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lauren.rickards 'at' unimelb.edu.au

Dr Lauren Rickards

Research Fellow

MSSI, PIARN

Email: lauren.rickards 'at' unimelb.edu.au

Phone: 9035 7577 ; 0427 679 043

Address:

Southern Annex, Ground Floor Alice Hoy Building (Blg 162) Monash Road The University of Melbourne, Parkville Victoria 3010, Australia

Details:

Biography

I am a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne working with a range of groups on sustainability-related issues, including the Primary Industries Adaptation Research Network (http://piarn.org.au/), the Victorian Centre for Climate Change Adaptation Research (http://www.vcccar.org.au/), and various themes of MSSI.

From 2006-2009, I worked as an Associate Partner at RM Consulting Group, consulting mainly to government on strategic rural and sustainability issues. I continue to work with the community farming organisation Birchip Cropping Group (http://www.bcg.org.au/) as Thinker in Residence. Prior to joining RMCG, I was Vice-Principal of Janet Clarke Hall, one of the University of Melbourne’s academic colleges, and a post-graduate student and non-stipendiary lecturer at the University of Oxford, where I had a Rhodes Scholarship. A fellow and inaugural chair of the Board of the Centre for Sustainability Leaders Fellowship Program (http://www.csl.org.au/), I am now Deputy Chair of the Terrestrial Ecosystems Research Network (http://www.tern.org.au/).

At Oxford, I did an interdisciplinary MSc in Environmental Change and Management with a particular emphasis on climate change and a dissertation on the restoration of degraded agricultural land in the Canary Islands. I also completed a D.Phil. in cultural geography, in which I studied the implicit and highly gendered and humanist construction of the "ideal agriculturalist" in formal agricultural education institutions.

Please click on this link for a pdf file of my academic Curriculum Vitae:
http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/files/mssi/L Rickards CV 080511.pdf

Areas of interest

The majority of my current work sits at the nexus of cultural geography and sociology and applies a critical perspective to three main, inter-related areas of interest:

· Climate change – in particular, goals, power relations and outcomes of climate change adaptation; the role of climatic extremes (with a focus on drought),; the relationship between transformational adaptation and resilience; and obstacles to achieving a transition to a sustainable and equitable world.

· Rurality – the role and image of agriculture and rurality in Western society; perceptions and experiences of change in rural communities; the role of agricultural extension and other policy instruments in directing change in rural communities; and the interface of public and private needs and land uses.

· Knowledge production - the changing valuation of different knowledge forms in policy; the rise and challenges of interdisciplinarity and transdisciplinarity in response to complex societal problems such as climate change; and the role of implicit ideals in shaping knowledge and policy.

Current work

· PIARN – Research Fellow (0.4FTE). In this role, I am involved in a variety of collaborative and interdisciplinary writing activities, focused on: the relationship between climate variability/extremes and climate change, in particular the role of drought; the relationship between climate change adaptation and mitigation; discourses around food security; and the transformation of the rural landscape and communities

· Scenarios for Climate Adaptation project (http://www.vcccar.org.au/content/pages/scenarios-climate-adaptation) – Research Fellow (0.2 FTE). This project is investigating the potential for scenario-based processes to help address the paradox that climate change creates for government by demanding a focus on the longer-term future in order to facilitate appropriate adaptation, while also reducing our ability to understand that future by introducing an unprecedented level of irreducible uncertainty.

· Critical Breaking Point? – Project leader. This Birchip Cropping Group-based project is a unique longitudinal, in-depth and relatively large scale social research study into the effects of climate extremes and other pressures on farming families (http://www.bcg.org.au/cb_pages/news/Stress_and_Complexity.php). Conducted with local interviewers, we are currently completing follow up interviews with the 48 families we interviewed in 2007 in the North-West of Victoria (many of whom have experienced both severe drought and floods) in order to better understand rural resilience.

· Melbourne Interdisciplinary Collaboration Exploration – Project leader. Interdisciplinarity and collaboration are both increasingly popular forms of research. In this project uses the University of Melbourne’s Interdisciplinary Seed Grant funding scheme as a window onto researchers’ experiences of such a research setting, with a focus on different perceptions of success.

· MSSI – Through a University of Melbourne Career Interruption Fellowship, I am working as a Research Fellow at MSSI with a range of great people across MSSI themes, including John Wiseman, Taegen Edwards and Che Biggs on Climate Transformations (http://www.sustainable.unimelb.edu.au/content/pages/climate-transformations), Grant Blashki on the links between health equity issues and climate adaptation, and colleagues on Risk, Resilience and Transformation.

Teaching and supervision

Regular guest lecturing

· Knowing Nature (undergraduate subject 100-187)

· Sustainability, Policy and Management (undergraduate subject 950-601)

· Emerging Issues in Land and Food (undergraduate subject NRMT 40001)

· Social Inclusion and the Politics of Recognition (short course SOTH9005)

· Climate Change Adaptation (Graduate Cert. in Climate Change for Primary Industry)

Supervision

Honours - Edward Perrett (The changing policy valuation of rural groundwater and implications for climate change adaptation)

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