INTERVIEW WITH DR ALEXEI TRUNDLE (CGS 2005)

– ASSISTANT DIRECTOR (INTERNATIONAL) & MELBOURNE POSTDOCTORAL FELLOW

TELL US ABOUT WHAT YOU HAVE BEEN UP TO SINCE LEAVING CGS IN 2005?

When I left CGS in 2005 I took a gap year in the UK, working as a rowing coach and tutor at Winchester College. When I was at Winchester, I spent my mornings reading newspaper about the review into climate change by Nicholas Stern, commissioned by the UK Government. It had a profound impact on me. As a result, when I came back to Australia, I did a ‘180’ and took up a degree in environmental sustainability at ANU’s Fenner School.

Since then, I’ve spent the last ten years or so doing research into how we can try to cope with the impacts of climate change that are either unavoidable, likely, or in some cases looking at how to plan for ‘worst case’ scenarios, focusing especially on cities and the urban poor. I finished a PhD looking at these impacts on Pacific Island cities in 2023, and now work at the Melbourne Centre for Cities, which is a research centre at the University of Melbourne.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR BIGGEST CHALLENGE SINCE GRADUATING FROM CGS?

There have been times when my work on climate change adaptation felt like it wasn’t having enough positive impact working with large corporations that didn’t take their responsibilities seriously enough. My way of coping with this was to re-apply whatever spare time I had in activism and volunteering – I spent time with the Australian Youth Climate Coalition and as well as volunteering with their national team, did a fundraising hike with them to Everest Base Camp where I made friends with some amazing young people, who have gone on to have brilliant careers working on the climate crisis.

WHAT HAS BEEN YOUR CAREER HIGHLIGHT SO FAR?

I’ve been really privileged to have worked in some amazing places, and that has meant that I’ve been able to see – and try to understand – just how different other parts of the world can be, and the strength that we all draw on from this diversity of experiences and ways of seeing and being. While doing research in Vanuatu’s capital Port Vila I was based out of a tent that was a few metres from the shoreline of a sheltered reef, camping at the back of a colleague’s rental property on the city’s fringe in a place called Pango. It was a pretty unusual setting to finish a four year long research project and made me really appreciate the different ways of seeing Pacific cities and what they can be.

WHAT IMPACT DID CGS HAVE ON YOUR CAREER CHOICES AND JOURNEY?

I think it would be easy to look back on all of the classical music training that I did at school and dismiss it as not too relevant to my current career, but in reality I learnt a huge number of skills through music that I apply every day, whether it is projecting or modulating my voice when I facilitate workshops or do public speaking, or if it is in a deeper sense in reading group dynamics or understanding the different ‘languages’ that people use to communicate.

I also can’t underestimate the impact that CGS Geography had on my way of seeing the world, particularly in applying scientific and spatial thinking in the ‘real world’ as a way of analysing and finding solutions to problems.

WHAT’S NEXT FOR ALEXEI TRUNDLE? WHERE DO YOU HOPE TO BE IN 5 OR 10 YEARS ONCE YOUR RESEARCH IS COMPLETE?

I really value working in the higher education sector, doing research at a university is a real privilege and comes with a freedom to express your findings truthfully, be critical of injustices, and to seek out new ideas in an exploratory way. I hope that in 5 or 10 years I will have been able to bring others along with me on that journey, particularly young people from the Pacific, who are vastly underrepresented within the Australian tertiary sector as both students and staff. The research that I do is also very ‘applied’, working with city governments and local communities. I would hope in a decade’s time there are some tangible changes ‘on the ground’ that I can see in the communities and cities that I work with, as they face accelerating climate impacts.