On today's episode, we welcome Dr. Catherine Phillips who joins us from Te Whare Wānanga o Waitaha/The University of Canterbury in Aotearoa/New Zealand along with Dr. Elizabeth Straughan from the University of Melbourne, and Dr. Jennifer Atchison from the University of Wollongong in Australia. Their shared research interests centre around human relationships with nature, in particular how the nonhuman world shapes human lives.

Today we’ll be discussing their article: Finding Comfort and Conviviality with Urban Trees; published in the journal of cultural geographies in 2022.

The article develops an understanding of more-than-human comfort and conviviality by analysing emails sent to trees in the City of Melbourne, Australia, sharing personal dilemmas, jokes, poetry, confessions, political concerns, and more. The messages provide an opportunity to consider how trees become foregrounded in people’s everyday lives.

Artwork: ⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠https://www.etsy.com/shop/EmilyHIllustrations?ref=search_shop_redirect⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠⁠

Music: Ryan Kinnear, Reid Cai, and Becca Mayers