Margaret Somerville – författare

This is an invitation to readers to ponder universal questions about human relations with rivers and water for the precarious times of the Anthropocene. The book asks how humans can learn through sensory embodied encounters with local waterways that shape the architecture of cities and make global connections with environments everywhere.The book considers human becomings with urban waterways to address some of the major conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene, through stories of trauma and healing, environmental activism, and encounters with the living beings that inhabit waterways. Its unique contribution is to bring together Australian Aboriginal knowledges with contemporary western, new materialist, posthuman and Deleuzean philosophies, foregrounding how visual, creative and artistic forms can assist us in thinking beyond the constraints of western thought to enable other modes of being and knowing the world for an unpredictable future. Riverlands of the Anthropocene will be of particular interest to those studying the Anthropocene through the lenses of environmental humanities, environmental education, philosophy, ecofeminism and cultural studies.

Water in a Dry Land is a story of research about water as a source of personal and cultural meaning. The site of this exploration is the iconic river system which forms the networks of natural and human landscapes of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In the current geological era of human induced climate change, the desperate plight of the system of waterways has become an international phenomenon, a symbol of the unsustainable ways we relate to water globally. The Murray-Darling Basin extends west of the Great Dividing Range that separates the densely populated east coast of Australia from the sparsely populated inland. Aboriginal peoples continue to inhabit the waterways of the great artesian basin and pass on their cultural stories and practices of water, albeit in changing forms. A key question informing the book is: What can we learn about water from the oldest continuing culture inhabiting the world’s driest continent? In the process of responding to this question a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers formed to work together in a contact zone of cultural difference within an emergent arts-based ethnography.Photo essays of the artworks and their landscapes offer a visual accompaniment to the text on the Routledge Innovative Ethnography Series website, http://www.innovativeethnographies.net/. This book is perfect for courses in environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and qualitative methods.

Water in a Dry Land is a story of research about water as a source of personal and cultural meaning. The site of this exploration is the iconic river system which forms the networks of natural and human landscapes of the Murray-Darling Basin, Australia. In the current geological era of human induced climate change, the desperate plight of the system of waterways has become an international phenomenon, a symbol of the unsustainable ways we relate to water globally. The Murray-Darling Basin extends west of the Great Dividing Range that separates the densely populated east coast of Australia from the sparsely populated inland. Aboriginal peoples continue to inhabit the waterways of the great artesian basin and pass on their cultural stories and practices of water, albeit in changing forms. A key question informing the book is: What can we learn about water from the oldest continuing culture inhabiting the world’s driest continent? In the process of responding to this question a team of Indigenous and non-Indigenous researchers formed to work together in a contact zone of cultural difference within an emergent arts-based ethnography.Photo essays of the artworks and their landscapes offer a visual accompaniment to the text on the Routledge Innovative Ethnography Series website, http://www.innovativeethnographies.net/. This book is perfect for courses in environmental sociology, environmental anthropology, and qualitative methods.

This is an invitation to readers to ponder universal questions about human relations with rivers and water for the precarious times of the Anthropocene. The book asks how humans can learn through sensory embodied encounters with local waterways that shape the architecture of cities and make global connections with environments everywhere.The book considers human becomings with urban waterways to address some of the major conceptual challenges of the Anthropocene, through stories of trauma and healing, environmental activism, and encounters with the living beings that inhabit waterways. Its unique contribution is to bring together Australian Aboriginal knowledges with contemporary western, new materialist, posthuman and Deleuzean philosophies, foregrounding how visual, creative and artistic forms can assist us in thinking beyond the constraints of western thought to enable other modes of being and knowing the world for an unpredictable future. Riverlands of the Anthropocene will be of particular interest to those studying the Anthropocene through the lenses of environmental humanities, environmental education, philosophy, ecofeminism and cultural studies.

The author, Margaret Somerville, collected the insights contained within the present volume over a year of walking the ridge daily, linking globally significant scientific findings on the origins and deep time evolution of landscapes and living things to her own intensely observed, embodied interactions with rocks, trees, plants, birds, weather and the seasons, informed by decades of work with Indigenous researchers. It draws on the formation of Gondwana Land and how the planet came to be when life emerged from the sea and trees in symbiosis with fungi. The Gondwana forests contained the oldest trees and plants on the planet and the first song birds in the world that are said to be the beginning of music and song. It also addresses seasonal change. This book is a valuable resource for any course that aims to address global issues and bring hope to the global movement of young people facing climate change in their local places.

First Prize in Public health in the 2017 BMA Medical Book AwardsPublic Health and Epidemiology at a Glance is a highly visual introduction to the key concepts and major themes of population health. With comprehensive coverage of all the core topics covered at medical school, it helps students understand the determinants of health and their study, from personal lifestyle choices and behaviour, to environmental, social and economic factors.This fully updated new edition features:• More coverage of audit and quality improvement techniques• Brand new sections on maternal and child health, and health of older people• New chapters on social determinants of health and guideline development• Expanded self-assessment materialThis accessible guide is an invaluable resource for medical and healthcare students, junior doctors, and those preparing for a career in epidemiology and public health

Through focusing on children's sustainability learning this book examines how school education can address the current environmental problems. It explores children's responses in literacy and language, arts-based approaches, and indigenous studies as well as scientific pedagogies to provide a unique insight into how children learn.

In recent year, efforts to understand learning for and throughout working life have moved away from a focus on workplace training to concerns about learning as a component and outcome of engaging in work and work-related activities and interactions. This shift acknowledges a broader set of workplace factors that shape workers’ learning and development. Yet equally, it acknowledges that this learning through engagement is also necessarily shaped by the diverse ways that individuals elect to engage or participate in workplace activities. Central here is the issue of individuals’ subjectivity and how this is shaped by but shapes engagement in work and, therefore, what learning flows from their participation. It is in considering the relations among subjectivity, learning and work that it is possible to advance both the conceptual and procedural bases for understanding learning through and for working life. Moreover, the focus on relations among subjectivity, work and learning represents a point of convergence for diverse disciplinary traditions and practices that are provided by the book’s contributors. In this way, the contributions represent something of the emerging perspectives that are elaborating the complex relations among subjectivity, work and learning, and circumstances in which they are played out.

What if prayer is not about having the right words, but about noticing the sacred in washing dishes, the rhythm of breath, or the quiet sharing of tea with a friend?Margaret Somerville invites us to rediscover prayer as a way of living, not a formula to get right. With wisdom drawn from her Celtic roots, lifelong pilgrimage to the Isle of Iona, and deep engagement with Buddhist, Hindu, Muslim and Jewish traditions, she reimagines prayer as presence in the ordinary. From her granny's morning ritual of lighting the coal fire to the contemplative kneading of bread, she shows how holiness shimmers in the small gestures of daily life.Through six pathways - Sacred Space, Release, Naming, Wilderness, Nourishment and Peace - the author offers gentle practices and stories that carry us beyond unanswered petitions into a deeper communion with self, others and the divine mystery. Both memoir and spiritual guide, this book speaks to seekers who are weary of rigid traditions or silence from heaven, and to all who long for prayer that nourishes rather than disappoints.With a foreword by Kaitlin Curtice.

Reading 'Body/Landscape Journals' is like falling through a fault-line, as we respond to poesis, both as poetry and as thought creation. From Pine Gap Women's Peace Camp and interactions with women across Australia, Margaret Somerville conjures up the landscape inhabited by both Indigenous and white women in the places they call home: the mountains, the desert, the tropics. A thoughtful challenge of all that we think, concluding with reflections on the architecture of love.