Place, Country, Environments

Researchers

• Dr Christine Eriksen
• Dr Kate Booth (University of Tasmania, Australia)
• Professor Bruce Tranter (University of Tasmania, Australia)
• Associate Professor Shaun French (University of Nottingham, England)

Research Assistants

• Dr Eliza de Vet (University of Wollongong, Australia)
• Dr Chloe Lucas (University of Tasmania, Australia)

Project description

There is a growing concern in Australia and internationally of the extensive social and economic costs of disasters, and with it an acknowledgement of our inadequate understanding of the role of insurance in disaster mitigation, preparation and recovery. A 2017 report by Deloitte Access Economics outlined how in the ten years leading up to 2016, the total cost of ‘natural’ disasters in Australia averaged $18.2 billion per annum. When disasters strike, home and contents insurance provides a safety net but many households are under-insured or not insured at all. The average uninsured loss for each ‘natural’ disaster in Australia between 2004 and 2011 was estimated by Lloyds at almost $1 billion. Little is known about the factors that contribute to these rates of inadequate insurance cover. This project attempts to bridge this knowledge gap by examining perceptions of risk and insurance amongst residents both with and without direct personal experience of bushfires. It strives to assist the development of insurance policies and implementation strategies that meet the needs of residents. 

Funding

Australian Research Council Discovery Project Grant (DP170100096)

Researchers

• Dr Jennifer Atchison
• Dr Hugh Forehead (project lead)
• Professor Kris French
• Associate Professor Louella McCarthy
• Professor Clare Murphy
• Dr Cole Hendrigan
• Dr Farzana Tanima

Project description

This project aims to help understand what aspects of public space in Liverpool today are working well for residents and visitors. It will harness the data that the Smart Cities program is delivering and supplement this with information about:

• people’s experience of green space and the reasons they chose to visit certain areas
• the nearby green space around each of the Smart Cities sensors, including heat load, native/exotic vegetation and its structure and water features
• other qualities of the space (such as light, shade, view, noise) and quantities (benches, shelters, pavers, water and more)

Funding

UOW Global Challenge grant (2019)

Outcomes

Ultimately, this project will enable Liverpool City Council to design policies that will protect existing spaces that work well for residents and design new spaces that emulate or improve on the best existing spaces. This will protect the interests of the most vulnerable people in society, who are more likely to require the refuge that good public spaces provide. This will help to build a resilient community in Liverpool as it undergoes significant development and population growth in the coming years.

Researchers

• Dr Jennifer Atchison
• Dr Catherine Phillips (project lead) 

Project description

Urban forests are fundamental to city liveability, resilience, and sustainability and trees are increasingly recognised as contributing to solutions for multiple contemporary urban challenges such as climate change, urban heating and cooling, air quality, connection with nature. The shift toward evaluating trees as key to sustainable urban futures has been supported by ecosystem services frameworks, which identify and measure the contributions ecosystems make to supporting human lives and well‐being. If municipal governments are to retain and expand urban forests – as they argue they must to improve our urban futures – then socio‐cultural valuations require more attention. Melbourne offers an excellent opportunity to pilot our interdisciplinary approach, and serves as the initial case study for a collaboration between the University of Melbourne (School of Geography), the University of Wollongong (ACCESS) and the City of Melbourne (Urban Sustainability). 

Funding

University of Melbourne Community Engagement Grant (2018) and a MSSI-Geography Award (2017).

Outcomes

This project will:

• Analyse how people articulate their valuations and engagements with Melbourne’s trees.
• Pilot an interdisciplinary, mixed methods approach including a qualitative, quantitative and artistic aspects.
• Explore collaborative techniques to translate socio-cultural valuations into urban planning and governance. 


More Information about this project 

Indicative publications

Seeing the trees for the (urban) forest: more-than-human geographies and urban greening.

Researchers

Associate Professor Michael Adams

Project description

Reflection on the privilege of my learning from Indigenous and vernacular communities focuses this research on nature and the human search for meaning. I use ethnographic and immersion research to study hunting and death, animals and the sacred, freediving and loss, and connections to place. Insights in all of these areas underscore my debt to Indigenous teachers.

Funding

• Bundanon Trust residencies
• Asialink Arts residency
• The Calibre Prize

Outcomes

Publications

• Fathom
• Outlier
• Wild children
• Salt Blood
• The cultural meanings of wild horses
• One Blood
• Caught in the net of life and time 

Creative work

• Flood

Podcasts and videos

• Full immersion, TEDx U Wollongong (video)
• Meditations on Mortality, Sorrow and Lament, Sydney Ideas.
• Best of 2017: Michael Adams, Interview on Richard Fidler Conversations, ABC.

Researchers

• Associate Professor Michael Adams
• Dr Derek Scasta
• AJ Corradini 

Project description

The domestication of the horse is at least 6,000 years old, and Xenophon’s On Horsemanship has been in print for 2,300 years. This project explores aspects of the human-horse relationship, from wild horses in Australia and other countries, to Indigenous relationships with horses, to geographies of recreational horse ownership.

Outcomes

Indicative publications

• An inductive field-based international comparison of free-ranging horse socio-ecology in Australia, New Zealand, and the United States
• The cultural meanings of wild horses

Podcast

• The cultural meanings of wild horses

Researchers

Dr Leah Gibbs 

Project description

Sharks have come to be the focus of intense public and policy debate in recent years. This research examines the cultures and politics of human-shark encounter and shark hazard management. To date work has examined: experiences and views of ocean-users (with Dr Andrew Warren); interdisciplinary critique of the effects and effectiveness of shark hazard management (with Dr Lachlan Fetterplace, Dr Matthew Rees and Associate Professor Quentin Hanich); and trials and evaluation of novel non-lethal shark hazard management techniques [pictured] (with Dr Kye Adams, Allison Broad, Professor Andy Davis and Associate Professor Wanqing Li). New work with HDR student Teaniel Mifsud is exploring the range of human–shark encounters through crowdsourced mapping methods (co-supervised by Dr Chris Brennan-Horley).

Funding

This work has been supported by the University of Wollongong Global Challenge Program and University Research Council.

• 2018 Project AIRSHIP: automated blimp surveillance for conservation and human safety (Global Challenges Project Funding, University of Wollongong) $20,000
• 2017 Shark Eye: Real time Smartwatch alerting through aerial surveillance (NSW Department of Primary Industries Shark Management Strategy). $42,000
• 2017 Project AIRSHIP: sharks, video imaging and the public perception of risk (Global Challenges Seed Funding, University of Wollongong). $14,934
• 2014 Threatened and threatening: governing sharks for conservation and human safety (Global Challenges Strategic Funding, University of Wollongong). $5,000
• 2014 Death and the ocean: human-shark encounters and the cultures and governance of the sea (University Research Council, University of Wollongong). $5,000

Outcomes

Peer-reviewed outputs

• Agency in human–shark encounter
• Coexisting with sharks: a novel, socially acceptable and non-lethal shark mitigation approach
• Effects and effectiveness of shark hazard management: The Shark Meshing (Bather Protection) Program, NSW, Australia
• ‘Sharks, nets and more-than-human territory in eastern Australia’ pp203–219
• Transforming shark hazard policy: learning from ocean-users and shark encounter in Western Australia
• Killing sharks: cultures and politics of encounter and the sea  

Research-based public outputs

• Shark nets are destructive and don’t keep you safe – let’s invest in lifeguards
• More shark nets for NSW: why haven’t we learned from WA’s shark cull? 
• Spectacular shark encounter: Fanning’s close shave reminds us we share the ocean 
• Western Australian shark cull policy dumped: experts react 
• WA shark cull season ends, and ocean users don't want it to return
• Who’s hunting who? Misguided responses to shark attacks  

Research Engagement and Impact

Leah Gibbs contributed as an Expert Witness for two years (2017–2019) in a legal case brought by the Humane Society International against the Queensland Government about use of lethal shark control measures in the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park. On 2 April 2019 the Administrative Appeals Tribunal handed down its decision in favour of HSI and the Environmental Defenders Office NSW. The case was appealed and later heard by the Federal Court of Australia, where it was dismissed; a terrific win for marine species and the Great Barrier Reef. 

In 2017 Leah Gibbs acted as a witness to the Public Hearing and Senate Inquiry into the efficacy and regulation of shark mitigation.

This research on human-shark interactions has featured in more than thirty local, national and international media outlets, in print, online and audio formats, including ABC Radio, Australian Geographic, Courier Mail, The Guardian, New York Times, SBS online, Sunday Telegraph, Swellnet, Triple J Hack.

Researcher

Dr Scott McKinnon 

Project description

This project examines the construction and enactment of Australian memories of disaster, exploring the interlinked yet often conflicting concepts: ‘remembering a disaster’ and ‘learning from a disaster’. In political rhetoric, media reports and the personal narratives of survivors, disasters associated with natural hazards are often described as unforgettable events. Although post-disaster discourses reveal a desire to record and preserve memories at multiple scales and to ensure that individuals, communities and governments ‘never forget’, this discursive focus on remembrance often fails to prompt lasting change in community behaviours or in government policy. The project examines how active ways of remembering might contribute to resilience, as well as seeking to understand the long-term impacts of disaster as seen in commemorative processes. 

Funding

University of Wollongong Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Research Fellowship (2017-2020).

Outcomes

Indicative publications

Remembering and Forgetting 1974: The 2011 Brisbane Floods and memories of an earlier disaster

Other outcomes 

Disasters in Australia and New Zealand. 

Disasters in the Illawarra. A series of oral history interviews about the 1968 bushfires and the 1998 storm and floods in the Illawarra is currently being undertaken. The interviews will be donated to Wollongong City Libraries and made available online as a community resource.

Researcher

• Associate Professor Nicholas Gill 
• Dr Sonia Graham
• Dr Leonie Miller
• Dr Jenny Atchison
• Dr Holly Tootell
• Associate Professor Laurie Chisholm

Project description

This project area began life as an investigation into invasive plant management by rural landholders in peri-urban areas and on rural lifestyle landholdings. Invasive plant management is a major activity by many such landholders and important in developing links to, and knowledge of, their land. Landholders variously live with, seek to eradicate, or aim to control weeds. How they do this has implications for landscape scale environmental outcomes and for pathways to effective invasive plant management. 

The work has expanded beyond this to include interdisciplinary collaborations with researchers in the School of Psychology, the School of Earth, Atmospheric and Life Sciences, and the School of Computing & Information Technology. Management by rural lifestyle landholders remains a focus, however work under this broader project also now includes: 

• Successfully applying for and holding the 2020 Australian Academy of Science Fenner Conference on the Environment - Managing wild and weedy Australia across boundaries and disciplines.
• Evaluating biosecurity risks and management interventions for recreational activities in and around Kosciuszko National Park in collaboration with the NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service.
• Collective weed management in post-fire landscapes: learning from successes and failures.

Funding

• 2020 Global Challenges Program
• 2020 University of Wollongong Matching Scholarship Scheme with NSW Department of Planning, Industry, and Environment/NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
• 2020 Australian Academy of Science
• 2018 Faculty of Social Science Partnership Grant with NSW Office of Environment and Heritage/NSW National Parks and Wildlife Service
• 2018 Nursery and Garden Industry Association of NSW and the ACT and the Plant Sure Consortia
• 2015 NSW Department of Primary Industries, Weeds Action Program
• 2012 Australian Research Council Discovery Grant DP130102588

Outcomes

Our report and recommendations for the design of a Voluntary Environmental Program underpin the Plant Sure Scheme which aims to reduce biosecurity risks in the nursery and garden industries 

Publications

• Watching the grass grow: learning from and managing invasive plants in conditions of uncertainty
• Biosecurity hygiene in the Australian high country: footwear cleaning practices, motivations, and barriers among visitors to Kosciuszko National park. 
• Opportunities for better use of collective action theory in research and governance for invasive species management. 
• Weed hygiene practices in rural industries and public land management: variable knowledge, patchy implementation, inconsistent coordination 
• 2020 Fenner Conference on the Environment: Managing wild and weedy Australia across boundaries and disciplines – Conference report.  

Media and Other Impacts

• Invited Keynote Speaker 18^th NSW Weeds Conference “Living with weeds, learning about weeds: weed management, values”. Weed Society of NSW.
• The war on weeds – NSW Country Hour

Researchers

Vanessa Cavanagh 

Project description

Indigenous land management including Aboriginal fire knowledge has garnered significant public and policy debate in recent years. This PhD research examines the roles and experiences of Aboriginal women in cultural burning in NSW. This qualitative Indigenist research achieves this through semi-structured interviews and participatory action auto-ethnography.

The research forms part of Work Package 5 Indigenous cultural burning: Exploring the links between cultural revitalisation and wellbeing within the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub. 

Funding

This work has been supported by the NSW Bushfire Risk Management Research Hub, and the UOW Global Challenges (travel grant). 

Outcomes

Peer-reviewed outputs

• Igniting a conversation: Indigenous intercultural doctoral supervision. Geographical Research.
•  ‘Walking in the landscapes of our ancestors – Indigenous perspectives critical in the teaching of Geography’, Interaction, Vol 48, No 1, pp. 14-16.  

Research-based public outputs

• An A to Z of Shadow Places Concepts, Shadow Places Network Creative Commons 
• This grandmother tree connects me to Country. I cried when I saw her burned, p.22-33 in Tree Story, Edited by Charlotte Day and Melissa Ratliff
• 'Grandmother trees, Aboriginal women and fire’ P. 44-48, in Continent Aflame: Responses to an Australian Catastrophe, edited by Pat Anderson, Sally Gardner, Paul James and Paul Komesaroff 
• ‘Aboriginal people find strength despite perpetual grief’ P.122-125, in Continent Aflame: Responses to an Australian Catastrophe, edited by Pat Anderson, Sally Gardner, Paul James and Paul Komesaroff 
• ‘Friday essay: this grandmother tree connects me to Country. I cried when I saw her burned’ 
• ‘Strength from perpetual grief: how Aboriginal people experience the bushfire crisis’ 
• ‘Vanessa Cavanagh, Rachael Cavanagh, & Deb Swan on ancestral fire regimes /205’
• There’s no place like… Entanglements Lecture Podcast Series - Reigniting Connections: Aboriginal Women and Cultural Burning in NSW with Vanessa Cavanagh
• ‘Aboriginal women and caring for country in NSW, Australia with Vanessa Cavanagh'   

Research Engagement and Impact

Vanessa Cavanagh contributed as an Expert Witness to the Royal Commission into National Natural Disaster Arrangements (2020), as well as contributing to the NSW Bushfire Inquiry (2020).

Researchers

• Associate Professor Sarah Hamylton
• Dr Leah Gibbs
• Dr Lucas Ihlein
• Dr Kim Williams 

Project description

This project uses interdisciplinary collaboration to investigate and communicate about climate change. Human geographer Dr Leah Gibbs, coastal scientist Associate Professor Sarah Hamylton, and artists Dr Lucas Ihlein and Dr Kim Williams work together to explore the efficacy of mapping, drawing, story-telling and other forms of communicating to interrogate the contemporary environmental and social changes that are altering the Great Barrier Reef. In 2016 and 2017 this iconic Australian coastal landscape underwent two consecutive mass bleaching events. Driven by carbon emissions and global practices of consumption, this environmental issue represents a truly global challenge. Through this project we are exploring non-traditional scholarly outputs, including music. Here's our first song: ‘Rock the Boat’. 

Funding

This work has been supported by the University of Wollongong Global Challenge Program.

• Mapping the Islands: how art and science can save the Great Barrier Reef (Global Challenges Seed Funding, University of Wollongong). $15,000

Outcomes

Peer-reviewed outputs

• ‘Rock the Boat’: Song-writing as geographic practice.
• Can interdisciplinary insights encourage a meaningful response to the climate crisis? Narratives from the Great Barrier Reef, Australia.
• ‘Sustaining the seas through interdisciplinary songwriting’ Sustaining the Seas: oceanic space and the politics of care. pp281–292

 Creative outputs

• ‘Rock the Boat’. Artists poster
• Blue Spotted Rays ‘Rock the Boat / The Reef Song’. Seven-inch vinyl single, cover artwork, annotated sheet music
• Blue Spotted Rays ‘Rock the Boat’. Recorded at Silver Sound Studios. Musical recording
• Blue Spotted Rays ‘The Reef Song’. Recorded at Silver Sound Studios. Musical recording

Researchers

• Associate Professor Nicholas Gill
• Professor Hannah Gosnell (Oregon State University) 

Project Description

Regenerative agriculture is a growing worldwide agro-ecological movement and has the potential to transform agricultural and grazing systems. While its biophysical outcomes remain subject to debate, the social, personal and cultural institutions and process associated with regenerative agriculture potentially offer much that is of value for transitions to more resilient primary production. This project aimed to examine the personal transitions of NSW graziers into forms of regenerative agriculture and identify how these transitions were initiated and sustained. 

Funding

ACCESS Visiting Fellow 

Outcomes

Transformational adaptation on the farm: Processes of change and persistence in transitions to ‘climate-smart’ regenerative agriculture  

Media and other Impacts

• Invited 2021 presentation to the L2A Strategic Water Management course for the Environment Institute of Australia and New Zealand
• Invitation to be on the steering committee for the Birchip Cropping Group’s Defining Regenerative Agriculture project
• Regenerative agriculture is an uncommon journey
• Regenerative agriculture a contentious trend still stirring emotions in Australia's farming industry

Researchers

Dr Sonia Graham  

Project description

Weeds are a major threat to the sustainability of rural ecosystems and industries. Current policies call for communities to act collectively to manage weeds, but there is little empirical evidence about such processes and their benefits. This project aims to produce pioneering knowledge about how communities collectively manage weeds and the benefits for rural sustainability. It will conduct the first extensive comparative case study of self-organising weed management initiatives, pilot a new analytic method and advance theory that can explain effective collective management of weeds. Expected outcomes include evidence-based strategies and guidelines that support communities and governments to expand and enhance rural collective action. 

Funding

2020 Australian Research Council DECRA DE200100234

Outcomes

Publications

Australian Academy of Science 2020 Fenner Conference on the environment–Managing wild and weedy Australia across boundaries and disciplines

Reports

2020 Fenner Conference on the Environment: Managing wild and weedy Australia across boundaries and disciplines – Conference report 

Blogposts

How to run a transdisciplinary workshop