Anitra Nelson

Associate Professor Anitra Nelson joined MSSI as an Honorary Principal Fellow in 2020 after working for over 20 years in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University and, before that, in the Institute of Latin American Studies at La Trobe University. She finalised her book Small is Necessary: Shared Living on a Shared Planet (2018) as a Carson Fellow at the Rachel Carson Centre for Environment and Society at the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich (2016–2017) and spent three months as a Visiting Fellow in the Economic Department of the New School for Social Research in New York (2012).

Recently Anitra has worked on three books on degrowth. She is lead co-editor of scholarly collections Housing for Degrowth: Principles, Models, Challenges and Opportunities (2018) and Food for Degrowth: Perspectives and Practices (forthcoming 2020) both issued in the Routledge Environmental Humanities series. With Vincent Liegey, she is co-author of Exploring Degrowth: A Critical Guide (2020) in the FireWorks series of Pluto Press (UK).

Anitra has researched, published and taught on Australian housing research, with an emphasis on affordability, environmental sustainability and policy issues. She collaborated on significant Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute funded studies into mortgage default (2008–2010) and marginal rental housing (2011–2014) and, most recently, taught the RMIT Housing Policy Masters course (2019). She is an active member of Cohousing Australia’s Planning Policy Working Group.

Marx’s Concept of Money: The God of Commodities (1999, 2014), a book based on Anitra's doctoral thesis, is still in print and used internationally in courses. Her deep interest in money has been applied to environmental and social sustainability, including researching non-monetary economies for their sustainability potential. She is lead co-editor of Life Without Money: Building Fair and Sustainable Economies (2011) and her 2016 article on money in the scholarly journal Capitalism Nature Socialism was shortlisted for the 2017 Australian International Political Economy Network AIPEN Richard Higgot Journal Article Prize. Her current work, Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy, is to be published in 2021.

Anitra is a book series editor for the Pluto Press FireWorks series and the Palgrave Macmillan Alternatives and Futures series.^[1]

SEARCH National Members Forum, 2024

SEARCH National Members Forum, 2024.

Session II (Panel): A people’s economy for a planet in peril.

Speakers: Steve Murphy, John Wishart, James Miranda, Felicity Wade, and Anitra Nelson.

SEARCH GofundMe

Jacqueline Widin is organizing this fundraiser on behalf of Vicki Findlay.

Our comrades and friends, Vicki Findlay and Steve Bolt, have had their home and livelihoods wiped out by the devastating floods in Lismore. We are fundraising to help them rebuild their home and workplace. The cost of home insurance in their area is prohibitive, up to $30,000 per year. They have no means to fund a return to their home and support their family. Vicki and Steve are long time activists in SEARCH, the CPA, family violence, environmental justice, and legal reform. Along with their political work in various social justice campaigns, Vicki works to support women and families in domestic violence and Steve works in community and legal aid services, in defending environmental activists and in drug law reform.

Donors included Graham Chuck, Liz Aird, Mark Aarons, Phillip Parsons, John Wishart, David McKnight, Romaine Rutnam, Carmel Shute, Anitra Nelson, Peter Colley, Roger Keyes, Geoffrey Davis, Judy Ferguson, Geoff Evans, Glynn Ryall, Phillip Walker, Steve Lewis.^[2]

Beyond Money

BEYOND MONEY: in conversation with Anitra Nelson Thursday, 25 August 2022, New International Book Shop.

Join Anitra Nelson in conversation with Lucy Myers about their new book Beyond Money: A Postcapitalist Strategy.^[3]

SEARCH Foundation

"100 years after the Russian Revolution"

Join Beatrix Campbell, UK author, playwright, filmmaker, journalist, political commentator and broadcaster, in debating current politics in Melbourne, Saturday 11 November 2017.

In a wide-ranging address, Bea will explore the various forms of inequality today; realistic strategies towards an egalitarian and just society; the meaning of socialism in this centenary year of the Russian Revolution; the failure, collapse and rejection of the totalitarian Soviet model of socialism; and forms of democratic socialism that are feasible in the 21st century.

Following the key note address Beatrix Campbell will be in discussion with Peter Love – labour historian and trade union activist, Stuart MacIntyre – historian and Anitra Nelson – Activist-scholar, Associate Professor at the Centre for Urban Research, RMIT University.

Fighting the Good Fight – a discussion of how do we develop a general, systematic ‘moral economy’ to shape our vision of a just, ethical and greener future? Can we emulate the surges in socialist sentiment that have surprised so many in the US and UK? How do we build new alliances that will change the shape of politics?

Speakers include Matt Kunkel – Vice-President of the SEARCH Foundation, Dimity Hawkins – nuclear free activist and PhD candidate, a co-founder of ICAN, Sue Pennicuik MLC (Southern Metropolitan Region) – Victorian Greens.

Organised by the SEARCH Foundation