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Dr Leah M. GIBBS

Position:  Lecturer
Room:  41.G11
Phone:  +61 2 4298 1547
Email:  leah_gibbs@uow.edu.au

Research Interests

My research focuses on the cultures and politics of nature. In particular, I am interested in the following themes:

1. cultural geographies of nature, especially water;
2. environmental governance;
3. politics of environmental knowledge production; and
4. multi-disciplinary research methodologies.

Current research

1. ‘Environmental knowledge production and water governance’
This project investigates the extent to which diverse systems of environmental knowledge are acknowledged and accommodated in water governance in Tanzania. It analyses the role of northern discourses in southern environmental governance, and the practical and political implications of environmental knowledge production in the context of environmental change. This project is funded by a Royal Geographical Society - Institute of British Geographers Small Research Grant.
Writing in progress: 'Environmental knowledge production and water governance in the global south'. Presented at: RGS-IBG Annual conference, Manchester, August 2009; Nordic Environmental Social Sciences conference, London, June 2009; Departmental seminars, University of Stirling, March 2009 & University of Leicester, February 2009.

2. ‘Valuing Water’ This research examines current approaches to valuing water within natural resource management, the values that people attribute to water, and the gap that exists between the two. It draws on research in the Lake Eyre Basin, central Australia, and brings together cultural research methods and institutional analysis. The research contributes to recent society-nature discourse, and engages with an interdisciplinary literature of human interactions with nature.
Writing in progress: 'Boats, bottles and bores: water and theories of materiality and postcolonialism'. Presented at: 'After Empire? Rethinking the Post in the Postcolonial', Leeds, September 2008; RGS-IBG Annual Conference, London, August 2008.

Representative publications

Gibbs, L.M. 2010. "A beautiful soaking rain": environmental value and water beyond Eurocentrism. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, v.28 (2), 363-378. doi:10.1068/d9207

Gibbs, L.M. 2010. Book review "Troubled Waters: confronting the water crisis in Australia's cities" by Patrick Troy (Ed.). Urban Studies, v.47 (1), 222-224. doi:10.1177/00420980100470011105

Gibbs, L.M. 2009. Just add water: colonisation, water governance and the Australian inland. Environment and Planning A, v.41 (12), 2964-2983. doi:10.1068/a41214

Gibbs, L.M. 2009. Water places: cultural, social and more-than-human geographies of nature. Scottish Geographical Journal, v.125 (3-4, Special Issue: Glasgow Geography Centenary), 361-369. doi:10.1080/14702540903364393

Gibbs, L.M. 2009. Book review "Resurrecting the Granary of Rome: environmental history and French colonial expansion in North Africa" by Diana K. Davis. Land Degradation & Development, v.20 (3), 347-348. doi:10.1002/ldr.890

Stringer, L.C., Twyman, C. and Gibbs, L.M. 2008. Learning from the South: common challenges and solutions for small-scale farming. Geographical Journal, v.174 (3), 235-250. doi:10.1111/j.1475-4959.2008.00298

Gibbs, L.M. 2006. Valuing Water: variability and the Lake Eyre Basin, central Australia. Australian Geographer, v.37 (1), 73-85. doi:10.1080/00049180500511988

Gibbs, L.M. 2003. Decolonising, multiplicities and mining in the Eastern Goldfields, Western Australia. Australian Geographical Studies, v.41 (1), 17-28. doi:10.1111/1467-8470.00189

Current students

I currently supervise two PhD students, both based full-time at the University of Glasgow, Scotland.

Flavia Velásquez-Forte, ‘Decentralization and Land Planning Policies in Chile’

Andrew Wilbur, ‘Seeding alternatives: Back-to-the-land migration and alternative agro-food networks in Northern Italy’

Suggested topics for future students

I welcome students interested in working in the area of the cultures and politics of nature.

Abbreviated CV

June 2010–  Lecturer, University of Wollongong

February 2007–May 2010  Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Department of Geographical and Earth Sciences, University of Glasgow, UK

August 2006–January 2007  Postdoctoral Research Associate, Department of Geography, University of Sheffield, UK

2006  PhD, Australian National University

1999  BSc(Hons), Macquarie University