Emerging Technologies Research Lab

06/08/2026

Sophie Adams, human geographer and Science and Technology Studies scholar based in the Climate Change Adaptation Lab at La Trobe University will join the ETlab to present her research on 'Distributed renewables and the rescaling of power in Australia' on Monday 17 August.

To join the presentation, please write to [email protected]

23/07/2026

'Sustaining Life, Displacing Extinction: Spatiotemporal Disjunctures in Indonesia’s Green Transition'
Based on ethnographic research in Indonesia and across digital media spaces, this paper explores how infrastructures intended to sustain and preserve life simultaneously reorganise conditions of harm, inequality, and extinction.

Visiting guest speaker, Birgit Bräuchler (University of Copenhagen), joins the ETLab to discuss her paper.

This event is open to the public and will take place on Monday 3 August.

https://events.humanitix.com/birgit-braeuchler-seminar-sustaining-life-displacing-extinction-spatiotemporal-disjunctures-in-indonesia-s-green-transition

20/07/2026

Today our visiting guest from Kobe University Japan, Associate Professor Yuho Hisayama, Director of the Kobe Institute for Atmospheric Studies spoke to us about his research into atmospheres. We very much enjoyed hosting Yuho and look forward to hearing from him again!

22/06/2026

What do cute robots have to do with the energy transition?

More than you might think. 👇
Listen to Yolande Strengers as she discuss the kinds of homes we might live in as AI, automation and energy technologies become increasingly embedded in everyday life.

🎧 In Wired for Energy ("The Human Side of Energy"), hosted by Greg Trainor and Neil Belford we cover everything from cute robots through to forecasting for extreme weather events and their impact on the grid: https://lnkd.in/gMR4-5BD
🎧 In The Energy Connection ("Future Living: When Technology Moves Too Fast"), hosted by Charis Palmer and The Energy team and also featuring Kari Dahlgren, we explore the challenges of governing technological change when innovation often outpaces our ability to understand its social consequences. https://lnkd.in/gwx5nhNf

The conversations are informed by ongoing collaborative research on home futures and emerging technologies with colleagues and partners, including the RACE for 2030 project and Yolande's ARC Future Fellowship on cute home helper robots.

22/06/2026

Last week Debora Lanzeni spoke with Dr Shane Huntington OAM from 3RRR's on the 'Einstein A Go Go' radio program.
Listen to their chat here


https://www.rrr.org.au/explore/programs/einstein-a-go-go/episodes/38479-einstein-a-go-go-14-june-2026

19/06/2026

This week Sarah Pink gave her keynote on 'Anticipatory Infrastructures' at the Digital Innovators Summit in Singapore.

https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:activity:7472140849301151744/

10/06/2026

Welcome to the ETLab, Sofia Lamadrid Isoard- our new PhD candidate to the FUTURES program.

Sofia's PhD project aims to investigate how construction workers in Australia navigate future scenarios shaped by automation, AI, and environmental transitions. Drawing on posthumanist theory and speculative methods, the research explores workers’ values, hopes, aspirations, concerns, and lived experiences as the construction industry transforms. The project examines how labour might be reimagined beyond productivity and efficiency, asking what more just, relational, and ecologically grounded forms of work could emerge through new relationships between humans, technologies, and environments.

https://www.monash.edu/emerging-tech-research-lab/news-and-events/news/new-phd-candidate-sofia-lamadrid-isoard

04/06/2026

🤖🌏 "The thing we need to understand about the climate crisis is that we're not going to make our way out of it if we insist on maintaining the system of consumer capitalism that has got us into the problem in the first place. Consumer choices will not get us out of a big structural problem."

The Entangled documentary recently sat down with Michael Ruchardon to explore the complex role AI plays in conservation.
"The techno-utopian vision that we're given of artificial intelligence is that it is the way out of all of the crises that we face, and especially the climate crisis, AI will make work more efficient. It will solve energy issues through the wonders of the technology itself.

Another future that we might be facing is one where AI just drives us deeper and deeper into a hole. It pushes people to use more and more energy intensive technology.

There's a big case for slowing down the adoption of AI technologies and being more cautious in how we use them. We need that sort of targeted response to the use of AI rather than a, 'we'll just throw this at everything and it'll solve all of our problems for us', because that is simply not the case.

Professor Michael Richardon

Photo: Deforestation for beef pastures in Queensland, Wilderness Society

02/06/2026

Our Adjunct Professor of Practice, Andrew Campbell, was recently published in The Mandarin, which discusses how often within organisations, the people with the most knowledge don't have a a way to communicate it through internal performance systems.

OPINION | Most formal performance systems are designed to measure and report, not connect leaders with what people closest to the work already know and experience. That gap is where trust erodes and outcomes fall short.

02/06/2026

Our Research Fellow, Fareed Kaviani has just connected colleagues at the Centre for Sociodigital Futures at the University of Bristol as part of his research into the project. The visit was supported by Monash Information Technology and the ETLab.