The 2026 Iain McCalman Lecture

The Iain McCalman Lecture celebrates SEI co-founder and former co-director Iain McCalman’s dedication to fostering and pioneering multidisciplinary environmental research.

The lectures aim to highlight the work of early to mid-career researchers working across disciplinary boundaries to impact both scholarship and public discourse. In 2026, Dr Rebecca McNaught will be presenting the Iain McCalman Lecture titled Communities in an era of compounding disasters: stories of hope from the Northern Rivers.

In the Northern Rivers of New South Wales, the catastrophic 2022 floods and landslips revealed both the fragility of systems and the strength of local people. Communities stepped up in extraordinary ways, rewriting disaster response norms after experiencing a series of compounding disasters over an 8-year period. The responses to 2025 Cyclone Alfred demonstrated the lessons learned and positive systemic change that has happened since 2022 as well as showing that there is still much work to do.

This lecture shares stories from the ground up—women leading community disaster recovery efforts, the creation of the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance involving over 50 grassroots community groups, and deep, embedded research partnerships. Drawing on two decades of experience in international climate and disaster work and current research in rural health, Dr. Rebecca McNaught explores what it means to move beyond a disaster response mindset toward a vision of proactivity and well-being in the face of compounding disasters.

Join us to learn how lessons from the Northern Rivers can inform policy, research, and practice in an increasingly climate-challenged world—and why our future depends on collaboration, creativity, and enabling a culture of care.

Speaker

Dr Rebecca McNaught is a Research Fellow – Rural and Remote Health with the School of Public Health, University of Sydney. She is based at the University Centre for Rural Health in Lismore, NSW – a region at the epicentre of compounding disaster events.

Dr McNaught has over 20 years of experience working with governments, NGOs and communities on climate change adaptation and disaster risk management across the Asia/Pacific region where she worked for the Red Cross and United Nations Development Program. She was a contributing author to the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change 6th Assessment report and the Australian Government's 2025 National Climate Risk Assessment. She currently co-chairs the Sustainability, Climate Change and Health Collaboration at The University of Sydney. Locally, she is a founding member of the Northern Rivers Community Resilience Alliance, a prior board member of not-for-profit Plan C and President of the South Golden Beach New Brighton and Ocean Shores Community Resilience Team.

Learn more on the Sydney Environment Institute website.