EM/ProfJames Goodman

James Goodman's research interests currently centre on climate politics and global studies he also has a continuing interest in researching changing nature of academic work.

In 2014-18 he led the ARC Discovery project 'The Coal Rush and Beyond', with seven other academics, which compared contestations over coal mining in India, Germany and Australia and led to an ABC radio series, a special journal issue with Energy Policy, and a book with Cambridge University Press. From 2018-24 he led a follow-up ARC Discovery project, 'Decarbonising Electricity' with nine academics, focused on the impacts of renewable energy, again comparing in India, Germany and Australia. A co-authored book from the project was published in 2025. 

He has edited three special issues on climate-related issues: 'Reversing the Resource Curse?', Journal of Australian Political Economy (2022, 87); 'New Extractivism', Journal of Cosmopolitan Civil Societies (2022, 15.1). 'From Carbon Democracy to Climate Democracy', Globalisations journal (2023, 20.8).  In 2018 he coedited a special issue of Energy Research and Social Sciences, with more than thirty papers, on 'Methods in Climate end energy Research'. In 2016 he also co-edited a Special Issue with the journal Energy Policy, on 'Coal, Climate and Development', with sixteen refereed papers. He is coauthor of 'Climate Upsurge: An Ethnography of Climate Movement Politics', that reflected on the climate movement that emerged between 2006 and 2010 (Routledge, 2014).

He also publishes on wider debates in international politics and global studies. He coedited the 'Routledge Handbook of Transformative Global Studies' with Hamed Hosseini, Sara Motta and Barry Gills (Routledge 2020), described as 'erudite and wide-ranging' (Prof Manfred Steger), as 'full of original thinking' (Susan George), as a 'stunning handbook' (Prof Adam Morton). Related work addresses wider dynamics of global management and social movements, with a co-edited book, 'Crisis, movement, management: globalising dynamics' (Routledge, 2014). His co-authored book, on the policy ideas of the global justice movement, 'Justice Globalism: Ideology, Crises, Policy' (Sage, 2014), described by Prof. Saskia Sassen as 'a brilliant systematic and empirically-based analysis'.

Other books centre on the politics of globalization. In 2015 he published a co-authored book on developments in capitalist informationalism, 'Disorder and the Disinformation Society', with Francesca Da Rimini, Jon Marshall and Didar Zowghi (also with Routledge). Similar themes were investigated in a co-edited Special Issue of the Global Networks journal, on 'Networks of Disorder', also with Jon Marshall, in 2013. Other books include: 'Nationalism and Global Solidarities: Alternative Projections to Neoliberal Globalisation' (Routledge, 2007); 'Nature's Revenge: Reclaiming Sustainability in an Age of Corporate Globalism' (Broadview, 2006); 'Protest and Globalisation: Prospects for Transnational Solidarity' (Pluto, 2002); 'Moving Mountains: Communities confront Mining and Globalisation' (Zed, 2002); and 'Stopping a Juggernaut: Public Interests versus the Multilateral Agreement on Investment' (Pluto, 2000).

His interest in the changing nature of academic work arises from a funded project on contingent academic work funded by the Federal Department of Education Skills and Employment (DESA). This led to a formal DESA report on the issue and to a coauthored book in 2023 'The Transformation of Academic Work: Fractured Futures', with Keiko Yasukawa and Claire Parfitt (Palgrave).

During his career has has been author or coauthor of 35 book chapters and 32 refereed journal articles. He has written several entries for compendia or encyclopedia, such as the Routledge Handbook on Climate Justice (2018), the Oxford Research Encyclopedia of Climate Science (2016), the Sage Handbook of Globalisation (2014), the Blackwell Encyclopedia of Social and Political Movements (2013, 2020), and the International Studies Association Compendium (2009).