- Entry type: Person
- Entry ID: AWE6137
Plumwood, Val
- Birth name Morrell, Val
Former married name Routley, Val
- Born 11 August 1939, Terry Hills, New South Wales, Australia
- Died 29 February 2008, , Australian Capital Territory, Australia
- Occupation Activist, Author, Environmentalist, Feminist, Lecturer, philosopher, Teacher
Summary
Val Plumwood was an eminent Australian environmental philosopher.
Details
Val Plumwood was born on 11 August 1939 in Terry Hills, Sydney. She started her first year of philosophy at Sydney University in 1956 and, after a short break, resumed her studies in the 1960s.
Val taught at Macquarie University, Murdoch University, the University of Tasmania, North Carolina State University and the University of Montana. She published widely during the seventies, including papers with Richard Routley (her second husband) and four books. At the time of her death, she was working on a further two manuscripts.
In the 1970s Val was a prominent member of a group of philosophers at the Australian National University who formed the first wave of Australian environmental philosophy. She was also an important environmental activist, and in the 1970s and 1980s was instrumental in a campaign to save rainforests in eastern Australia.
Val received a PhD from the Australian National University in 1990 was a member of the university’s Social and Political Theory Program, Research School of Social Sciences. She held visiting professorships at the University of California-Berkeley in the US, McMaster University in Ontario, Canada, the University of Lancaster in the UK and the University of Frankfurt in Germany. Val was also a Fellow at the Australian National University, first as an Australian Research Council fellow and later as a Visiting Fellow of the Fenner School of Environment & Society.
Val passed away in late February 2008.