Slow emergencies, policy change, and
hopeful futures for young people
Slow emergencies are crises such as climate change, AI, and pandemics which progress invisibly over longer time scales and thus do not catalyse the policy action seen with more immediate capital ‘E’ Emergencies. Initial research suggests the convergence of slow emergencies is impacting the sense of future for young people, including resulting in increased mental health diagnoses and suicide rates.
During this project, young people and policy makers are coming together to generate urgently needed education policies that better address the impacts of climate change, AI, and pandemics on young people.
Research and Impact
The project is exploring how participatory policy making methods involving young people can help open policy windows on slow emergencies. Through interviews, policy forums, and tools and outputs distributed across states and territories, this research examines:
- How the combined effects of slow emergencies impact young people’s senses of future;
- How sharing young people’s experiences with policy makers can enable policy change; and
- How these policy changes may need to vary to account for political dynamics in subnational jurisdictions.
The research is expected to build new knowledge on how the slow emergencies of climate change, AI, and pandemics are together affecting young people’s hope for the future. The research findings will inform policy to better address the impacts of slow emergencies on young people. Ultimately, the project will contribute to more hopeful futures for young people, while building capacity to transition to post-carbon economies and manage the rapid development of AI and the effects of future pandemics.
Research Team
Marcia McKenzie
Lead Chief Investigator
Marcia McKenzie is Professor in Global Studies and International Education in the Faculty of Education, University of Melbourne. She is a member of the Royal Society of Canada’s College of New Scholars, Artists, and Scientists; and Director of the $4.5M SSHRC-funded Monitoring and Evaluating Climate Communication and Education (MECCE) Project and of the Sustainability and Education Policy Network (www.sepn.ca). Her research program includes both theoretical and applied components at the intersections of comparative and international education, global education policy research, and climate and sustainability education, including in relation to policy mobility, place, affect, and other areas of social and geographic study. She is co-author of Place in Research: Theory, Methodology, and Methods (Routledge, 2015) and Critical Education and Sociomaterial Practice: Narration, Place, and the Social (Peter Lang, 2016), and co-editor of Land Education: Rethinking Pedagogies of Place from Indigenous, Postcolonial, and Decolonizing Perspectives (Routledge, 2016) and Fields of Green: Restorying Culture, Environment, and Education (Hampton, 2009); and co-edits the Palgrave book series Studies in Education and the Environment. She has also authored or co-authored sixglobal UNESCO reports, including Climate Change and Sustainability in Science and Social Science Secondary School Curricula (2024), Learn for the Planet: A Global Review of How Environmental Issues are Integrated in Education (2021), and Country Progress on Climate Change Education: A Review of National Submissions to the UNFCCC (2019).
Sam Sellar
Chief Investigator
Sam Sellar is Dean of Research (Education Futures) and Professor of Education Policy at the University of South Australia. Sam’s research focuses on education policy, large-scale assessments and the datafication of education. He is currently co-investigator for an ESRC project investigating digital platforms in higher education (led by Janja Komljenovic, Lancaster University). Sam has published more than 70 books, book chapters and journal articles, and he is Lead Editor of Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education. His forthcoming book is Algorithms of Education: How datafication and artificial intelligence shape policy, co-authored with Kalervo N. Gulson and P. Taylor Webb.
Sarah Truman
Chief Investigator
Sarah Truman is an Associate Professor at the University of Melbourne’s Faculty of Education and a member of the Social Transformations in Education Group. Her broad research areas include English literary education; youth cultural productions; public pedagogies and critical literacies; research-creation (arts-based research); and critical geographies. From 2023-2025, she held an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellowship called Speculative Futures. The project investigated speculative fiction stories as tools for thinking about the world on the themes of technology, sustainability, and social justice. Project participants included high school English students and teachers in Australia, Canada, and the United Kingdom, and transdisciplinary scholars who engaged with speculative fictions in their own research. Additionally, Sarah co-directs the Literary Education Lab.
