An inaugural study-abroad program in Sydney examines history through exploration and observation

The three-week course took students across the city to consider how relationships among people, land, and human health changed as the Australian port became a global player.

By Sarah Steimer

In a traditional classroom setting, students engage with their materials, teachers, and classmates in a variety of ways. But what the traditional classroom can lack is an opportunity for students to directly observe and explore, which can be important components of social science research.

Such an opportunity was a motivating force behind the inaugural Sydney study abroad program designed by Christopher Kindell, Assistant Instructional Professor in the Committee on Environment, Geography and Urbanization (CEGU) and an affiliate faculty member of Department of History. From Aug. 22 through Sept. 12, Kindell led 16 students through Sydney, Australia, with assignments that included field notes, site reflections, and course expansion proposals.

“I have really come to appreciate and cherish learning that takes place outside of the classroom,” Kindell says. “The main goal was to get students out in the field, to give students the opportunity to explore and observe.”

The course — “Sydney: Colonization, Health, and the Environment” — challenged students to engage with the city and its history. Specifically, they explored the period between the First Fleet’s arrival in 1788 — when British ships brought colonial officials, settlers, and convicts to mainland Australia — and the Australian Federation in 1901 that made it a united nation. The goal was to explore encounters among Aboriginal Australians, British convicts, colonial officials, free settlers, and migrant laborers, among others, and how these interactions altered the social, environmental, and urban fabric of Sydney.

“It has a very complicated and contested history,” Kindell says. “But I have found that in Australia, they're not necessarily afraid to show that through museums, architecture, and exhibits. I found upwards of 20 different places that would be potential site visits for this class.”

Each of the three weeks was designed as an individual unit. The first week focused on Sydney’s birth as a colonial seaport, including the Aboriginal, British settler, and convict interactions during the late 18th and early 19th centuries. The texts and site visits explored how settlers reacted to their new environments, setting up ways to sustain themselves, alongside the violence perpetrated against Aboriginal Australians. The unit considered the role of convict labor in establishing the region as a British imperial outpost, and the lessons included a trip to Cockatoo Island in the middle of Sydney Harbor. The site was originally used by Aboriginals for ceremonial practices, then by the British government to imprison reoffending criminals. Later, Cockatoo served as an industrial school and reformatory for girls as well as as a British naval shipbuilding facility. Today, it's a tourist destination where permanent tents have been erected — and where Kindell’s students had an overnight stay.

In the second week, students were asked to consider the relationship between urban development and rural expansion. Sydney exploded in size and population in the mid-19th century, and many of the materials for expansion — wood and stone, for example — had to be transported from Sydney’s hinterlands. Students traveled to the Blue Mountains to gain a sense of such sourcing treks. And to better grasp how land changes as a city develops, they visited public parks, many of which were previously used as agricultural facilities and horse race tracks. Students also visited the Rocks, once the home of early freed convicts, and Elizabeth Farm, a historic estate of wool pioneers.

The third week dove into the late 19th century and how the government managed the fast-growing city and engaged with the rest of the world. They visited Sydney Hospital, historically known as the Rum Hospital, which was the first major hospital in Australia, and students explored its exhibits. They also spent time at Q Station, originally a quarantine station and now a hotel and heritage site where many elements from its history remain intact. These sites mark the rise of Sydney’s public health and medical professions, and Kindell integrated his expertise in the history of infectious diseases and the environment into the course.

“This is one of the first opportunities that I've had to meld my teaching interests and my research interests into one composite class, so that students can physically see, when we're talking about British convict labor, what solitary confinement actually looked like by going to Cockatoo Island,” Kindell says. “We can see how a city managed food shortages because they have giant underground granaries.”

Throughout the course, students were asked to keep a handwritten field notes journal to record what they saw and connect their observations to their readings. Kindell assigned a historical fiction book review, meant to encourage students to consider the differing perspectives of a place that has a contested history. And for their final project, students wrote and presented independent site proposals, serving as an opportunity to impact Kindell’s future Sydney courses. They identified, explored, and observed locations that didn’t appear on the course syllabus and pitched them to the class as potential future course additions.

Sebina Avdic, a rising fourth-year BA/MA, majoring in Psychology and completing the MAPSS program, focused her site proposal and final project on Sydney Park. 

“As I walked through its wetlands, the landscape initially appeared completely natural,” she recalls. “I later learned that much of what I was seeing was actually the result of deliberate restoration efforts, including engineered wetlands and stormwater management. It felt like a fitting way to wrap up the course because it brought me back to one of the ideas we had encountered throughout the trip: The environments we see today are often the product of layers of human intervention and change. By the end of the course, I found myself looking at places differently and asking not only what I was seeing, but how they came to look that way in the first place.”

Kindell created a impromptu moments in the course as well, taking a few occasions to change in-class attendance to letting students explore the city on their own, finding sites with a partner that they hadn’t yet experienced and exploring how it might have changed over many years. Kindell also received positive feedback from students about the journaling assignments, which he said showed particularly keen observations — and he plans to integrate field notes in his other UChicago courses. 

But the final independent site research and proposal, he says, was the highlight of student work, and he credits the high levels of engagement to giving students a stake in future iterations of the class. He’s also pleased with how adept the students became at navigating Sydney’s public transit systems, often traveling to their sites by bus, train, or ferry.

“I expected to have my ‘student life’ and ‘tourist life’ in Sydney very separate, but they ended up blending together and in such a wonderful, enriching way,” says Hannah Park, a third-year Public Policy and Human Development major. “Getting to actively visit and immerse ourselves in the sites from our course readings made discussions and doing assignments all the more enjoyable to engage in.”

While much of what Kindell teaches focuses on regions outside the U.S., which can make experiential teaching obviously tricky, he says the trip has helped him recognize that he can still use Chicago as a site of exploration for some of the bigger themes he’s interested in teaching. 

“Sydney loves its heritage,” he says. “They love talking about it, and it is embodied in so many different physical locations around the city. Chicago is similar in many ways. Heritage would be a great theme to explore in experiential learning classes in a city like Chicago.”

Future iterations of the Sydney course will incorporate some of the student proposals, along with select sites and assignments from this year’s course. Overall, those in attendance consider the inaugural trip to be a success — and Kindell says it was “the best teaching experience I've ever had.”