Andrea is a Post Doctoral Fellow in Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland . She got her PhD at USC Annenberg, and is originally from Colombia. Broadly, her research interests lie at the intersection of media and Science and Technology Studies.She studies mobilities; cultures of transnational, remote work; on-demand workers and freelancers; feminized maintenance of workspaces; media tales of tech; civic social media in Latin America.
Her research can be found in New Media and Society, the International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication & Society, and in the edited volume Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: A Casebook. She has also conducted research with the IDRC and USAID in projects about the "future of work" in the "Global South".
A/Prof Steve Bell is a senior social scientist at the Burnet Institute and has 22 years’ experience across South-East Asia (India, Nepal), Africa (Morocco, Nigeria, Rwanda, Uganda, Zambia, Zimbabwe) and Western Pacific (Australia, Indonesia, PNG, Fiji) Regions. He works respectfully with not-for-profits, public institutions, businesses and community organisations, using innovative, inclusive, people-centred approaches to identify sustainable solutions to critical health challenges and accelerate health equity.
Steve’s work brings together lived experience, socio-ecological systems thinking and social theory to understand what works (or not) in global health and social development. He has researched and published widely on HIV, sexual and reproductive health, maternal health, neglected tropical diseases, TB and Indigenous health. He is particularly interested in understanding the socio-structural determinants of health and social inequities, and injustices associated with marginalisation due to gender, sexuality, age and geography. He has also published two books on interpretive and community-led approaches in research, design, monitoring and evaluation: ‘Peer research in health and social development: international perspectives on participatory research’ (2021), and ‘Monitoring and evaluation in health and social development: interpretive and ethnographic perspectives’ (2016). He is currently taking on new PhD students in these areas, so please do reach out to him at the Burnet Institute for a chat!
He holds associate professorial appointments at UNSW Sydney and The University of Queensland, is a Member of the International Editorial Board at Culture, Health & Sexuality, has been a Senior Advisor to the Boston Consulting Group, and has worked in research and consultancy roles with international governments, NGOs, UNAIDS, UNFPA and WHO.
Aude is a demographer/population geographer at the Queensland Centre for Population Research at the University of Queensland. Her research focuses on understanding internal migration processes and their consequences for individuals, regions and nations. Her contributions to formal demography include the development of measurement and estimation techniques that facilitate large-scale international comparisons of migration levels, patterns and selectivity. Building on the life-course perspective, her theoretical contributions include the concept of migration capital and the intergenerational transmission of migration.
She leads a group of PhD students and post-doctoral fellows who work on internal migration in partnership with international organisations, federal and state government departments on a range of the methodological and applied issues. Aude's current projects include:
- The internal migration and regional retention of immigrants
- Forecasting internal migration
- The long-term consequences of childhood migration
- The impact of climate change on internal migration
She is currently Chief Investigator on two Australian Research Council’s Discovery Projects and a Linkage Project in partnership with the University of Melbourne, the University of New England, Shanghai University, the Australian Bureau of Statistics and Treasury’s Centre for Population.
She co-edits of the Journal of Population Research, co-chairs the IUSSP Scientific Panel on Lifetime Migration and sits on the Commonwealth's Treasury experts panel on population.
Dr Noreen Breakey joined the tourism team at UQ in 2005. She has been the Director for Undergraduate Programs, Coordinator of the First Year Experience, and is currently a member of the award-winning MTHEM Foundation Year Teaching Team. Individually, Dr Breakey received a UQ Excellence in Teaching & Learning Award - Citations for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning. She actively undertakes scholarship of teaching and learning and has numerous research publications on tourism and hospitality education. Dr Breakey developed the Masters course, Disciplinary Foundations of Tourism, Hospitality & Events, which she continues to Course Coordinate, encouraging students to understand how the theories and approaches from different social science and humanities disciplines can help us to address the challenges and issues in tourism, hospitality, and events.
Dr Breakey received her PhD on tourism destination development from UQ in 2006. Since then her research has explored the relationships between people, tourism and the natural environment, through her principal research areas of environmental ethics, sustainable tourism, ecotourism, community-based tourism, and tourism in protected areas. She has successfully supervised six PhD scholars through to completion.
Dr Breakey is an active member of Ecotourism Australia. She was a member of their Policy and Advocacy Committee (2011 to 2014), and subsequently on their Board of Directors (2019-2023).
Prior to her academic career, Dr Breakey worked for over a decade in industry, including hotels, resorts, tour operations, travel agencies, and events in Australia and overseas, as well as in government, developing the Destination Management Plans at Tourism Events Queensland.
Dr Elin Charles-Edwards is a population geographer and demographer. Her research is focused on understanding patterns, processes and determinants of human migration and mobility and its impacts on local and regional populations.
Jonathan is a human geographer within the School of the Environment and Deputy Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Science at UQ. Jonathan joined The University of Queensland in 2005 following previous appointments at the University of Glamorgan (UK) and the UK national mapping Agency, Ordnance Survey.
Jonathan's interests lie at the intersection of human geography, regional science, sociology and criminology in understanding how human mobility shapes and is shaped by our urban systems and in turn impacts social sustainability; how regional economic growth and development is governed by human capital migration; and how big data and spatial analytics can be effectively harnessed to inform smarter policy.
Jonathan's interest in geography and the spatial sciences began early on in his academic career. Completing his undergraduate studies in geography and a masters degree in geographic information science, where he focused on developing a broad understanding of key statistical, modelling and spatial analytic methods. He then went on to earn a PhD in human geography and computer science, where he focused on modelling the complex relationship between mobility, land use and crime.
Rob Cramb is Professor of Agricultural Development. His research interests centre on rural development, agrarian change, and natural resource management in Southeast Asia, focusing on the evolution of farming systems, land tenure arrangements, and community-based resource management in a variety of agro-ecological zones.
He graduated in agricultural economics from the University of Melbourne, then worked in Sarawak, Malaysia, for 6 years with the Department of Agriculture, first as a volunteer with Australian Volunteers International and subsequently as a consultant for the World Bank funded National Extension Project. He then undertook PhD studies at Monash University in development economics and Southeast Asian studies, returning to Sarawak for fieldwork on the evolution of Iban agriculture and customary land tenure. In 1987 he took up a position at the University of Queensland as lecturer in agricultural development. He has coordinated undergraduate and postgraduate programs in agricultural and resource economics and continued to teach and research issues of agricultural development and natural resource management in Southeast Asia in collaboration with colleagues in soil, crop, and animal science. Most recently he has been involved in assessing the impacts on customary landholders and small-scale farmers of the rapid expansion of oil palm plantations in Malaysia and Indonesia. He is currently involved in research on developing more inclusive models for smallholder engagement in global commodity chains, using cassava as a case study.
Pedro Fidelman leads strategic projects in the Social and Environmental Sustainability theme at the UQ Centre for Policy Futures, including the Centre's contribution to the Reef Restoration and Adaptation Program and Blue Economy Cooperative Research Centre.
Pedro’s research focuses on environmental policy and governance with an emphasis on the role of institutions (e.g., regulations, norms, and decision-making processes) in addressing global environmental change (e.g., over-exploitation of natural resources, biodiversity loss and climate change). He is also interested in the process of policy making and associated social and political actors and contextual factors.
His research is predominantly empirical, drawing on case studies in the context of marine and coastal social-ecological systems, climate change adaptation and natural resources management in Australia, Southeast Asia and Brazil. Current research includes governance, policy and regulatory implications of using novel and emerging technologies for environmental outcomes, and policy and regulatory innovation in the context of environmental, social and technological change.
Prior to joining UQ, Pedro held research positions in Brazil (e.g., University of Brasilia) and Australia (e.g., ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and Sustainability Research Centre of the University of the Sunshine Coast).
Laurel is a spatial and social planner with over 30 years of experience as a practitioner and an educator/researcher. Laurel has led, designed and participated in over 60 applied research projects. Many of those research projects guide and influence the policies and programs of various Australian Local and State governments and non-Government organisations in the fields of social infrastructure, social planning, urban planning and transport provision.
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Senior Lecturer in Geography
School of the Environment
Faculty of Science
Availability:
Not available for supervision
Dr. Lieske’s overarching research theme is spatial decision support. Topics include city analytics, the costs of sprawl, planning support system theory and implementation as well as regional environmental change. Additional areas of expertise include the effective use of geographic visualisation as a communication and decision support tool.
Professor Yan Liu is a Spatial Data Scientist and a Quantitative Human Geographer, specialising in Geographical Information Science (GIS), urban modelling and geo-simulation, spatial data analytics, and spatially integrated social studies. Her research focuses on developing cutting-edge methods for the collection, analysis and modelling of spatial data in order to provide science-based decision tools and data-driven solutions to a range of social-environmental challenges that we face in our urban and regional space. Her research is multidisciplinary in nature, connecting human geography with geomatic engineering, environmental, social and behavioural sciences and spatial science education through the innovative use of spatial data and technologies, with the overall aim to advance human knowledge and understanding of the spatial evolution of cities, the underpinning driving forces, the interactions between people and the physical and built-environment they live in, along with the planning of resilient cities and communities in response to the global challenges such as population growth, ageing, climate change and global pandemics. In the era of Big Data, the analysis of space, place and people—through the use of spatial (big) data—becomes pivotal in developing a holistic and grassroots understanding of our cities in order to achieve sustainable and healthy living in our urban space. Yan's profound expertise in GIS and spatial data analytics as well as her broad general knowledge across multiple disciplines enables her to tackle these important social-spatial issues necessarily from a multi-disciplinary and cross-disciplinary perspective. Yan has recently been appointed to the ARC College of Experts (2022-2024). She also serves in the Scientific Advisory Board of the Australian Urban Research Infrastructure Network (AURIN) (2021-2023), and in the Executive Committee of the International Geographical Union (IGU) Applied Geography Commission (2021-2023), amongst others.
Julia Loginova is a dedicated researcher passionate about sustainability and justice in the minerals and energy sectors in an era of energy transitions, climate change, and geopolitical volatility. Growing up in northern Russia (Komi Zyrian) sparked her interest in socioeconomic, environmental and political transformations in regions affected by resource extraction. She has academic qualifications in economics and law, natural resource management, and human geography, and completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne on Indigenous community responses to climate change and resource extraction in the Arctic. Julia is highly skilled in qualitative research, data science, network analysis, and spatial research, providing unique mixed-method insights on complex challenges.
Since joining the University of Queensland in 2018, she has focused her research on globalization of the resources sector, governance of energy transitions, socioeconomic redistributions, and Indigenous and non-Indigenous community participation in multiple geographies, including Australia, China, Russia, Ecuador, and the Arctic region. Julia's current research projects include Indigenous co-ownership of renewable energy projects, coal transitions in multiple geographies, and assessment of risks in resource extraction regions. She is a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery project that aims to improve the sustainability of copper global production networks in Australia, Zambia, and Chile, and is a collaborator on a research project on critical minerals in the Arctic. At UQ, Julia contributes to teaching courses on global change, sustainable cities and regions, and geopolitics.
Professor Kristen Lyons is a public intellectual with over twenty years experience in research, teaching and service that delivers national and international impacts on issues that sit at the intersection of sustainability and development, as well as the future of higher education. Trained as a sociologist, Kristen is comfortable working in transdisciplinary teams to deliver socially just outcomes, including for some of the world's most vulnerable communities. Kristen works regularly in Uganda, Solomon Islands and Australia, and her work is grounded in a rights-based approach. In practice, this means centring the rights and interests of local communities, including Indigenous peoples, in her approach to research design, collaboration, and impacts and outcomes. Kristen is also a Senior Research Fellow with the Oakland Institute.
Karen is a Professor in Development Geography in the School of the Environment. She is ultimately interested in how people experience and can improve their capacities to respond to the triple crises of poverty, disaster risk, and climate change. Over the last 20 years, Karen has been undertaking applied research in resilient livelihoods, non-economic loss and damage, community-based adaptation, human mobility, and gender, in close partnership with governments and NGOs throughout the Asia-Pacific region. For example, Karen has worked with farmers in Aceh as they rebuilt their livelihoods following the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, with newly-settled migrants in Dhaka (Bangladesh) forced from their rural homelands due to flooding and erosion, with Elders in the Torres Strait recording their traditional environmental knowledge, and with several rural communities throughout the Pacific Islands region, documenting their everyday stories of climate impacts, adaptation, and loss and damage.
Karen has advised several governments and international organisations on adaptation, loss and damage, mobility, and gender. She is currently a member of the Expert Group on Non-Economic Losses for the Executive Committee of the Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage (United Nations Climate Change Secretariat). Karen's recent advances have included a world-first conceptualisation of loss and damage across the Pacific Islands (ARC Future Fellowship), an understanding of how climate change is violating people’s human rights (Vanuatu Government), the identification of optimisation points to improve adaptation outcomes (ARC Linkage), and strategies for supporting women in disaster recovery (UN Women).
Karen has managed 27 research and capacity building grants as lead or named CI worth >$6.4 million for the ARC, Australian Government, DFAT, National Geographic, OECD, Scope Global, UNDP, and others. She has published over 120 papers and book chapters, and over 80 reports, online commentaries, and policy briefs. Karen has supervised 14 PhD students to completion (9 as Principal) who have gone onto exciting roles in universities, government, the UN, and consultancy firms. She is currently supervising five PhD students, and teaches core courses into the environmental management and planning programs.
Karen proudly comes from the small town of Quirindi, which is Kamilaroi Country, on the Liverpool Plains in NSW. Growing up in a small, close-knit country town sparked Karen's interest in social, development, and environmental issues in rural communities.
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
I am Associate Professor of urban planning. Since joining the University of Queensland in 2015, my research has focused on various aspects of the built environment, including urban design, transport, and housing - in both the Global North and South. I approach my work from a feminist perspective, considering the role of gender in the city. My academic journey has been international in nature. A native of Albania, over the years I have held guest teaching and/or research positions in Austria (UWien), Canada (UBC), Chile (PUC), Italy (IUAV), the Netherlands (UvA), Oman (GUTech), and Vietnam (UTC), and provided consultancy services to various United Nations agencies including the UNDP, UNESCAP, and UN Habitat. My research has been funded by domestic and international granting bodies, including the Australian Research Council. Overall, I have attracted $500,000 in external funding and $100,000 in internal funding. My latest books are Trophy Cities: A Feminist Perspective on New Capitals (Edward Elgar, 2021) and Alternative Planning History and Theory (Routledge, 2023). Alongside my academic research, I also publish broadly in non academic outlets, including The Conversation, and regularly give interviews on national and international media. Prior to joining academia, I worked in urban design and planning in California. In addition to English and Albanian, I speak Italian, Spanish, and French. For a full list of my publications, click the 'Works' tab, which displays results live from UQ eSpace, or visit my external profiles listed on the left panel.
Qualifications
Postdoctoral Residency, Delft University of Technology, Faculty of Architecture and the Built Environment, Delft, the Netherlands. 2012-2014.
PhD in Urban Planning, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tirana, Albania. 2007-2010.
Visiting PhD student, University of California at Los Angeles, Luskin School of Public Affairs, Los Angeles, Ca, USA. 2009.
Master in Urban Planning, University of Cincinnati, College of Design, Art, Architecture, and Planning, Cincinnati, Oh, USA. Full scholarship award. 2003-2005.
Visiting Master student, Catholic University of Leuven, Faculty of Architecture (St Lucas), Brussels, Belgium. Recipient of US government FIPSE grant. 2004.
Professional Degree in Architecture, Polytechnic University of Tirana, Faculty of Architecture and Urban Planning, Tirana, Albania. 1998-2003.
Service Roles (UQ)
Member of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (Faculty of EAIT) [current]
Lead of Equity, Diversity of Inclusion (School of ADP) [current]
Chair of CALD Working Group (Faculty of EAIT) [current]
Member of RAP Network [current]
Member of Executive Committee (SEES) [past]
Director of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (SEES) [past]
Deputy Chair of Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee (Faculty of Science) [past]
Member of Early and Mid-Career Researchers Reference Group (Faculty of Science) [past]
Member of Research Committee (SEES) [past]
Member of Health, Safety and Wellness Committee (SEES) [past]
Richard previously practiced as a chef, predominantly managing foodservice operations in the prestige club, heritage facility and hotel sectors, before joining UQ in 2005. He has taught undergraduate and postgraduate courses in hospitality and tourism management and professional development. His expertise and scholarship in teaching and learning are recognized by awards and advisory appointments at state, national and international level. His research projects, often funded by competitive local, national and international awarding bodies, explore tourism, hospitality and culinary workforce policy and planning especially in relation to youth and MH&W, skills development, identifying ‘foodies’ consumer behaviours and designing and evaluating education programs. He holds an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship, to develop a tourism workforce crisis resilience and recovery strategy in partnership with Queensland Tourism Industry Council.
Dr. Maram Shaweesh's is a qualitative researcher. Her interdisciplinary research spans several humanities and spatial disciplines, including architecture, housing adequacy, migration, multiculturalism, everyday encounters in the Australian suburb, urban design, and young people's experiences in urban spaces.
Maram has conducted various research projects focused on housing. For instance, she investigated everyday life in suburban housing as experienced by the Australian Lebanese community. This research utilised social qualitative research methods to explore the relationship between housing design and policy, and the social and cultural context in Australia, such as changing family ideals, household composition, children's wellbeing, parenting values, and social marginalisation. Additionally, Maram has experience working with remote Indigenous communities, having contributed to the "Gunana Futures" research project investigating housing adequacy in Mornington Island.
Maram was also involved in the team working on the Growing Up in Logan project as part of Growing Up in Cities. Collaborating with Logan City Council (CityStudio) and Beenleigh State High School, the project aims to understand adolescents' perceptions of urban space to better comprehend how local environments impact their everyday lives.
As part of her role at the UQ Institute for Social Science Research, Maram worked across several externally and internally funded projects, including Foundation Partner for a National Centre for Place-Based Collaboration (Nexus Centre for place-based collaboration); Targeted Review of Student Equity in Higher Education Programs and System Level Policy Levers; Social Isolation and Loneliness - Research, Analysis and Best Practice; SMBI Community Intiative - Learning by doing; Empowered Communities Partnership Lessons Learned Project; Place-based Approaches to Road Safety; and, Sharing with Friends (co-housing model for older women in Australia).
Faculty of Engineering, Architecture and Information Technology
Availability:
Available for supervision
Media expert
I am an economic and urban geographer interested in (a) how globalisation shapes cities, and (b) how cities and urban space are shaped by globalisation. The first of these themes focusses on ‘the global economy’ and how various firms, institutions, and industries are distributed across space. This incorporates both existing geographies as well as change over time, as the shifting global economy has dynamic consequences. The second of these focusses more concretely on cities and the dynamics within them. I supervise a broad range of MPhil and Phd projects, and have active collaborations with partners in Australia, North America, Europe, and East Asia.
My specific interests fall into the following three areas:
1. The Sharing Economy, which has been popularised by platforms such as Uber and Airbnb. We currently have projects focusing on e-scooter sharing, short-term rentals, and labour platforms.
2. Land Use Change and Housing, with a focus on the interrelated processes of gentrification, suburbanisation, property investment, migration, and urban renewal. I am particularly interested in changing urban spatial structure with regard to macroeconomic, and specifically post-industrial, shifts that are occurring in cities around the world.
3. Global networks, with a focus on the diverse socio-economic connections between the world’s cities. This research theme combines network science, economic geography, and urban studies.
Dr David Wadley's research interests are in: Philosophy of Planning and Development, Industrial and Retail Planning, Economic Geography and Futurology.
David Wadley received his PhD from the Australian National University in 1975.
His current research projects are in the fields of:
Visual Impact Assessment in Planning
Effectiveness, Efficiency and Equity in Retail Planning
I am an urban sociologist and an expert in urban community in all its forms. My research encompasses the outer suburbs in Australia, the gentrifying inner city and informal communities in cities in the Global South. My work focuses on how different urban places and spatial logic in the city impact our opportunities to form attachments to neighbourhoods and each other.
Internationally, I have written extensively on urban poverty in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia and I am currently involved in work on climate change and its effects on the urban poor in collaboration with colleagues in Indonesia, Brazil and Solomon Islands. My latest research concerns the impact of climate change and natural disasters on the urban poor. More than 1 billion people live in informal urban settlements or slums. These people are among the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. However, adaptation and mitigation policies are being formulated at multiple scales, often without considering the voices of the poor.
I am the Bachelor of Arts Sociology program convenor and an award-winning teacher. I teach courses at all levels in our undergraduate sociology program, including Introduction to Sociology (SOCY1050), An Urban World (SOCY2340) and Advanced Studies in Social Thought: Getting the Big Picture (SOCY3345).
I am also an award-winning photographer (you can see some of my work on my Flickr page.
I am open to proposals from potential Honours and PhD students who share my passion for understanding the social life of cities. Whether you're from Australia, the Global South, or anywhere else in the world, I look forward to the possibility of working together.
