Rate My Professor Sally Babidge

Associate Professor Sally Babidge is a sociocultural anthropologist in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, serving as Director of the Bachelor of Social Science and the Master of Development Practice program. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy and a Postgraduate Diploma in Education from James Cook University. Her research examines the social and cultural dimensions of ecological and economic change, particularly impacts from the extractives industry on Indigenous Peoples in Chile and Australia. Current projects address political, practical, and epistemological challenges in identifying harms from large-scale mining, especially in critical minerals extraction, and groundwater-related community futures. Babidge employs ethnographic methodologies emphasizing sustained, engaged, and ethical relationships, contributing to political and environmental anthropology, decolonial and feminist theory. She teaches undergraduate anthropology courses, multidisciplinary theory and methodology for Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences Honours students, and supervises higher degree research students on ecological futures, water governance, territorial relations, and water justice for Indigenous Peoples.

Babidge has authored key publications including the monograph Groundwater Politics: Advanced Extractivism and Slow Resistance (Berghahn Books, 2025), Aboriginal Family and the State (Ashgate, 2010), and Written True Not Gammon: A History of Aboriginal Charters Towers (Charters Towers Regional Council, 2007). Notable journal articles encompass 'Sustaining Ignorance: The Uncertainties of Groundwater and its Extraction in the Salar de Atacama, Northern Chile' (Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2019), 'Neoextractivism and Indigenous Water Ritual in Salar de Atacama, Chile' (Latin American Perspectives, 2018), and 'Negotiated Agreements, Indigenous Peoples and Extractive Industry in the Salar de Atacama, Chile' (Development and Change, 2023). She has secured grants such as an ARC Discovery Project (2010-2012) on mining companies and intercultural negotiation in northern Chile, and Queensland Performing Arts Trust funding for cultural mapping (2019-2020). Her work advances understandings of water politics, extractive capitalism, and Indigenous agency, with contributions to environmental anthropology and political ecology through engaged research partnerships.