The Australian Earth Laws Alliance has been built entirely by volunteers, including our volunteer Board of Management.
AELA welcomes applications from qualified professionals and students of any discipline, at any time through the year. We also host Student Interns from Universities around Australia and overseas.
AELA has a growing number of qualified professionals who volunteer to manage or assist with AELA programs, including our Earth Arts, Earth Ethics, Rights of Nature, Peoples' Tribunal, AELA Education, New Economy, Future Dreaming and other programs. AELA invites involvement and support from professionals in law, science, Indigenous knowledge and governance, economics, business management, fundraising, communications and other areas.
AELA manages a range of multi-disciplinary programs, so we welcome student volunteers from fields as diverse as law, economics, environmental science, arts, communications, Indigenous studies, political science and other disciplines. Although we're based in Brisbane, Queensland, we're happy to oversee volunteers from anywhere in Australia.
AELA supports a small number of university based internships each year. Although we're based in Brisbane, Queensland, we're happy to mentor and oversee interns from universities anywhere in Australia.
In February 2016 I connected with AELA to undertake a semester-long research internship as part of my UNSW Masters of Environmental Management studies. My initial research idea was to explore the way that art is used to reflect or shape our approach to environmental issues, but through my early meetings with Michelle Maloney and Ilka Nelson I refined my research aim towards exploring the specific benefits that arts processes can bring to informing environmental governance. It turns out that there are deep, profound and beautiful ways that art--particularly public, community and participatory art--can act as a medium for knowledge co-production, place making, and engendering cultures of connectivity between people and their environments.
I was aware of AELA’s interdisciplinary approach to addressing environmental issues, and was strongly drawn to their more creative and integrative way of viewing the human and environment relationship. With my background in classical music, as well as film and TV studies, AELA provided an opportunity for me to bring together my arts past with my current environmental pursuits.
It was a challenging process to synthesise the somewhat disparate themes of art, the environment, and governance, but I have Ilka Nelson and Michelle Maloney to thank for providing structured, reflective, encouraging and incisive guidance throughout the process. My personal aim in the process was to find a meaningful pathway in the environmental field that I could continue along after the completion of the internship, and after the completion of my Masters. I definitely feel like I have a clearer idea of where I’m headed, and I plan to stay in contact with AELA as I continue to explore more pathways for harmonising our social and ecological systems.
Julia Grieves - Exploring Ecospirituality
From March to June 2016, I completed an internship with AELA as part of my Masters of Environmental Management and Sustainability through Monash University. I was involved in a research project designed by Michelle Maloney, AELA's National Convenor, and myself which will inform an upcoming AELA conference regarding earth-ethics and eco-spirituality in 2017. The main purpose of this project was to carry out research to inform the context, key themes and structure of the conference and to map out who is working in this area nationally.
My personal learning goals within this internship centred on gaining understanding and insight into how my own areas of interest in environmental theory and human behaviour can translate into practice; specifically regarding environmental ethics and the role of ethics in influencing change. In this sense, my research with AELA strongly enabled me to consolidate much of my university learning, which was achieved through empirical and non-empirical research as well as informal discussions with a number of AELA contacts working in this field.
My greatest learning and the most significant aspect I will take from this process is a reassured sense of optimism around the importance of working on a practical level in the areas of eco-spiritualty and environmental ethics. It has been a pleasure and a privilege to have had the opportunity to explore my areas of interest through AELA and with the ongoing support of Michelle who helped guide my research with regular feedback and trusted insights. I have found AELA to be an organisation of deep integrity and firm values which I feel align with my own and look forward to volunteering with AELA further in the future.
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AELA is a registered charity with the Australian Charities and Not-for-profits Commission (ACNC)
The Australian Earth Laws Alliance acknowledges that the sovereignty of the First Nations People of the continent now known as Australia was never ceded by treaty nor in any other way.
AELA acknowledges and respects First Nations Peoples’ laws and ecologically sustainable custodianship of Australia over tens of thousands of years through land and sea management practices that continue today.
