The costs of inaction are plain: wasted public funds, lost researcher time, compromised scientific integrity and eroded public trust. Today, the system rewards commercial publishers first, and science second. Without bold action from the funders we risk continuing to pour resources into a system that prioritizes profit over the advancement of scientific knowledge.
November 12, 2025 at 7:48 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
This afternoon!

www.iag.org.au/index.cfm?mo...
REGISTER NOW: WEBINAR: “Earth as element - Petrochemicals and Australian farming”, Tuesday 4 November 2025, 4.00 to 5.30 pm AEDT by Zoom
Please register in advance at: https://bit.ly/4ituMNh...
www.iag.org.au
November 3, 2025 at 9:05 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
overlandjournal.bsky.social
“Nearly four out of five of Australia’s critical mineral projects sit on Indigenous lands”.

For @copower.bsky.social, Noa Wynn examines the Yindjibarndi claim for damages to land and how green colonialism is repeating old injustices.
Colonialism's new Gold Rush: how 80 per cent of Australia's critical mineral mines exploit Aboriginal land without true consent - Overland literary journal
This fight over the Pilbara mine is not an isolated spat — it hints at a much larger problem. A new study finds that nearly four out of five of Australia’s critical mineral projects sit on Indigenous ...
overland.org.au
October 22, 2025 at 1:39 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
newmandala.bsky.social
NEW 🇮🇩 Too big to fail, and too big to succeed, Jokowi’s new capital city eventually came to be pushed forward by little more than the former president’s need to justify its existence, writes Anders Kirstein Moeller. www.newmandala.org/nusantara-th...
Nusantara: the city that never was - New Mandala
What political project did Jokowi’s new capital embody?
www.newmandala.org
October 22, 2025 at 7:20 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
We finally have an updated website! Some of the activities in the Environment & Energy stream at the Centre for Contemporary Chinese Studies
arts.unimelb.edu.au/centre-for-c...
Environment and Energy Stream
Environment and Energy Stream
arts.unimelb.edu.au
October 14, 2025 at 12:16 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
timmclellan.bsky.social
Private consultants are taking control of how public universities are evaluated and run.

My submission to the Senate university governance inquiry raises concerns about the impact of Nous Group and their dodgy UniForum data on our universities.

www.aph.gov.au/DocumentStor...

A thread
Image shows a screenshot of the conclusion of the linked Senate inquiry submission. This text can be found on page 10. The text is too long for alt text, but here is the first three quarters of the text: Conclusion Over the past decade, Nous Group’s UniForum data has quietly taken on the status of authoritative benchmark for the quality of a range of professional and academic services performed by public universities in Australia and across the world. This authoritative status is performed through scientific-looking graphs and scientific-sounding jargon designed to imply UniForum data is generated through rigorous methods and backed by expert consensus. This performance of authority is significant: it lends UniForum data an air of credibility and facticity that makes acting upon its results irresistible. When one begins to open the black box and examine how UniForum data is actually produced, however, it becomes difficult to justify the degree to which Australian university executives are relying upon it in their decision-making. My analysis is based on a review of publicly available documents, and it is therefore possible that Nous or its clients would point to things not in the public domain that address some of the conceptual and methodological flaws that I have highlighted in UniForum. But the fact that the underlying UniForum data and methodology is not in the public domain is itself one of the key causes for concerns. When the stakes are so high, it cannot be acceptable for Nous Group and its clients to simply tell university staff and governing councils, ‘trust us, these numbers are based on rigorous methods and analysis.’ The lack of rigor, external scrutiny, and transparency in UniForum’s underlying data and methodology would be a cause for concern in any public institution, but it is especially concerning in the context of universities where rigorous, transparent, and accountable knowledge production is a core part of what we do. ...
September 17, 2025 at 5:54 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
natureandspace.bsky.social
OnlineFirst - "Expulsion by suffocation: Soybean plantations, toxicity, and land grabbing in the Brazilian Amazon" by @fabiozuker.bsky.social:

#Amazon #EnvironmentalJustice #Anthropology #SlowViolence #toxicity #Deforestation #Agroecology #PlanetaryHealth

journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1...
October 3, 2025 at 1:05 AM
china-geographies.bsky.social
I refuse to teach with it
tedmccormick.bsky.social Ted McCormick @tedmccormick.bsky.social · Oct 9
A striking thing about articles I’ve read claiming to “study the effects” of generative AI on student writing skills and consumption of information is that (1) they nearly always find the effects are negative and (2) most “conclusions” are still written assuming that we must use AI, for some reason.
October 9, 2025 at 10:46 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
This is amazing
October 9, 2025 at 10:43 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
The expansion and reach of China's petrochemicals sector is mind boggling
October 6, 2025 at 8:14 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
roadsides.bsky.social
Working on fresh approaches to infrastructures? If you can imagine editing a special issue with us, send us a proposal!

Deadline for proposals: 15 November 2025

Send proposals to our editors-in-chief:

Agnieszka Joniak-Lüthi
[email protected]

Tina Harris
[email protected]
Guide for Editors | Roadsides
Dear Editors, Thank you for considering editing a guest collection in Roadsides. The following Guide for Editors will help you understand the application and publication process. The Editorial Board t...
roadsides.net
October 6, 2025 at 6:06 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
asianstudies.org
AAS-in-Asia 2026 to Take Place at Lahore University of Management Sciences—submit your organized panel session or roundtable proposal by November 13!

buff.ly/GReizuO
Colorful poster for AAS-in-Asia Lahore conference, Sept 25-27, 2026, themed 'Centering Asia: Refiguring Connections, Recharting Futures'.
October 6, 2025 at 6:41 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
"These codes of neighborliness or of common decency are, in other words, the bare minimum for us to exist peacefully as profoundly different people who nevertheless share the same time and place"

www.bostonreview.net/articles/how...
How Can We Live Together? - Boston Review
Ezra Klein is wrong: shame is essential.
www.bostonreview.net
September 27, 2025 at 10:15 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
This is not enough, not at all in line with 1.5
September 24, 2025 at 9:03 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social
Xi Jinping announced China's new climate targets personally, a positive gesture, but the targets brought little clarity on China’s future emission pathway. Targeting a 7-10% emission reduction by 2035 from an undefined "peak level" undersells China's current clean energy boom.
September 24, 2025 at 8:09 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
pekingmikenyt.bsky.social
China, for First Time, Vows to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions www.nytimes.com/live/2025/09...
U.N. General Assembly Updates: China, for First Time, Vows to Reduce Greenhouse Gas Emissions
www.nytimes.com
September 24, 2025 at 8:15 PM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
jonpiccini.bsky.social
Australia's universities are blighted by a "culture of consequence-free, rotten failure", according to the former chair of a senate inquiry examining governance at public universities. ... "There's no other sector in the country where failure is rewarded so handsomely and with so little scrutiny."
'Rotten' Australian university culture lashed in long-running senate inquiry
Australia's universities are blighted by a "culture of consequence-free, rotten failure", a senate inquiry has found.
www.abc.net.au
September 19, 2025 at 9:08 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
nickfeik.bsky.social
New:
A deep dive with some alarming new revelations on the silencing of one of the few remaining independent progressive voices in Australian media. Who killed Meanjin?
Who killed Meanjin?
And why won’t Melbourne University Publishing engage with efforts to save it?
www.crikey.com.au
September 16, 2025 at 5:59 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
nickfeik.bsky.social
The combination of bloodless corporate managerialism by uni execs and a do-nothing Albanese govt is killing Australia’s university sector.
University staff 'disheartened and demoralised' as thousands sacked
With the university sector in crisis, thousands face losing their jobs as unions blame poor management and students say they've lost hope.
www.abc.net.au
September 11, 2025 at 10:53 PM
china-geographies.bsky.social
It's hard to describe the depths of disillusionment in universities right now.

theconversation.com/universities...
Universities have lost their way, but cost-cutting and consultants are not the answer
Last week in Sydney, we saw a melodrama acted out that could stand in for the state of Australian universities more generally.
theconversation.com
September 10, 2025 at 4:09 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
laurimyllyvirta.bsky.social
Breaking: The value of China’s exports of clean energy technologies hit a new all-time record in July, passing the previous high from March 2023. China exported $18.4 bln worth of solar and wind power equipment, EVs and batteries during the month.
September 8, 2025 at 5:40 AM
Reposted by Sarah Rogers
damonyoung.com.au
What exactly happened to Meanjin? And why in this manner?

Some excellent observations (and questions) from @catrionamp.bsky.social over on @crikey.com.au: www.crikey.com.au/2025/09/08/m...
The decision to shut Meanjin shows a stunning lack of commitment to Christensen's vision of a vibrant local intellectual culture. To insist that it's just a rote financial decision belittles this history. And if it was just about the numbers, why wait until 2025? The horizon for literary funding has just brightened somewhat with the launch of Writing Australia. Does financial strife preclude closing the journal with some ceremony or even a little consultation with those who care about it? Usually when a cultural organisation experiences financial hardship, there's a call for donations, or a series of negotiations with other parties, or a weary effort to restructure. Quarterly periodicals become biannual; print publications go online. Were there really no other options for Meanjin? Are financial considerations going to guide the editorial program of the heavily subsidised MUP going forward?
September 8, 2025 at 3:55 AM