Whyalla
Futures
Research
Whyalla, South Australia, is living with an uncertain future, as plans for green steel and hydrogen are announced, delayed and revised. What futures do people here want, for themselves and their community?
Whyalla Futures Research is led by Dr Kari Dahlgren, Senior Lecturer in Anthropology at Monash University. It is part of Hydrogen Hub Futures, an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher Award (DECRA) project (DE250100024, 2025–2029).
Research questions
This project uses ethnography, futures methods and co-design workshops to understand how people in Whyalla, South Australia, imagine their futures. The path to decarbonising iron and steel making is uncertain, and the people who live with that uncertainty deserve a say in what comes next.
Who imagines Whyalla's future?
How are futures for the city produced by governments, companies and investors, and what models, like the hydrogen hub, do they rely on?
How are promises lived?
How do residents experience repeated cycles of announcement, hope, delay and insecurity, and how does that history shape trust in the next plan?
What does decarbonising steel mean here?
What are the everyday stakes of industrial decarbonisation for jobs, health, landscape and identity in a steel city?
Whose futures are missing?
Whose voices and desires are absent from top-down approaches to planning regional industrial cities, and what do they imagine instead?
Voices from Whyalla
A video podcast from the project. People who live and work in Whyalla talk about the city, the promises made to it, and the futures they want.
Produced by Sophie Hancock, in collaboration with The Whyalla Collective.
Episode 1: Staying, leaving, coming back
Staying, leaving, and finding your way back to Whyalla.
All episodes
What the project will make
These outputs are how what people share comes back to the city and reaches the people making decisions. The first two are already out.
A film made with the city
Built from podcast interviews, workshops and time spent in Whyalla, and screened locally.
Voices from Whyalla
Conversations with people who live and work in Whyalla. Produced by Sophie Hancock with The Whyalla Collective. Watch the episodes above.
Whyalla High School Status Report
A timeline of the former Whyalla High School site, from its opening in 1943 and closure in 2021 to its planned disposal by the State. Compiled to support The Whyalla Collective’s Groundswell Whyalla project. Updated 27 October 2026.
Read the report · PDF, 5 pages
Imagine Whyalla futures workshops
Co-design sessions with residents, shared back with the community.
Community futures for Whyalla
Recommendations that put residents' own visions in front of state and federal decision-makers.
Academic writing on industrial decarbonisation
On promised futures, the hydrogen hub model and whose voices count.
Want to hear when these are out? Get in touch
Researcher
Dr Kari Dahlgren
Senior Lecturer in Anthropology · Monash University
Dr Kari Dahlgren is a social anthropologist and ethnographer whose research examines the social and ethical dimensions of energy production, consumption, and transformation in Australia.
Her research is broadly concerned with how futures are anticipated and negotiated, and with the uneven effects that follow.