Rate My Professor Nancy Cushing

Associate Professor Nancy Cushing is an environmental history specialist in the School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences at the University of Newcastle. She holds a PhD from the University of Newcastle (1995), a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in History from Dalhousie University in Canada, and a Master of Museum Studies from the University of Toronto. Over more than 30 years at the University, her career includes current role as Associate Professor, Senior Lecturer from 2011 to 2017, Lecturer from 2000 to 2010, and Associate Lecturer from 1995 to 1999. Cushing has a strong record of leadership, serving as Director of the Centre for the Study of Violence, where she leads events and research on interspecies and environmental violence. She is Deputy Chair of the University’s Research Committee as elected Deputy President of Academic Senate (Research) for 2024–25. Externally, she led the revitalisation of the Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Environmental History Network as its first convenor and serves on its executive, and is on the executive of the Australian Historical Association, co-authoring a 2022 report on History degree careers. She was Editor of Exhibition Reviews for History Australia from 2003 to 2005.

Her research specializations encompass environmental history and Australian history, with particular focus on human-animal relations, more-than-human histories, coal and energy transition, statues and memorialisation, and urban history. Current projects include A New History of Australia in 15 Animals for Bloomsbury and a more-than-human history of Sydney funded by the Coral Thomas Fellowship at the State Library of New South Wales (2024–25). Key publications include Snake-bitten: Eric Worrell and the Australian Reptile Park (with Kevin Markwell, UNSW Press, 2010), Animals Count: How Population Size Matters in Animal-Human Relations (edited with Jodie Frawley, Routledge, 2018), A History of Crime in Australia (2023), Smoky City: A History of Air Pollution in Newcastle, NSW (with Bridgman H, 2015), and Radical Newcastle: Unearthing the Radical Past and Present of Newcastle and the Hunter Region (with Bennett JE and Eklund E, 2015). Notable articles and chapters feature '#CoalMustFall: Revisiting Newcastle’s Coal Monument in the Anthropocene' (2021), 'The Interspecies Entanglements of Eating Kangaroo, 1788–1850' (2016), and 'Carbon Old and New: The Australian Agricultural Company, Coal, Wood and the Complexities of Energy Transition in New South Wales, 1825–1847' (2024). Cushing provides media commentary on statues, captive and native animals, energy transition emotional toll, and Newcastle history.