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Kurt Iveson

@kurtiveson.bsky.social
465 followers 180 following 38 posts

Sydney-based urban geographer + unionist

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Reposted by Kurt Iveson
Amanda Tattersall @amandatattersall.bsky.social · 30/04/2026
Seven years in the making – @kurtiveson.bsky.social and I are thrilled to share that our book, People Power in Cities, is about to be released with Oxford University Press - out in print 3 June 2026. academic.oup.com/book/62529
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 03/04/2026
www.abc.net.au/news/2026-04...
abc.net.au
Fuel crisis highlights gaps in Western Sydney's public transport network
Mount Druitt residents would happily use public transport to avoid high fuel prices, but say it is not an option due to unreliable services.
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David J Bradley @davidjbradley.bsky.social · 11/02/2026
What's so amazing about Jim Henson as a puppeteer is that he could literally be explaining that Kermit is made out of felt and ping pong balls and yet Kermit still feels alive the whole time he's doing it
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 07/01/2026
It is fantastic isn't it?! Local brush turkey not as easily impressed though... 😀
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Ketan Joshi @ketanjoshi.co · 12/12/2025
New CEFC report into data centres in Aus - shows that the worst-case scenario seem to be about 10x to 15x worse than the potential best-case scenario Also frames DCs as "critical infrastructure". Is AI (84% of new DC growth) as 'critical' as a hospital or transport? www.cefc.com.au/insights/mar...
a chart showing data centre emissions by scenario
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Ben Eltham @beneltham.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
No notes
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 19/11/2025
Another egregious example of uni wage theft. As claimant says: "our university encourages students to pursue Master's programs in Psychology and Social Work, and then undervalues those same qualifications in their own staff." Go @nteuvictoria.bsky.social newshub.medianet.com.au/2025/11/unio...
newshub.medianet.com.au
Union takes RMIT to court over $1 million wage theft from counsellors - News Hub
The National Tertiary Education Union has launched Federal Court action against RMIT University over allegations it underpaid student counsellors for at least a decade, with affected staff potentially...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 27/10/2025
"clawing shared governance back can help ensure that universities aren’t converted into profit centers for private equity firms. It seems plausible, even likely, that faculty unions will have some success building power off of the growing resentment of ubiquitous AI and its slop products."
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 26/10/2025
Incredible personal reflections on organising from @alybatt.bsky.social Spadework www.nplusonemag.com/issue-34/pol...
nplusonemag.com
Spadework | Alyssa Battistoni
Your job as an organizer was to find out what it was that people wanted to be different in their lives, and then to persuade people that it mattered whether they decided to do something about it. This...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 22/10/2025
Straight onto next year's Ludic Geographies reading list, thanks Alison! youtu.be/B0a3IPEZLAI?...
youtu.be
Classic Sesame Street - Around, Through and Over
YouTube video by Sesame Maniac
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 15/10/2025
So much ill shit going on across the world ... but am also feeling devastated waking up to learn that D'Angelo has passed. Voodoo one of those records for me, if the not *the* record. RIP. youtu.be/_RLP0xAjdJU?...
youtu.be
D'Angelo - Africa (Demo)
YouTube video by Music For Listening
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 07/10/2025
"Kids, back when I did my honours, there was no Factiva, just days/weeks of scrolling through microfilm" ... says me every time an honours student does a newspaper search! (Which I am sure is very annoying...) What did the zoomers make of the format and the process?
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derek guy @dieworkwear.bsky.social · 01/10/2025
australian street style, 1973
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Environmental Politics @environmentalpol.bsky.social · 02/10/2025
New article! Acts of energy citizenship in community solar gardens by Judita Hudson, @kurtiveson.bsky.social & Sophie Webber. doi.org/10.1080/0964...
ABSTRACT
Characterised as sites of energy citizenship, community energy projects help people locked out of the corporate green energy and rooftop solar markets to participate in the renewable energy transition. However, the environmental politics of community energy projects cannot be assumed. Drawing from document analysis and semi-structured interviews with community energy organisers, advocates and participants, we compare two projects in New South Wales, Australia. We show that community energy projects accommodate different forms of energy citizenship, with implications for their ability to address existing exclusions and injustices of a market-led energy transition. We demonstrate that community energy projects have struggled to enhance low-income households’ access to renewable energy while simultaneously facilitating democratic participation in energy governance. In identifying the challenges that these projects have faced, we contribute to debates about how community energy projects can realise a just transition to renewable energy.
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NTEU @nteunion.bsky.social · 29/09/2025
AI is changing the way we work, and reshaping higher education. It must be introduced fairly, ethically & with real consultation so staff aren’t left behind. How is AI being used in your workplace? Share your story: nteu.info/aistory
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 20/09/2025
Congrats Brian, awesome news!
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 03/09/2025
More and more and more, as Frezzoz puts it! www.lrb.co.uk/the-paper/v4...
lrb.co.uk
Adam Tooze · Trouble Transitioning: What energy transition?
An honest account of energy history would conclude not that energy transitions were a regular feature of the past, but...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 31/08/2025
Looks awesome, congrats! Will read how you're thinking metabolism and municipalism in relation with great interest.
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RC21-ISA @rc21.bsky.social · 27/08/2025
Call for sessions for the RC21 conference in Vienna, 20-22 July, 2026. Deadline for submissions: 6th of October 2025. rc21-vienna2026.org/call-for-ses... #urban #sociology
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Matt Ryan @mattdjryan.bsky.social · 21/08/2025
50 Years of Political Economy. Some fantastic articles, but only one has brought me to tears. @kurtiveson.bsky.social's generous contribution takes time to dwell on the PhD theses of @natashaheenan.bsky.social, Anna Sturman, and myself. @ppesydney.bsky.social 1/ www.ppesydney.net/jape-issues/...
ppesydney.net
Issue 95 (Winter 2025) - 50 Years of Political Economy in Australia - Progress in Political Economy (PPE)
SPECIAL ISSUE – 50 YEARS OF POLITICAL ECONOMY IN AUSTRALIA Complete issue JAPE95 complete Contents The Editors: Editorial Voices of Former Students of Political Economy: Anthony Albanese; Thalia Antho...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 02/08/2025
www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
NSW supreme court rules in favour of pro-Palestine march across Sydney Harbour Bridge
Palestine Action Group claims up to 50,000 people will take part in the march which is scheduled to take place on Sunday
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 16/07/2025
Re-posting in the wake of this week's news that YIMBY Melbourne has secured a $760,000 grant from US-based Open Philanthropy to progress their housing agenda locally... arena.org.au/yimby-or-nim...
arena.org.au
YIMBY or NIMBY? Both are worse… – Arena
Critical * Radical * Australia * Earth
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Job Alert! 3-year Post-Doc to work with me and Marilu Melo Zurita on our "Wiring Australian Cities" project. It's an ARC-funded infrastructure geographies project 'following the infrastructure' of urban telecommunications across time and space. Details👇 usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA...
usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate - Wiring Australian Cities
Full time, 3-year fixed term position, located on the Camperdown Campus at the School of Geosciences Opportunity to work with a team of ARC-funded researchers seeking to generate new knowledge about A...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 09/07/2025
If you haven't already, please sign this petition in support of awesome sociologists at Macquarie Uni whose discipline is about to be decimated: www.megaphone.org.au/petitions/sa...
megaphone.org.au
SAVE SOCIOLOGY AT MACQUARIE UNIVERSITY
We urge Macquarie University management to reverse this decision and preserve the vital disciplines of Sociology and Politics. Sociology has a key place in the social sciences as the broadest and mos...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 26/06/2025
Job Alert! 3-year Post-Doc to work with me and Marilu Melo Zurita on our "Wiring Australian Cities" project. It's an ARC-funded infrastructure geographies project 'following the infrastructure' of urban telecommunications across time and space. Details👇 usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com/USYD_EXTERNA...
usyd.wd105.myworkdayjobs.com
Postdoctoral Research Associate - Wiring Australian Cities
Full time, 3-year fixed term position, located on the Camperdown Campus at the School of Geosciences Opportunity to work with a team of ARC-funded researchers seeking to generate new knowledge about A...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 13/06/2025
We had B.U.G.A.U.P. here in Sydney hacking billboards in the 1980s, now generally lauded by public health professionals for their role in banning tobacco advertising in public space. I especially love their stories of technical innovations to reach inaccessible spots www.bugaup.org
bugaup.org
BUGA-UP
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Thea Riofrancos @triofrancos.bsky.social · 03/03/2025
Why are minerals so central to geopolitics? How green are electric cars? Why is anti-mining protest increasing? Can the inequalities of the global economy be transformed? I tackle these topics in my book EXTRACTION: The Frontiers of Green Capitalism 👀 September 2025 @wwnorton.bsky.social
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 11/05/2025
Empty for over four years during a housing crisis ... nice job Sydney Uni. www.smh.com.au/national/nsw...
smh.com.au
Why this grand building on Sydney’s busiest street is derelict
Sydney University’s International House could accommodate 200 students, but amid a rental affordability crisis, it sits abandoned.
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Fordham Faculty United @fordhamfacultyu.bsky.social · 05/05/2025
A timely reminder by @olufemiotaiwo.bsky.social of the necessary ingredients to build the powerful and sustained movements we need today: the power to withhold and the power to promise.
time.com
Why Protests Should Be Promises
Modern movements that aim to advance racial equity should withhold and promise, rather than perform, writes Olúfẹ́mi Táíwò
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Kimberley C @ktcita.bsky.social · 23/04/2025
Looking fwd to this podcast about the Green Bans. Something I learned reading @kurtiveson.bsky.social and Meredith Burgmann (who is on this podcast) and others was that it wasn’t all about stopping development, but often pausing it (thru strikes) to make time for the community to take part
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 21/04/2025
Open letter signed by 60+ researchers on prioritising household clean energy over nuclear energy in current Australian election: www.ppesydney.net/open-letter-...
ppesydney.net
Open Letter: The Coalition’s Nuclear Plan Doesn’t Add Up—Spend the Money on Household Clean Energy Instead - Progress in Political Economy (PPE)
In the wake of the Government's announcement of its Cheaper Home Batteries Program, 60 Australian economists have signed a letter comparing the economic consequences of pursuing nuclear energy against...
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Environmental Politics @environmentalpol.bsky.social · 24/03/2025
New article! Prefiguring multispecies justice, by Anna Sturman, @danycelermajer.bsky.social, @freyagrace.bsky.social and @blancheverlie.bsky.social. This article considers the ways critical feminist thought and multispecies justice intersect. doi.org/10.1080/0964...
full title: Prefiguring multispecies justice: how communities are challenging and transfiguring care, labour, and belonging in the midst of climate catastrophe.
abstract: Formal disaster management plans and institutions are systematically neglectful of the impacts of climate-change-exacerbated disasters on animals, with few exceptions. While animals’ exclusion in this context is consistent with their status as property, or parts of ecosystems with no independent ethical value, differently located humans and animals contest this status and the types of institutions that follow from it. In this article, we draw on research conducted with Australian communities whose witness of animals’ suffering during the 2019–20 Black Summer fires, and the failure of state-led disaster responses to attend to this, led them to autonomously organise to care for wild and domesticated animals. Their efforts have been largely classified, and dismissed, as volunteerism and (feminised) care...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 02/03/2025
Perfect placement of 3 items on Sydney Uni's staff page today: one celebrating Mardi Gras (which started with a militant 1978 protest), one celebrating the Freedom Ride of 1965, one on new Campus Access Policy which curtails protest on campus. Protest is great as long as it's in the past, I guess?
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Thanks for this, and for the inspiration! Only about a decade or two behind you in realising how fascinating and important this stuff is...! :-)
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Jewish Council of Australia @jewishcouncilau.bsky.social · 27/02/2025
We spoke to @australia.theguardian.com about the dangers of the new antisemitism definition and its chilling on academic speech about Palestine. By labelling Palestinian political expressions as antisemitic, it will institutionalise anti-Palestinian racism. www.theguardian.com/australia-ne...
theguardian.com
Australian universities’ new antisemitism definition has some academics worried. Here’s why
Warnings decision could have ‘chilling’ effect and limit scope of education on Middle East
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
Big thanks to Kathy Mee and the team at Australian Geographer for their support and for publishing the piece!
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
We focus in particular on a story from the archives about the initial efforts to 'underground' telephone wires in the 1890s, and how the conflict over that process - especially its labour and its impacts on the surface - have shaped urban governance ever since.
Dozens of telephone wires above the street in colonial SydneyTechnical diagram of early 'telephone tunnels' in SydneyMap of early telephone tunnel network in Sydney from 1910sWorkers in a telephone tunnel, Sydney 1920s
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 28/02/2025
New paper from me and Marilu Melo Zurita about the urban geopolitics of telecommunications infrastructure in Sydney. As @shannonmattern.bsky.social says, there's "multiple ways to wire the wired city": we tell the story of how this went down (literally!) in Sydney. doi.org/10.1080/0004...
doi.org
The ups and downs of telecommunications infrastructure: the urban geopolitics of communications cabling in colonial Sydney
As telecommunications networks have facilitated the outward and upward expansion of cities, their development has also involved downward expansion into the urban underground. The making and remakin...
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Dr Liz Allen @drdemography.com · 13/02/2025
This kind of nepotism and cronyism in higher education has got to stop. Gobsmackingly dumb move from the new VC whose university is plagued with historical governance issues. University managers have got to stop ruining higher education. www.abc.net.au/news/2025-02...
abc.net.au
Bill Shorten's $300k speechwriter follows him to University of Canberra
A speechwriter hired on a $600,000, two-year contract to write speeches for Services Australia and its minister Bill Shorten, has joined him at his new job at the University of Canberra.
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Natasha Heenan @natashaheenan.bsky.social · 11/02/2025
My PhD on geoengineering, Producing the Climate, is now available to read via USyd library! Huge thanks to my wonderful supervisors @garethbryant.bsky.social and @kurtiveson.bsky.social as well as my generous examiners @geoffmann.bsky.social and Chantel Carr. ses.library.usyd.edu.au/handle/2123/...
ses.library.usyd.edu.au
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Shannon Mattern @shannonmattern.bsky.social · 10/02/2025
This book is going to be 🌟🌈🤖📡🏆. I've been eagerly anticipating it for YEARS! Let's please buy out Lori's entire press run when pre-orders open next week. (And I'm keeping my 🤞 that another para-academic experimental publisher takes up the project + gives it the distribution it deserves!!)
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 01/02/2025
"This is really a key dynamic of the next few years: being told we should be very worried about what the authoritarian Chinese are doing by Silicon Valley authoritarians we should also be extremely worried about." www.theguardian.com/commentisfre...
theguardian.com
Oh, I’m sorry, tech bros – did DeepSeek copy your work? I can hardly imagine your distress | Marina Hyde
If China has done to Sam Altman what his OpenAI has been accused of doing to creatives, it would take a heart of stone not to laugh, says Guardian columnist Marina Hyde
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Yanis Varoufakis @yanisvaroufakis.bsky.social · 28/01/2025
The fact that, following the DeepSeek ascendancy, uranium stocks fell 11% (on the 'fears' that the vast expansion of data centres may be unnecessary, rendering nuclear power less attractive), reveals how deeply in the void of madness crazy the stock market had fallen...
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 24/01/2025
Great article, this quoted sentence below really hit home ... if the meetings about AI I'm sitting in are any indication, the emergent approach at my university is absolutely working both to prepare students for AI's inevitability, and to deflect any critical reasoning directed towards AI itself.
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 14/01/2025
Fascinating look into the history of concerns about sun, shade and thermal comfort in Australian housing design: "Nothing new under the sun: Australia’s long history of missed chances to build sustainable homes" theconversation.com/nothing-new-...
theconversation.com
Nothing new under the sun: Australia’s long history of missed chances to build sustainable homes
When Australia faced a housing crisis 80 years ago, the government was urged to promote the building of more climate-responsive homes. So why are so many homes today still not made for our climate?
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
Ningla A-Na not just for the story of the Tent Embassy, but also for the amazing interviews and footage about Black Power and mutual aid in response to racist policing and planning in Sydney at the time. It's old, but still contemporary!
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Kurt Iveson @kurtiveson.bsky.social · 13/01/2025
How about some densification *without* gentrification? A linked article on gentrification by the author gives investors advice about how to identify areas for high-returns via displacement of low-income residents. I wonder why those folks might not be cheerleaders for this kind of redevelopment?
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Naomi Klein @naomiaklein.bsky.social · 07/01/2025
The irresistible case for eco-populism, beautifully made by @aldasky.bsky.social and @triofrancos.bsky.social in the NYT! www.nytimes.com/2025/01/07/o...
nytimes.com
Opinion | Biden Left Us With a ‘Prius Economy.’ It’s Time for Something Different. (Gift Article)
Climate impacts are fueling the cost-of-living crisis, especially for the poor and working class.
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