About

Image: N’arweet Professor Carolyn Briggs AM PhD, Dr Troy Innocent,
Professor Rosi Braidotti, and Dr Fiona Hillary

Posthuman Summer Lab is a Planetary Civics initiative led by Dr Fiona Hillary (RMIT School of Art / CAST) and Dr Troy Innocent (RMIT School of Design / future play lab). Generated through their engagement with the Utrecht Summer School and Indigenous knowledges, this lab situates posthuman methods in relation to the diversity of place and ways of being in the Asia-Pacific. It is focused on posthuman thinking engaged with regenerative practices situated in polycrisis and climate emergency — responding to these by translating posthuman knowledge into practice and collective action.

People

  • N’arweet Professor Carolyn Briggs AM PhD is a descendant of the First Peoples of Melbourne, the Yaluk-ut Weelam clan of the Boon Wurrung. Over the past fourty years, Carolyn has worked with diverse communities on Indigenous language restoration, and advocacy for Indigenous culture and heritage. She is currently remapping Naarm as part of RMIT future play lab’s ARC Linkage Project Play about Place.

  • Professor Rosi Braidotti is a feminist Continental philosopher and Distinguished University Professor Emerita at Utrecht University in the Netherlands. Throughout her work, Braidotti asserts and demonstrates the importance of combining theoretical concerns with a serious commitment to producing socially and politically relevant scholarship that contributes to making a difference in the world. 

  • Dr Fiona Hillary is a Naarm/Melbourne based artist/academic working in the public realm. Employing nuanced relational and attunement methodologies cultivated through her Posthuman Publics framework, Hillary's work emerges in dialogue with diverse loci, ranging from detritus-rich littoral margins to post-industrial palimpsests and intricate urban assemblages.  

    Fiona is a founding collaborator in Ocean Lab, a Platform ARTS initiative, with Marine Scientist Prue Francis (Deakin University) and Sound Artist Vicki Hallett. Fiona is a member of the international collective, the Algae Society. She is a founding member of Ocean Research Climate Action (ORCA) and Co-Lead of the Australian Posthuman Summer Laboratory at RMIT University.   

  • Dr Troy Innocent connects people and place through urban play. Working with the city as a material, his work traverses the analog and digital spaces we live in. His approach to 'reworlding' is speculative design in action as it reconnects, reimagines and regenerates the creative, cultural and social diversity of our world. Innocent is creator of 64 Ways of Being, an innovative augmented reality platform for listening, playing and exploring cities through new eyes, and leads a three-year study on post-pandemic impacts of creative placemaking. Innocent is currently based at RMIT University where he is Director of the future play lab in the School of Design.