Rate My Professor Hedda Askland

Hedda Askland is an Associate Professor in Anthropology in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle, Australia. A Norwegian social anthropologist, she holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Master of Social Science from the University of Newcastle. Her research focuses on displacement and rupture in contexts of significant socio-political and environmental change. Early work centered on exile, identity, and home in the East Timorese diaspora in Australia, examining how homeland conflicts influence diasporic practices and translocal engagements. In her early post-doctoral phase, Askland applied anthropological perspectives to architecture, design, and construction management, sparking interest in the impacts of large-scale infrastructure on rural communities and forms of invisible displacement.

Her principal contributions are in the anthropology of mining and displacement. Since 2015, she has undertaken ethnographic fieldwork in mining-affected communities in rural New South Wales, exploring interactions between multinational mining operations and local populations. Key theoretical engagements include temporality, materiality, class, inequality, proximity, reciprocity, globalization, and accelerated change. She critiques conventional displacement narratives, proposing 'displacement in place'—a sense of displacement arising from alterations to place's biophysical, social, and ontological dimensions without physical relocation. Askland extends her scholarship to energy transitions, post-mining landscapes, and climate change, including an Australian Research Council-funded project on mining voids and affective dimensions of post-mining futures. Notable publications encompass co-authored books Creativity, Design and Education: Theories, Positions and Challenges (2010, with Williams, Ostwald) and Assessing Creativity: Supporting Learning in Architecture and Design (2012, with Ostwald, Williams); chapters like "Extractive Inequalities: Coal, Land-Acquisition and Class in Rural New South Wales, Australia" (2018, with Bunn) and "Collective Emotions and Resilient Regional Communities" (2022, with Duffy et al.); and "Displacement as Condition: A Refugee, a Farmer and the Teleology of Life" (2020). She received the Vice-Chancellor's Early Career Research and Innovation Excellence Award (2016). Her applied research informs policy: as expert witness in the Rocky Hill Coal Mine Land and Environment Court case, contributing to its rejection on social impact and climate grounds; advising on development applications; and collaborating with communities, governments, NGOs on Anthropocene issues.