Global South Research and Pedagogy

Considering areas in the Global South - those regions outside Europe and North America - not as recipients of exported knowledge but as producers of theories, methods and world views that question the motivations of Western ways of knowing.

What does it mean to research, teach or theorise from the Global South? To regard those regions outside Europe and North America not as recipients of exported knowledge but as producers of theories, methods and world views that question the motivations of Western ways of knowing. How might we continually interrogate the geopolitics of knowledge? Can we extend the critique of power initiated by postcolonial theory to analyses of Cold War legacies? Can we expose the extent to which canonical approaches align with mercantilism and private property? Global South approaches occur at the confluence of two formerly marginal postcolonial and socialist ways of knowing. Initially identified through decolonised political alliances for South-South cooperation and demarcated later in 1980 as a territorial southern region based on development indices, this term is increasingly used to describe social disadvantage within Global North liberal democracies. This third important dimension to Global South knowledges links global and social forms of inequity.

Destination Global South

An ongoing exhibition at the ABP Library featuring student work or exhibits related to travelling studios in countries and cities in the Global South.

  • Destination Global South

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  • Destination Indonesia

    Destination Indonesia student work

  • Destination Ahmedabad

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  • Immigrant Networks

    2022-2023 Architecture and Industry: The migrant contribution to nation-building

    IMMIGRANT NETWORKS: Migration + Industry + Architecture + Landscape

    Museo Italiano CO. AS. IT.  15 November 2022 - 10 February 2023

    Migration, industry and settlement were catalytic for modernisation in Australia after World War II, a period shaped by post-war reconstruction. Federal and corporate funding for major industries together with government policies for population growth enabled nation-building programs that shaped remote, rural and urban environments into modern industrial landscapes. Populations were drawn from war-destroyed nations, underdeveloped economies, and hostile political environments.

    Immigration centres and industries that employed refugee and immigrant labour in the post war period can be thought of as nodes in an interdependent spatial and transnational labour network. The physical sites and projects featured in this exhibition convey this network, its nodal points and inter-cultural social interactions through a study of migrant camps (the examples of Benalla and Greta are explored), key industrial sites for hydro-electric power generation (Snowy Hydro), defence (Woomera) and raw-material production (BHP Steelworks, Port Kembla), independent small businesses and the associated industrial infrastructure and landscapes (trans-Asian suburbanisation in Melbourne). These are selected due to their significance in the history of immigration and Australian modernisation and capacity to convey their co-dependence, and the later dispersal of new immigrants into manufacturing and service industries at the metropolitan periphery.

    The exhibition was made possible by the Australia Research Council Discovery Project DP190101531, Architecture and Industry: The migrant contribution to nation-building 2019-2022, with an interdisciplinary team from The University of Melbourne, Deakin University, The University of Tasmania and The Australian National University. The broader project covers a range of sites indicated in the above map.

    Migrant Camps – Alexandra Dellios

    Snowy Hydro – Anoma Pieris

    Port Kembla Steelworks – Mirjana Lozanovska

    Woomera – Andrew Saniga

    Melbourne Suburbs- David Beynon

  • Southern Built Environments

    The Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning presented the Southern Built Environments Research Seminar Series in 2022. This seminar series combines and showcases the expertise and passion of our academics and their research collaborators whose research projects continue to have a meaningful impact on communities in the Global South encompassing Asia, Africa, Latin America and Oceania.

    Our seminar series aims to inspire interdisciplinary dialogue, sparking debate and conversations among Faculty staff and guests from all over the world about the future of Southern Urbanism.

    Each seminar will focus on a different geographical region, with guest speakers tackling compelling issues in the Global South that affect both the natural and built environment, with major implications to settlements where these challenges emerge.

  • Rethinking Asia-Pacific Architectures

    The workshop, ‘Spaces in transition: globalisation, transnationalism and urban change in the Asia-Pacific’ was held from 2015-2106 as the inaugural forum for the Society of Architectural and Urban Historians of Asia a regional and international network for critical reflection on the histories, pedagogies and practices of architecture in the Asia-Pacific. Workshop participants shared their insights on architecture and urbanism in the Asia-Pacific region, using ‘global modernisms’ as a conceptual entry-point. The workshop engaged with multiple historical processes such as decolonisation, indigenisation, urbanisation and globalisation.

    The workshop was framed as a forum for Australia-based scholarship on Southeast Asian and East Asian topics, approached from an Inter-Asian perspective. A panel from CAMEA at the University of Adelaide will extend this focus towards other Asian regions.The keynote for the workshop was Abidin Kusno from York University, Toronto, Canada. Alongside his participation at the workshop, Kusno delivered one of the keynotes in ‘GOLD: the 33rd Annual Conference of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand (SAHANZ)’ and was a panellist at the Indonesia Forum Panel Discussion, ‘Reading Indonesian Cities: Dreams, Nightmares and Memories of a Nation’.The workshop was followed by a postgraduate student plenary, ‘Rethinking Modern Asia-Pacific Architectures’ held in collaboration with the University of Hong Kong and the National University of Singapore.

    It was funded through an International Research and Research Training Fund workshop grant from the University of Melbourne. Collaborating academics include Cecilia Chu and Eunice Seng from Hong Kong University and Jiat-Hwee Chang and Lilian Chee from the National University of Singapore.The workshop was organised with funding from the Strategic Initiative Fund at the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, The University of Melbourne. The initiative was headed by Anoma Pieris (Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning), Duanfang Lu (University of Sydney), and Cecilia Chu (Hong Kong University).Organisers of both the events include Anoma Pieris, Amanda Achmadi and Sidh Sintusingha at the University of Melbourne, John Ting at the University of Canberra and David Beynon at Deakin University. Amanda is also the convenor of the University of Melbourne’s Indonesia Forum.

Selected publications on Global South topics

Featuring a selection of recent and previous publications by researchers in our faculty concerned with Global South issues

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