Associate Professor Sally Babidge

Sally Babidge is a sociocultural anthropologist in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland and current Director of the Bachelor of Social Science and Master of Development Practice program. Her research is focussed on the social and cultural dimensions of ecological and economic change, especially that driven by the extractives industry and experienced by Indigenous Peoples in Chile and Australia. Current projects consider the political, practical and epistemological problems of 'seeing' harms from large scale mining projects, especially in the 'critical minerals' extraction boom (see a recent short FILM made with research collaborators in Chile), and in relation to groundwater and associated community futures. Ethnographic methodologies and theory that rely on sustained, engaged, and ethical relationships characterise her practice in Australia and Chile and resulting publications.

She has recently published a monograph, "Groundwater Politics: Advanced Extractivism and Slow Resistance" (Berghahn, 2025).

She designs courses for and teaches in the undergraduate major in anthropology, multidisciplinary teaching in theory and methodology for Humanities and Social Science Faculty Honours students. HDR students in anthropology and mixed social science undertake research under her supervision on questions associated with ecological futures, especially water, territorial relations, and in areas of political and environmental anthropology, decolonial, feminist and other critical foci of theory and methodology.