Out there, back then: Chronotopes of presence and absence in Outback Australia

This project examines the ways in which different groups of people narrate time, place, and belonging in Outback Australia. In particular, it engages with questions of how people perceive and express histories and environments in Outback Australia, how these perceptions and narratives are used in negotiations of emplaced belonging, and how such negotiations are mediated across gender, race, and class. This research pays particular attention to the trope of ‘the frontier’ and modernist ideals of closer settlement in Outback Australia and its material, affective, and narrative legacies. The research engages with settler colonial violence, ongoing contestation over land and resources, and uncertain futures in relation to climate change and failed modernist dreams. Research is conducted using ethnographic methods of participant observation, narrative analysis, and archival research.