Researcher biography

Dr Tom Doig is a creative nonfiction author, investigative journalist and scholar. Tom was the recipient of the 2023 CLNZ-NZSA Writer's Award for his work on prepper subcultures in Aotearoa New Zealand. He has written two books about the unprecedented 2014 Hazelwood mine fire disaster: Hazelwood (Penguin Random House, 2020) and The Coal Face (Penguin Books Australia, 2015). Hazelwood was a finalist for the 2020 Walkley Book Award, Journalism and the 2021 Ned Kelly Awards, Best True Crime and Highly Commended in the 2020 Victorian Premier's Literary Awards, Non-Fiction. The Coal Face was joint winner of the 2015 Oral History Victoria Education Innovation Award. Dr Doig has also written a humorous travel memoir, Mörön to Mörön: Two men, two bikes, one Mongolian misadventure (Allen & Unwin, 2013). He is the contributing editor of the interdisciplinary collection Living with the Climate Crisis: Voices from Aotearoa (Bridget Williams Books, 2020).

Dr Doig teaches creative nonfiction and poetry.

As a scholar, Dr Doig is interested in interdisciplinary approaches to the accelerating climate crisis, with a focus on the cultural, social and psychological aspects of climate breakdown. He is currently researching a new book: We Are All Preppers Now (forthcoming with Scribe Publications), documenting survivalists, doomsday preppers, climate activists and other subcultures of imminent collapse around the world.

Areas of research