Latest posts
-
Disobedient Ecologies x ACAUDS
Urban Wetlands PhD researcher Holly O’Neil presented her paper ‘Disobedient Ecology: A productive and troublesome reframing of Sydney’s wetland entanglements’ at the 2025 ACAUDS conference.
-
10 years of Bangawarra
We’re thrilled to celebrate Bangawarra‘s 10 year anniversary this year. Bangawarra is the embodiment of a unique partnership led by D’harawal eora Knowledge Keeper Dr Shannon Foster and Wugulora academic Jo Paterson Kinniburgh. The Bangawarra team is the bridge between the wisdom of Ancestral knowledge and contemporary design practices, committed to the sustainable stewardship of
-
Swamposium 2025
In November 2025, the urban wetlands team ran the Swamposium, an opportunity for a small group of researchers and creative practitioners to spend the day together. Right in the middle of the construction site at Dank Street South Precinct, where the undergrounded waterways connect with Alexandra Canal, we met on Country as residents of the Open
-
Follow the Creek x UTS Creative Places
The urban wetlands team have worked with UTS’ ‘Creative Places’ grant to test out some of our research methodology and wayfinding design in place. Locating Ultimo’s long-gone Blackwattle Swamp, the team worked on a series of walks, AR activations, and place-based storytelling to resurface the creek that flowed (and still flows through the drains) to
-
Sharing with the Australian Marine Sciences Association
We joined a unique event hosted by the NSW Branch of the Australian Marine Sciences Association (AMSA) on the Hawkesbury. It brought together researchers, councils, government, and community organisations with a shared interest in estuaries. Over a delightful 2 hour river cruise down the Hawkesbury, attendees heard talks by researchers and industry leaders (including us),
-
‘Re-seeing the Swamp’ at the IGNCC, Brussels
PhD candidate on the Surfacing Urban Wetlands team, Holly O’Neil, presented her paper ‘Re-seeing the Swamp: how disobedient wildlife and graphic storytelling can re-present and re-surface the “unsightly” wetlands of Sydney’. Looking at drawing as method for re-seeing and re-approaching complex eco-narratives, O’Neil joined a panel of makers and theorists alike to talk about ‘Eco-comics’
-
‘Emergent Geographies’ Institute of Australian Geographers Conference 2025
This years Institute of Australian Geographers conference explored how ’emergent geographies’ acknowledges the ways challenges arise out of complex interactions and behaviours that require greater emphasis on interdisciplinary thinking and approaches. James Goodman and Ilaria Vanni, from the Surfacing Urban Wetlands team, presented at the conference. Goodman presented his paper, ‘Urban social movements and climate
-
‘Surfacing Urban Water’ at AusSTS
Alexandra Crosby, Sarah Jane Jones and Holly O’Neil, from the Surfacing Urban Wetlands team, hosted their interactive workshop ‘Surfacing Urban Water’ at the AusSTS ‘Signals and Noise’ conference 2025 in Melbourne. The workshop, reflected on how the visualisation of wetlands and waterways in cities fundamentally impacts how we imagine the urban environment and our role
-
Workshops in Sydney Park’s Wetlands
Holly O’Neil, our research assistant, shows off some of the results from our recent Sydney Park workshops as part of DrawSpace Gallery’s ‘Walk With Me’ exhibition. Showing layers of story, habitat, and history, the workshops invited participants to interact with the wetlands through drawing and noticing.
-
Visualising Urban Nature at Climate Action Week 2025
When is a tree not just a tree? and a drain not just a drain? When it’s a rain garden! Thanks to everyone who joined our Climate Action Week workshop on visualising urban ecologies. Climate Action comes in many different forms- the way we visualise nature in cities shapes how we see our role in
-
Lightning Talks: Creative Solutions for Sustainable Futures with UTS Visualisation Institute
On the 14th of March, 2025, Dr Sarah Jane Jones and Holly O’Neil will be taking part in a project share as part of the Visualisation Institute’s take on Sydney Climate Action Week at UTS, run by Zoë Sadokierski. The event, ‘Lightning Talks: Creative Solutions for Sustainable Futures with UTS Visualisation Institute’ explores different practices
-
Posthuman Summer Lab 2025
From the 10th to the 19th of February 2025, team members Dr. Sarah Jane Jones and Holly O’Neil travelled to Melbourne for the annual Posthuman Summer Lab. The interdisciplinary laboratory explores the intersections between posthuman methods and First Peoples knowledges, in consultation with Boonwurrung elder N’arweet Professor Carolyn Briggs AM, and Professor Rosi Braidotti. The lab itself
-
Visualise Urban Nature – Climate Action Week 2025
Join Ilaria Vanni, Sarah Jane Jones and Alexandra Crosby at UTS to consider how the visualisation of nature in cities fundamentally impacts how we imagine the urban environment and our role in caring for it. At this time of climate-driven environmental change, residents’ engagement with urban ecologies is vital. Yet, we generally think of nature
-
Sydney Summit 2025
On the 4th of February 2025, our research assistant, Holly O’Neil, attended the 2025 Sydney Summit held at the ICC Sydney. The annual summit’s focus this year was on the concept of time running out. “We are 25 years into the new century. We have 25 years left to achieve net zero. We are 25
-
New Article: Visually Communicating Artificial Urban Wetlands
Crosby, A. L., Vanni, I. ., Jones, S. J., & O’Neil, H. (2024). Visually Communicating Artificial Urban Wetlands. M/C Journal, 27(6). https://doi.org/10.5204/mcj.3113 Urban wetlands in Australia are under threat, yet they provide benefits for climate change mitigation, pollution reduction, habitat provision, and socioecological connection. In what is now known as Sydney’s inner south and inner west, wetlands
-
‘Walk With Me’ Exhibition at DrawSpace
We’re excited to announce that we will be showing some of our teams work at the upcoming ‘Walk With Me’ exhibition at DrawSpace from the 28th of November to the 22nd of December. The exhibition presents six projects that foreground preoccupations with and responses to habitat loss and species extinction, connection with urban ecologies, the
-
Yanma badhu (Dharug) – Water Walk
As part of the current exhibition at UNSW, ‘Living Waters: 75 years of water research at UNSW’, CI Ilaria Vanni and RA Holly O’Neil attended the ‘Yanma badhu (Dharug) – Water Walk’. A walk curated by Clare Britton and Troy Reid to invite audiences to consider “how water moves through and on Bidgigal and Kamaygal
-
Airspace Projects – The Catchment
Over at Airspace Gallery in Marrickville, we are part of the current exhibition and project ‘The Catchment‘, alongside Aunty Rhonda & Clare Britton, Asher Milgate, Danny Wild, and the Cooks River Alliance. The exhibition explores the significance of the Cooks River Catchment, as both “as an ecological reality and cultural community.” Utilising the teams photodiagrams
researching
- To advance new knowledge of how diverse political, economic and cultural forces have shaped and continue to shape waterscapes in two precincts of Sydney undergoing urban renewal by developing a series of ‘water stories’;
- To better understand how communities living in renewing urban spaces can engage with local ecological contexts and complex histories of change;
Visualising
- To document and analyse how visualising water flows can contribute to improved knowledge about cultural and ecological relationships in renewing urban spaces;
- To test and evaluate the applicability of the case studies and conceptual framework by engaging key stakeholders in each of the two precincts in a series of codesign multimodal workshops.
With more than 85% of Australians living in urban areas and unprecedented urban growth, wetlands’ environments and histories are increasingly rendered invisible and illegible. Creating effective means to address the visibility of these environments is particularly urgent as new precincts are planned on undergrounded Wetlands. This ARC Discovery Project ‘surfaces’ connected wetlands in different parts of Sydney.
urbanwetlands.online 