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Kurt Iveson

@kurtiveson.bsky.social

430 followers 180 following 31 posts

Sydney-based urban geographer + unionist

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Political science 24%

Sociology 15%

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 3d

"Kids, back when I did my honours, there was no Factiva, just days/weeks of scrolling through microfilm" ... says me every time an honours student does a newspaper search! (Which I am sure is very annoying...) What did the zoomers make of the format and the process?

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Environmental Politics @environmentalpol.bsky.social · 8d

New article!

Acts of energy citizenship in community solar gardens by Judita Hudson, @kurtiveson.bsky.social & Sophie Webber.

doi.org/10.1080/0964...

ABSTRACT
Characterised as sites of energy citizenship, community energy projects help people locked out of the corporate green energy and rooftop solar markets to participate in the renewable energy transition. However, the environmental politics of community energy projects cannot be assumed. Drawing from document analysis and semi-structured interviews with community energy organisers, advocates and participants, we compare two projects in New South Wales, Australia. We show that community energy projects accommodate different forms of energy citizenship, with implications for their ability to address existing exclusions and injustices of a market-led energy transition. We demonstrate that community energy projects have struggled to enhance low-income households’ access to renewable energy while simultaneously facilitating democratic participation in energy governance. In identifying the challenges that these projects have faced, we contribute to debates about how community energy projects can realise a just transition to renewable energy.

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 9d

australian street style, 1973

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

NTEU @nteunion.bsky.social · 11d

AI is changing the way we work, and reshaping higher education.
It must be introduced fairly, ethically & with real consultation so staff aren’t left behind.
How is AI being used in your workplace?
Share your story: nteu.info/aistory

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 20d

Congrats Brian, awesome news!

Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Sep 3

More and more and more, as Frezzoz puts it! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...

Adam Tooze · Trouble Transitioning: What energy transition?

An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but...

www.lrb.co.uk

Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Aug 31

Looks awesome, congrats! Will read how you're thinking metabolism and municipalism in relation with great interest.

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Reposted by Brian Doucet, Kurt Iveson

RC21-ISA @rc21.bsky.social · Aug 27

Call for sessions for the RC21 conference in Vienna, 20-22 July, 2026. Deadline for submissions: 6th of October 2025. rc21-vienna2026.org/call-for-ses... #urban #sociology

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Matt Ryan @mattdjryan.bsky.social · Aug 20

50 Years of Political Economy. Some fantastic articles, but only one has brought me to tears.

@kurtiveson.bsky.social's generous contribution takes time to dwell on the PhD theses of @natashaheenan.bsky.social, Anna Sturman, and myself.

@ppesydney.bsky.social

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www.ppesydney.net/jape-issues/...

Issue 95 (Winter 2025) - 50 Years of Political Economy in Australia - Progress in Political Economy (PPE)

SPECIAL ISSUE – 50 YEARS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN AUSTRALIA Complete issue JAPE95 complete Contents The Editors: Editorial Voices of Former Students of Political Economy: Anthony Albanese; Thalia Antho...

www.ppesydney.net

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Reposted by Iain Davidson, Steven French, Ariadne Vromen , and 3 more Iain Davidson, Steven French, Ariadne Vromen, Anne Norton, Erin O’Donnell, Kurt Iveson

Jenny Frecklington-Jones #IStandWithWatermelon🍉🍉 @joneshowdareyou.bsky.social · Aug 3

It is massive. Thanks to Peter Deppeler on Twitter for the footage. #GazaGenocide #MarchForHumanity

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Aug 2

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

NSW supreme court rules in favour of pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge

Palestine Action Group claims up to 50,000 people will take part in the march which is scheduled to take place on Sunday

www.theguardian.com

Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Jul 16

Re-posting in the wake of this week's news that YIMBY Melbourne has secured a $760,000 grant from US-based Open Philanthropy to progress their housing agenda locally...
arena.org.au/yimby-or-nim...

YIMBY or NIMBY? Both are worse… – Arena

Critical * Radical * Australia * Earth

arena.org.au

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Jul 9

If you haven't already, please sign this petition in support of awesome sociologists at Macquarie Uni whose discipline is about to be decimated: www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/sa...

SAVE SOCIOLOGY AT MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY

We urge Macquarie University management to reverse this decision and preserve the vital disciplines of Sociology and Politics. Sociology has a key place in the social sciences as the broadest and mos...

www.megaphone.org.au

Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Jun 26

Job Alert! 3-year Post-Doc to work with me and Marilu Melo Zurita on our "Wiring Australian Cities" project. It's an ARC-funded infrastructure geographies project 'following the infrastructure' of urban telecommunications across time and space. Details👇 usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA...

Postdoctoral Research Associate - Wiring Australian Cities

Full time, 3-year fixed term position, located on the Camperdown Campus at the School of Geosciences Opportunity to work with a team of ARC-funded researchers seeking to generate new knowledge about A...

usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Jun 13

We had B.U.G.A.U.P. here in Sydney hacking billboards in the 1980s, now generally lauded by public health professionals for their role in banning tobacco advertising in public space. I especially love their stories of technical innovations to reach inaccessible spots www.bugaup.org

BUGA-UP

www.bugaup.org

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · May 11

Empty for over four years during a housing crisis ... nice job Sydney Uni. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...

Why this grand building on Sydney’s busiest street is derelict

Sydney University’s International House could accommodate 200 students, but amid a rental affordability crisis, it sits abandoned.

www.smh.com.au

Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Fordham Faculty United @fordhamfacultyu.bsky.social · May 5

A timely reminder by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social of the necessary ingredients to build the powerful and sustained movements we need today: the power to withhold and the power to promise.

Why Protests Should Be Promises

Modern movements that aim to advance racial equity should withhold and promise, rather than perform, writes Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò

time.com

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Working Class History @workingclasshistory.com · Apr 22

This #EarthDay, hear how working-class Aussies fought to save the environment. In the 1970s, construction workers + locals stopped billions of dollars of destructive development with Green Bans. Listen to their story: workingclasshistory.com/podcast/e47-...

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Apr 21

Open letter signed by 60+ researchers on prioritising household clean energy over nuclear energy in current Australian election: www.ppesydney.net/open-letter-...

Open Letter: The Coalition’s Nuclear Plan Doesn’t Add Up—Spend the Money on Household Clean Energy Instead - Progress in Political Economy (PPE)

In the wake of the Government's announcement of its Cheaper Home Batteries Program, 60 Australian economists have signed a letter comparing the economic consequences of pursuing nuclear energy against...

www.ppesydney.net

Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Environmental Politics @environmentalpol.bsky.social · Mar 24

New article!

Prefiguring multispecies justice, by Anna Sturman, @danycelermajer.bsky.social, @freyagrace.bsky.social and
@blancheverlie.bsky.social.

This article considers the ways critical feminist thought and multispecies justice intersect.

doi.org/10.1080/0964...

full title: Prefiguring multispecies justice: how communities are challenging and transfiguring care, labour, and belonging in the midst of climate catastrophe.
abstract: Formal disaster management plans and institutions are systematically neglectful of the impacts of climate-change-exacerbated disasters on animals, with few exceptions. While animals’ exclusion in this context is consistent with their status as property, or parts of ecosystems with no independent ethical value, differently located humans and animals contest this status and the types of institutions that follow from it. In this article, we draw on research conducted with Australian communities whose witness of animals’ suffering during the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, and the failure of state-led disaster responses to attend to this, led them to autonomously organise to care for wild and domesticated animals. Their efforts have been largely classified, and dismissed, as volunteerism and (feminised) care...

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Reposted by Jenny Pickerill, Kurt Iveson, Sébastien Chailleux

Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social · Mar 3

Why are minerals so central to geopolitics? How green are electric cars? Why is anti-mining protest increasing? Can the inequalities of the global economy be transformed?

I tackle these topics in my book EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism

👀 September 2025 @wwnorton.bsky.social

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Mar 2

Perfect placement of 3 items on Sydney Uni's staff page today: one celebrating Mardi Gras (which started with a militant 1978 protest), one celebrating the Freedom Ride of 1965, one on new Campus Access Policy which curtails protest on campus. Protest is great as long as it's in the past, I guess?

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Feb 28

Thanks for this, and for the inspiration! Only about a decade or two behind you in realising how fascinating and important this stuff is...! :-)

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Feb 28

Big thanks to Kathy Mee and the team at Australian Geographer for their support and for publishing the piece!

Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Feb 28

We focus in particular on a story from the archives about the initial efforts to 'underground' telephone wires in the 1890s, and how the conflict over that process - especially its labour and its impacts on the surface - have shaped urban governance ever since.

Dozens of telephone wires above the street in colonial Sydney

Technical diagram of early 'telephone tunnels' in Sydney

Map of early telephone tunnel network in Sydney from 1910s

Workers in a telephone tunnel, Sydney 1920s

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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · Feb 28

New paper from me and Marilu Melo Zurita about the urban geopolitics of telecommunications infrastructure in Sydney. As @shannonmattern.bsky.social says, there's "multiple ways to wire the wired city": we tell the story of how this went down (literally!) in Sydney. doi.org/10.1080/0004...

The ups and downs of telecommunications infrastructure: the urban geopolitics of communications cabling in colonial Sydney

As telecommunications networks have facilitated the outward and upward expansion of cities, their development has also involved downward expansion into the urban underground. The making and remakin...

doi.org

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Jewish Council of Australia @jewishcouncilau.bsky.social · Feb 27

We spoke to @australia.theguardian.com about the dangers of the new antisemitism definition and its chilling on academic speech about Palestine. By labelling Palestinian political expressions as antisemitic, it will institutionalise anti-Palestinian racism.

www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...

Australian universities’ new antisemitism definition has some academics worried. Here’s why

Warnings decision could have ‘chilling’ effect and limit scope of education on Middle East

www.theguardian.com

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Dr Liz Allen @drdemography.com · Feb 13

This kind of nepotism and cronyism in higher education has got to stop. Gobsmackingly dumb move from the new VC whose university is plagued with historical governance issues. University managers have got to stop ruining higher education. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02...

Bill Shorten's $300k speechwriter follows him to University of Canberra

A speechwriter hired on a $600,000, two-year contract to write speeches for Services Australia and its minister Bill Shorten, has joined him at his new job at the University of Canberra.

www.abc.net.au

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Reposted by Duncan McLaren, Kurt Iveson

Natasha Heenan @natashaheenan.bsky.social · Feb 11

My PhD on geoengineering, Producing the Climate, is now available to read via USyd library! Huge thanks to my wonderful supervisors @garethbryant.bsky.social and @kurtiveson.bsky.social as well as my generous examiners @geoffmann.bsky.social and Chantel Carr. ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/...

ses.library.usyd.edu.au

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson

Lori Emerson @loriemerson.net · Feb 10

is a bit crushed to learn Anthology Editions will shut down July 1. they are still publishing #othernetworks but instead of a print run of 4000, they'll print 1000 with extremely limited promo/marketing...thems are the breaks, I guess and I know there are much worse things in the world right now 1/3

table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook

At long last, I can share the final table of contents for Other Networks: A Radical Technology Sourcebook (forthcoming from Anthology Editions…sometime…soon!)–a coffee table book …

loriemerson.net

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