Dr Natascha KLOCKER

Position:  Lecturer
Room:  41.G13
Phone:  +61 2 4298 1331
Email:  natascha@uow.edu.au

AUSCCER

Research interests

• Geographies of racism and anti-racism
• Immigration, cultural diversity, asylum seeking and refugees
• Geographies of childhood and youth, including children’s work/labour
• Alternative research methodologies, including participatory action research

Current research

‘Climate change and cultural diversity: how the attitudes and behaviours of ethnically diverse Australians influence household sustainability’
URC Small Grant, University of Wollongong, 2011

The research project aims to:

1. Investigate how culturally diverse groups, in NSW, understand the concepts of environment and climate change.
2. Determine whether concerns over environmental degradation in general, and climate change in particular, differ across culturally diverse groups.
3. Examine how culturally specific values and practices may influence the operation and sustainability of households.
4. Use the research findings to promote cross-cultural learning, and ultimately more environmentally sustainable attitudes and behaviours within the community.

The proposed research will expand upon limited academic understandings of how culturally diverse groups value and interact with the environment. Such research is critical in multicultural Australia, but has thus far been lacking. The study will investigate environmental attitudes and behaviours of key immigrant groups, comparing them with the dominant Anglo-Australian community.

Evaluation of the Localities Embracing and Accepting Diversity (LEAD) Program

The LEAD Program is a joint initiative of the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Victorian Equal Opportunity and Human Rights Commission, Beyond Blue and DIaC. The program seeks to evaluate the success of place-based efforts to reduce race-based discrimination (against people from migrant, refugee and Indigenous backgrounds). I am a member of the evaluation team, which is based at the University of Melbourne, Centre for Health Policy, Programs and Economics.

Representative publications

Searchable Publications

Klocker, N. (in press) ‘Conducting sensitive research in the present and past tense: recounting the stories of current and former child domestic workers’ Geoforum

Klocker, N. and Drozdzewski, D. (in press) ‘Career progress relative to opportunity: how many papers is a baby ‘worth’?’ Environment & Planning A

Klocker, N., Gibson, C. and Borger, E. (in press) ‘Living together, but apart: Material geographies of everyday sustainability in extended family households’ Environment & Planning A

Natascha Klocker & Elyse Stanes (2012): ‘Reel love’ across ethnic boundaries? The extent and significance of inter-ethnic intimacy in Australian cinema, Ethnic and Racial Studies, DOI:10.1080/01419870.2012.675080

Klocker, N. (2012) ‘Doing Participatory Action Research and Doing a PhD: Words of Encouragement for Prospective Students’ Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 36(1): 149 – 163

Klocker, N. (2011) ‘Negotiating change: working with children and their employers to transform child domestic work in Iringa, Tanzania’ Children’s Geographies 9(2): 205-220

Klocker, N., Trenerry, B. and Webster, K. (2011) How does freedom of religion and belief affect health and wellbeing? Victorian Health Promotion Foundation, Carlton, Australia (http://www.vichealth.vic.gov.au/Publications/Freedom-from-discrimination/Freedom-of-religion-and-belief.aspx)

Paradies Y, Chandrakumar L, Klocker N, Frere M, Webster K, Berman G, McLean, P. (2009) Building on our strengths: A framework to reduce racial discrimination and promote diversity in Victoria. Melbourne, Victorian Health Promotion Foundation.

Klocker, N. (2008) ‘How does freedom of religion and belief affect health and wellbeing?’ Discussion Paper prepared for VicHealth and the Australian Human Rights Commission

Klocker, N. & Webster, K. (2008) ‘Ethnic and race-based discrimination as a determinant of mental health and wellbeing’ VicHealth Research Summary.

Dunn, K.M., Klocker, N. and Salabay, T. (2007) ‘Contemporary Racism and Islamaphobia in Australia: Racialising Religion’, Ethnicities 7(4): 564 - 589

Klocker, N. (2007) ‘An example of ‘thin’ agency: Child domestic workers in Tanzania’, in E. Robson, R. Panelli and S. Punch (Eds) Young Rural Lives, Taylor & Francis, New York, pp. 83 - 84

Robson, E. Bell, S. and Klocker, N. (2007) ‘Conceptualising agency in the lives and actions of rural young people’, in E. Robson, R. Panelli and S. Punch (Eds) Young Rural Lives, Taylor & Francis, New York, pp. 135-148

Gibson, C. and Klocker, N. (2005) ‘The ‘cultural turn’ in Australian regional economic development discourse: neoliberalising creativity’, Geographical Research, 43(1): 93 – 102

Klocker, N. (2004) ‘Community antagonism towards asylum seekers in Port Augusta, South Australia’ Australian Geographical Studies, 42(1): 1 – 17

Gibson, C. and Klocker, N. (2004) ‘Academic publishing as a ‘creative’ industry, and recent discourses of ‘creative economies’: some critical reflections’ Area, 36(4): 423 – 434

Klocker, N. and Dunn, K.M. (2003) ‘Who’s Driving the Asylum Debate: Newspaper and Government Representations of Asylum Seekers’, Media International Australia, 109: 71 – 93

Gibson, C. and Klocker, N. (2003) ‘Cultural Industries and Cultural Policy: A Critique of Recent Discourses in Regional Economic Development’, Proceedings of the New Zealand Geographical Society Conference ‘Windows on a Changing World’, 6 – 11 July 2003, The University of Auckland, pp. 131 – 135

Current Students

Elyse Stanes (PhD): Making space: young people’s routines of consumption and implications for the cultural economy of sustainability

Alex Tindale (BSc Hons): Geographies of inter-ethnic intimacy in NSW

Past Students

Stephanie Toole (BEnvSc Hons, 2011): Transport choices – to and from primary schools in the Sutherland Shire

Catherine Owen (BSc Hons, 2010): Is there a place for teenage drinkers? Parents attitudes towards alcohol consumption in Wollongong, New South Wales

Erin Borger (BSc Hons, 2010): Dynamics of Extended Family Households: A Cultural Economy of Sustainability

Suggested topics for future PhD and Honours students

I welcome students interested in working on any of my broad areas of research interest. However, I particularly welcome studies interested in:

• The theory and practice of racism and anti-racism.
• Cross-cultural variations in environmentally sustainable attitudes and practices in Australia.
• Geographies of childhood and youth.

Abbreviated CV

February 2010 – Lecturer in Human Geography, University of Wollongong

July 2008 to January 2010 – Research Leader, Reducing race-based discrimination, University of Melbourne and the Victorian Health Promotion Foundation

January to June 2008 – Associate lecturer in Human Geography, University of Wollongong

October 2007 to June 2008 – Research Assistant, Managing Cultural Diversity in the Construction Industry, UNSW

2008 – PhD, University of NSW (Thesis: A participatory, action-oriented and youth led investigation into child domestic work in Iringa, Tanzania)

2002 Bachelor of Environmental Science (Geography Hons, Thesis: ‘Representations of asylum seekers in contemporary Australia: The government / media / public opinion nexus’).

Bachelor of Arts (Comparative Development, Politics and International Rel