‘What a fucking waste’: outrage, evasive labour, and building care from the shadows with dumpster divers

Willow Ross is a cultural geographer and postgraduate researcher raised on the unceded lands of the Kaurna, Wurundjeri and Bunurong peoples. She is interested in the intersections of waste, activism, and creative methods. Her research asks how ordinary people come to politicise the things and places we throw away – and how they fight back.

Willow uses participatory and creative methods to draw out feminist geographies of place and waste. In the past, this has included urban walking tours, ‘dive-along’ interviews with dumpster divers, zine-making and collaging workshops, and community recipe book-making. She is guided by writing from stolen lands (so-called ‘Australia’) and writings on shadow places, shadow care, and informal economies of waste.

Willow is currently publishing research on dumpster diving in Naarm/Melbourne and beginning a her research project on anti-nuclear waste activism. She also teaches and works as a research associate in history and geography, asking how people are shaped by connections with urban and rural natures, more-than-human worlds, and how identities are mediated by power and resistance in place.

The event is part of the seminar Trash und anderer Mist und Müll [Trash and Other Garbage] held by Nanna Heidenreich (Transcultural Studies), which is organised in cooperation with the seminar Schmutz und Schund [Dirt and Trash] held by Thomas Waitz at the Institute for Theater, Film, and Media Studies at the University of Vienna.

Moderation: Nanna Heidenreich

Admission
The guest lecture is open to the public and welcomes anyone interested.