I am researching the settlement and agricultural development of the Macquarie and Barwon-Darling riverine plains. My environmental history begins towards the end of the nineteenth century, in the aftermath of the collapse of the pastoral industry. Tim Bonyhady, in his book The Colonial Earth, as well as Tom Griffiths, and Michael Quinn, write about the environmental sensibility that emerged from the early pastoral occupation of the plains. So I am asking, what has happened since then? Instead of beginning with an 'unspoiled' environment and charting its decline, I ask, how do we live in the aftermath of rapid ecological change?

To do this I centre my narrative on state-based science for agriculture, but also conservation science on former grazing and cotton properties. This narrative focus creates a meeting point between rhetoric, economics, science, and the non-human world. I can map the complexities and contradictions of how we've tried to live in, and with, the non-beautiful places, the wounded places, the 'production' places. I am finding that place shapes science, as much as science and agriculture have shaped place.

I am an environmental historian undertaking doctoral studies at the Australian National University. Between 2001 and 2005 I volunteered for ReconciliACTION, a youth anti-racism activist network, and I've worked at Jumbunna Indigenous House of Learning and the NSW Reconciliation Council. I currently maintain the Australian and New Zealand Environmental History Network website coordinated by Libby Robin. I have published fiction in various Australian journals.

Selected Publications

• Muir, Cameron. 'Feeding the World: Our Great Myth.' Griffith REVIEW Edition 27: Food Chain (February 2010): 59-73.
• Muir, Cameron. 'The Opera House of the West.' Australian Humanities Review no. 47 (2009): 55-65.
• Muir, Cameron. 'Vigilant Citizens: Statecraft and Exclusion in Dubbo City.' Media/Culture Journal 9, no. 3 (2006).
• Muir, Cameron. 'Is Your History My History?' Griffith REVIEW Edition 13: The Next Big Thing (2006).

Book reviews

• Muir, Cameron. 'Review of Crawford Munro: A Vision for Australia's Water by L. Ross Humphreys.' Historical Records of Australian Science 20, no. 2 (2009).
• Muir, Cameron. 'Review of Lost Waters: A History of a Troubled Catchment by Erica Nathan.' Historical Records of Australian Science 18, no. 2 (2007): 293–95.
• Muir, Cameron. 'Review of Where the Rivers Meet: New Writing from Australia Edited by Frank Stewart, Larissa Behrendt, Barry Lopez, and Mark Tredinnick.' Australian Humanities Review no. 42 (2007).