Chris GIBSON

Position:      Professor of Human Geography, 
                         Director UOW Global Challenges Program
Room:           41.G08
Phone No:   +61 2 4221 3448
Email:           cgibson@uow.edu.au
Twitter:        Follow@profcgibson

Profile

BA (hons) (1995); PhD Geography (Sydney, 2000); FIAG. Professor Chris Gibson began at UOW in August 2005, after holding lecturing positions at UNSW, the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney. Currently Deputy Director of the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research and ARC Future Fellow. Professor Gibson is a member of the Australian Council of Learned Academies Expert Working Group Securing Australia’s Future – Australia’s comparative advantage, and international expert contributor to the 2013 UN Creative Economy Report. Professor Gibson ran the Cultural Geography Study Group of the Institute of Australian Geographers for several years, as well as a Node of the ARC Cultural Research Network (2005-2009). He was also Discipline Chair for Human Geography in the Excellence for Research in Australia (ERA) 2010 assessment exercise.  From May 2013 Professor Gibson will act as Director of UOW’s Global Challenges Program, Transforming Lives and Regions.

Research Interests

Cultural Economy ~ Cities & Regions ~ Economic and Environmental Transformation ~ Tourism

 Rural Festivals Project
AUSCCER
 Current Research Projects

• New book release - Music Festivals and Regional Development in Australia.  
  Ashgate, 2012
• New book release - Creativity in Peripheral Places, Redefining the Creative Industries.  
  Edited by Chris Gibson, Routledge, 2012
• Report on rural festivals now available online.
• ARC Creative Tropical City report now available online.
   

Recent commentaries

Warren, A and Gibson, C (2012) All washed up: have surf megabrands forgotten their roots? The Conversation, 18 September, https://theconversation.edu.au/all-washed-up-have-surf-megabrands-forgotten-their-roots-9620

Gibson, C and Klocker, N (2012) Does the shape of countries shape their destiny? The Conversation, 2 July, https://theconversation.edu.au/does-the-shape-of-countries-shape-their-destiny-7732

Gibson, C (2012) We can't compete on cheap and nasty; let's be a country that makes high-quality, lasting things, The Conversation, 18 June, http://theconversation.edu.au/we-cant-compete-on-cheap-and-nasty-lets-be-a-country-that-makes-high-quality-lasting-things-7170

Gibson, C (2012) A country that makes things: rethinking and broadening manufacturing, Griffith Review Provocations, http://griffithreview.com/edition-36-what-is-australia-for/download-ebook

Gibson, C (2012) Once a cultural icon, is Australia's surfboard industry destined to disappear?, The Conversation, 17 May, http://theconversation.edu.au/once-a-cultural-icon-is-australias-surfboard-industry-destined-to-disappear-7001

Warren, A. and Gibson, C. (2012) Manufacturing on the move? Beyond the high dollar in the debate about making things in Australia – the case of the Australian surfboard industry AUSCCER Discussion Paper 2012/2. Wollongong: Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research http://www.uow.edu.au/science/eesc/ausccer

Editorial Board Duties

- Dialogues in Human Geography
- Political Geography
- Social & Cultural Geography
- Tourist Studies
- Australian Geographer

Full Academic Publications List

UOW RIS Publications

Current Students

Ben Gallan (PhD): Day and night: temporality, cultural infrastructure and the right to the city
Eliza de Vet (PhD) (co-supervisor): An ethnography of Australian weather
Elyse Stanes (PhD): Shopping, consumption and youth sustainability
Chantel Carr (PhD): Making things: creativity and manufacturing in the Illawarra
Anna de Jong (PhD) (co-supervisor): Festivals and rural young people
Charlie Gillon (PhD): Exploring zones of friction and traction in rural residential urban design projects
Nick Skilton (PhD): Australia’s mining boom and peripheral economies in mining towns

Past Students

Andrea Gordon (MSc): Community Music, Place and Belonging in the Bega Valley, NSW, Australia
Andrew Warren (PhD, 2012): Soulful work or selling the soul? Cultural production, precarious labour and the emotional terrain of the custom surfboard industry
Wan Azdie Mohd Abu Bakar (PhD, 2010): Mapping food insecurity in the Illawarra
Chris Brennan-Horley (PhD, 2010): Creative city mapping: experimental applications of GIS for cultural planning and auditing
Kate Roggeveen (MSc, 2010): Tomato journeys from farm to fruit shop: greenhouse gas emissions and cultural analysis
Rae Dufty (PhD, 2008): Rethinking the politics of distribution: the geographies and governmentalities of housing assistance in rural New South Wales, Australia
Natascha Klocker (PhD, 2008): A participatory, action-oriented and youth-led investigation into child domestic work in Iringa, Tanzania
Karen McNamara (PhD, 2007): The politics of ‘environmental refugee’ protection at the United Nations