My Writing
In a meandering career, writing has been my anchor point. It’s how I learned to find clarity in my own personal chaos. In a text, I can’t airbrush vagueness with a flick of the hand, a smile, or a rising tone. I have to find the right words and syntax. The craft forces accuracy. Getting there is painfully slow. Writing is a reminder that you must use existing structures to forge anything new. And that they will resist.
Over the years, in two languages, through blog, book and essay writing, editing, and co-authoring, five key threads have emerged in my writing. I share them here, hoping they resonate with you.
#1 – How to Live Well: the world is probabilistic, and we can shift the odds
#2 – How Collectives Find Coherence: we could (and might) organise ourselves better
#3 – How to Exist Across Borders: there is much to be learned from ecotones
#4 – The Art of Meaning-Making: finding common ground is a craft we can develop
#5 – What Futures are Possible: considering better futures is an ethical imperative
Thread 1 – How to Live Well?
Character, virtue, discernment.
forming habits as ethical freedom.
The world is mostly out of our control. But we do have some influence on what habits we form, of thought and action. The question is then: which habits should we develop?
Many traditions have a list of character traits that, cultivated over time, raise the probability of living a life well lived. No results guaranteed, but it does shift the odds. I find that wisdom worth taking seriously. So, I've spent two decades engaging with those traditions: Stoic, Confucian, Buddhist, Catholic. Let’s call it empirical ethics.
The practice is an embodied school of discernment. I’ve taken each tradition seriously, adopted its principles in my own life, and documented what happened in blog posts, essays, and now on my Substack: Moral Fragments.
Key texts: Stoic Virtues (2025) · Against Tragedy (Meanjin, 2026) · Who Should Die and What Should We Do With the Bodies (Meanjin, 2023) · Cardinal Virtues (2017) · Confucian Virtues (2018) · Buddhist Virtues (2018) · Landscape Your Life (2024).
THREAD 2 – How do Collectives Find Coherence?
Alignment, structure, collective action.
The inner work of groups.
Most of today’s entangled crises – destruction, fragmentation, collapse – have to do with collective action. We suffer not so much from a lack of intelligence or goodwill, but a failure to organise ourselves, and hold things together under pressure.
Some of the writing in this thread looks at structural issues, with frameworks for decision-making, models for circulating ideas, or maps of how fields organise themselves. Some of it is more intimate: what it costs to sustain process stewardship over time, and what the people holding that elusive work actually need to sustain it.
Key texts: Soundtracking (forthcoming) · How Things Happen (Change Management Review, 2025) · PhD: Mapping the Digital Ecosystem of Chinese Language Learning (Monash, 2021) · Chinese Statecraft in a Changing World (Springer, 2023) · Foundations of Systems Sensing (2024) · Philosopher in Residence white paper (2023)
THREAD 3 — How to Exist Across Borders
Migration, translation, liminality.
What you notice from the threshold.
Many typologies assume a thing or a person belongs in just one clean category. One language, one culture, one identity, one role. On the ground, most of us are messier than that. At least, I am.
As the child of a divorce, I spent my early years between homes. It continued in my adult life: between French and English, between Europe, Australia and Asia, between roles, organisations, and communities. Liminal positions are uncomfortable, we know that, but they’re also rich. From a threshold, you can see patterns that are invisible from either side. More: by just existing in-between, you start operating as a connective tissue, and hold things together.
This thread gathers a range of writing that explores the wisdom of ecotones: those places where ecosystems overlap, and new things become possible. Travel and place, language and translation, queer communities, and working in the cracks of official structures.
Key texts: Beyond Butterflies: Ecotonal Innovation (2024) · Les Portes de l'Orient (2008) · Honeypot (film, 2011) · Mehmet et Philippe (novel, 2008) · Love Journeys (exhibition, 2011) · Marco Polo Magazine (2011–2016) · Shapeshifters Commons (2026)
THREAD 4 — The Art of Meaning-Making
Storytelling, editing, Language Learning.
How an idea finds its form.
My core academic training was in linguistics and philology. My first proper job was teaching and researching how meaning emerges in systems of texts and language. How it exists in the relationship between the whole and the parts, between reader and author, between context and tradition.
Informed by this experience, together with my storytelling work, this thread explores the art of sense- and meaning-making: how to edit a text until it speaks clearly to diverse readers, learn a language until its logic becomes second nature, or question a myth until its plot no longer appears inevitable.
Key texts: On Change: Twelve Meditations (2024) · What is a Story? (white paper, 2025) · Learning languages (blog, ongoing) · Mourning Rituals (2020) · Default Settings (2021) · Biomimicry (blog, ongoing) · The Bilingual Tai Chi (forthcoming)
THREAD 5 — What Futures are Possible
Governance, technology, ecology.
Writing that refuses the status quo.
I grew up with computers. I met my partner couch surfing. That lived experience of the digital commons has stayed with me even as I watch the rise of techno-feudalism. The dream of technology supporting a more abundant world isn't just a dream for me, even if the mechanics need some serious work.
I am a radical optimist, by temperament, and as an ethical position. In the face of global catastrophic risk, most of it man-made, orienting ourselves to more abundant futures is critical. For this, we need two things at once. We need imagination, or an ability to picture what doesn't exist yet. And we need clear-eyed understanding of how power and technology actually work.
Key texts: SolarPunk is Growing a Gorgeous New World (Singularity Hub, 2020) · GCF Risk Handbook (2018) · World Ethic Forum: radically shared aliveness (blog, ongoing) · Surplus: social, cultural, and political proposals (forthcoming) · How to Rule a World (with Corin Ism, forthcoming) · Juris Materiarum: Empires of Earth, Soil and Dirt (Bronwyn Lay, edited version forthcoming)