Australian Studies Journal Zeitschrift für Australienstudien / Race and Racism in Australian-German Relations

The present issue combines two years of work, with the last one under heavy restrictions, postponements and loss. In early 2020, Australia was ravaged by fires that can be explicated not merely as the result of global warming but also as the effects of economic exploitation with all its implications of social and racial injustice. The following worldwide spread of SARS-CoV-2 has led not only to unprecedented restrictions in modern academic life – including the cancellation of the 2020 German Australian Studies conference – but it has also shown the intricacies between questions of ecological sustainability, social justice and the exploitation of resources. Persisting and tenacious yet equally malleable and adaptable, narratives of race and racism have infiltrated the debates around socio-ecological disasters and health protection, while at the same time exhibiting extant patterns of prejudice. This work can be downloaded as open-access at the ASJ ZfA website: asj.australienstudien.org