Tim McLellan

@timmclellan.bsky.social

387 Followers 507 Following

Lecturer in Anthropology at ANU. Researching urban nature-based solutions, agroforestry science, audit cultures, and Nous UniForum data (themes that are more interconnected than you’d think…). https://researchportalplus.anu.edu.au/en/persons/tim-mclellan

Cover of a Nous-branded report dated October 2024 and titled: "Renew ANU: Research Functions Future State Design Workshop Pre-reading"

Screenshot of a Nous document linked in the post. It shows a "project charter" with various deliverables for Nous to deliver to ANU in later September and October

Cover of a Nous-branded report titled “A Winning Business Model: what it takes to achieve sustainable quality and excellence at a modern university”

Cover page of article in ST&HV.
Title: The Time Politics of Agroforestry Science
Author: Timothy McLellan

Abstract: This article examines the time politics of agroforestry science through an ethnographic study with scientists at the Institute for Farms and Forests (IFF) in China. IFF researchers seek to design complex agroforestry systems that emulate the regenerative cycles and evolutionary adaptations of natural forests, a goal which challenges the dominant temporalities of industrial agriculture and modernist development. Yet these aspirations are continually reshaped by the fast tempos and short horizons of scientific institutions and donor organizations. Drawing on environmental humanities scholarship, I argue that agroforestry science is animated by temporal empathy—an attentiveness to the temporalities of more-than-human worlds—but that this empathy is systematically constrained by institutional regimes of speed, measurement, and impact. Through case studies of agroforestry projects in China and Myanmar, I trace how scientists negotiate the dissonance between ecological time and developmental or donor time, and I show how their work both reproduces and contests neoliberal logics of value and progress. I propose temporal empathy not only as a feature of environmental science but also as a method for science and technology studies: as a mode of inquiry that can help us to apprehend, and potentially find common cause with, the aspirations and frustrations of scientists striving to imagine more livable futures.

Keywords: agroforestry, environmental humanities, fast science, institutions, nature-based solutions, temporal empathy

Video of Australian Senate Estimates hearing. First voice is Senator Mehreen Faruqi, then Prof. Rebekah Brown, then ANU COO Jonathan Churchill.

Image of a scatterplot graph titled, “Overall effectiveness score vs normalised cost – parts 1 & 2 services.”
Graph subtitle: “Net Satisfaction (-100 to +100), Parts 1& 2 Services 2017 – 2023”
Vertical axis is titled: “increasing effectiveness score”
Horizontal axis is titled: "increasing normalised cost for services assessed”.
Each point on the graph represents a university. ANU is highlighted in the bottom right of the graph implying that it have poor service effectiveness and high cost.

Image shows a screenshot of the conclusion of the linked Senate inquiry submission. This text can be found on page 10.

The text is too long for alt text, but here is the first three quarters of the text:

Conclusion

Over the past decade, Nous Group’s UniForum data has quietly taken on the status of authoritative benchmark for the quality of a range of professional and academic services performed by public universities in Australia and across the world. This authoritative status is performed through scientific-looking graphs and scientific-sounding jargon designed to imply UniForum data is generated through rigorous methods and backed by expert consensus. This performance of authority is significant: it lends UniForum data an air of credibility and facticity that makes acting upon its results irresistible.

When one begins to open the black box and examine how UniForum data is actually produced, however, it becomes difficult to justify the degree to which Australian university executives are relying upon it in their decision-making. My analysis is based on a review of publicly available documents, and it is therefore possible that Nous or its clients would point to things not in the public domain that address some of the conceptual and methodological flaws that I have highlighted in UniForum. But the fact that the underlying UniForum data and methodology is not in the public domain is itself one of the key causes for concerns. When the stakes are so high, it cannot be acceptable for Nous Group and its clients to simply tell university staff and governing councils, ‘trust us, these numbers are based on rigorous methods and analysis.’ The lack of rigor, external scrutiny, and transparency in UniForum’s underlying data and methodology would be a cause for concern in any public institution, but it is especially concerning in the context of universities where rigorous, transparent, and accountable knowledge production is a core part of what we do. ...

Poster advertising a double book launch event titled "Sustaining the Unsustainable?: Reflecting on Science, Bureaucracy, and Theories of Change from Climate-Smart Southwest China".

The event will take place December 11th from 5.15pm to 7pm in the Old Anthropology Library at the London School of Economics.

The poster shows the covers of the two books being launched: Cutting the Mass Line by Andrea Pia and Science Interrupted by Tim McLellan.

The poster lists two speakers: Andrea Pia of LSE anthropology and Tim McLellan of ANU anthropology. And two discussants: Tongyue Zhu and Cla Ruzol, both PhD students in Anthropology at LSE.