Associate Professor Marty Branagan
Associate Professor - Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education; School of Humanities, Arts, and Social Sciences
Biography
Dr Marty Branagan holds a PhD and a Grad.Dip.Ed from UNE, where he was awarded the New England Award for contributions to the community. He has a BA from Sydney University, where he was a member of the Student Representative Council, and a Diploma of Fine Arts from the New England Institute (TAFE NSW). A Senior Lecturer, he has been the Convenor of Peace Studies since 2015.'
Marty coordinates the unit Active Resistance: Contemporary Nonviolence, for which he created the annual Nonviolence Film Festival (sometimes accompanied by a peace exhibition). His long history of participant-observer research into nonviolent activism includes successful campaigns to preserve the Franklin River, Jabiluka and more than a million hectares of old-growth forests in northern NSW. He has recorded a series of ABC Radio interviews about Australian environmentalism.
He also coordinates Introduction to Peace Studies, Environmental Peace, Globalisation as if People and Ecosystems Matter, and Environmental Security, and has coordinated Building Peace in Post-Conflict Situations and Post-Conflict Justice and Reconciliation Processes. He has won numerous teaching commendations. Marty helped create the Master of Environmental Advocacy, now a major in the Master of Arts, after co-developing a new unit Politics and the Environment: Intersecting Crises. He also wrote Creating Cultures of Peace, with a book forthcoming.
His research interests include nonviolence developments; resistance to Nazism; the roles of women and the arts, humour and creativity in social change; addressing global warming and biodiversity loss; and learning in protest movements. His 2013 monograph Global Warming, Militarism and Nonviolence: The Art of Active Resistance explored ways of reducing the carbon bootprint of militarism, and has been used at Brandeis University and the University of Calgary among others. He has supervised nine PhD Students to successful completion, including two recipients of the Chancellor’s Doctoral Medal.
Co-organized conferences include ‘Environmental and Sustainable Peace, Social Justice and Creative Activism: Celebrating 40 Years of Peace Studies at UNE’ (2022), which led to numerous resolutions and a special edition of Social Alternatives; ‘Rethinking Peace, Conflict and Governance Conference’ (UNE 2020), 'Students and Sustainability' (SCU 1996) and 'Mining in a Sustainable World' (UNE 2013), which resulted in a special edition of the International Journal of Rural Law and Policy, while a 2012 conference resulted in a book Cultivating Peace. More recently he co-edited Rethinking Wilderness and the Wild Conservation, Conflict and Co-existence (Routledge 2020).
His semi-autobiographical novels are Horizontal Lightning (1994), about the struggles of Borneo’s semi-nomadic Penan people to preserve their rainforest homelands, and the illustrated novel Locked On! (2018), based on climate activism at Leard Forest and Bentley, NSW.
His numerous solo art exhibitions include three at NERAM. He has organised group exhibitions including at Armidale's Aboriginal Cultural Centre and Keeping Place; and coordinated public art projects. He has taught art at TAFE, and worked with indigenous 'youth at risk' in art-based programmes aiming to build skills, teamwork and self-esteem. As Peace Studies’ Library Liaison Officer, he greatly increased Dixson Library's collection of peace books and documentaries, and donated the Armidale Environment Centre's Archives. Marty has tutored at UNE’s Oorala Centre, taught in remote central Australian communities, and worked in community and student radio. He plays music occasionally with 'Waldorf Salad' and coached junior soccer for a decade. He and his partner are active in permaculture and rivercare, host an organic food cooperative, and have two children of whom they are immensely proud.
