Sub sections:
Research
The School of Human and Environmental Studies covers the areas of geography, urban and regional planning, archaeology and palaeoanthropology. The School has a long and distinguished history of research. Research currently conducted within the School is focussed largely in five broad areas:
School members also work in joint research projects with other academics across campus (and beyond) and participate in a variety of UNE research centres and other UNE research-orientated entities, including The Heritage Futures Research Centre, Centre for Applied Research in Social Sciences, the UNE Asia Centre, and The Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law at UNE. Geographers and planners continue to conduct research related to a broad range of issues. Professor Jim Walmsley is continuing work on an ARC (Wollongong) funded project examining the extent and impact of festivals as regeneration strategies for rural communities. Also, with Dr Neil Argent and Dr Fran Rolley, Professor Walmsley has completed a study of internal migration in inland Australia as part of the ARC Learned Academies Special Project on Internal Migration. Through The Centre for Applied Research in Social Sciences, the same staff are working on major government research consultancies. Along with Professor Walmsley, Dr Argent and Associate Professor Robert Baker, Associate Professor Tony Sorensen has continued his involvement with the ARC funded Research Network in Spatially Integrated Social Sciences. Associate Professor Sorensen represents UNE on the steering committee of that Network and, as well, has had accepted for publication several papers related to regional development and local government. Dr Raj Rajaratnam has assisted Dr Argent in his ARC funded project on ‘Isolation, Crowding and Friendship in Australian Rural Communities’ and Associate Professor Sorensen on an ARC funded project ‘Regional Governance in NSW’. Associate Professor Baker continued his internet collaboration with Dr. Les Cottrell from Stanford Linear Accelerator Centre and has published a book with Springer, Dynamic Trip Modelling: From Shopping Centres to the Internet. Judith Burns is completing her doctoral research into the short-term mobility of Indigenous Australians in far-western NSW and Paul McFarland is engaged in doctoral research related to the peri-urban fringes of Sydney and northern coastal NSW. Dr Barbara Rugendyke is currently finalising two book manuscripts, both under contract with Routledge; one examines the impacts of the advocacy activities of global development NGOs on multilateral banks, multinational corporations and national governments, and the other (jointly with Professor John Connell of the University of Sydney) explores the impacts of tourism development on small communities in the Asia Pacific region. Dr Robert Haworth is involved in a varied array of projects, with foci on the management of coral reefs in Brazil, the settlement history of south-western Sydney and reconstruction of Quaternary and Holocene climate and environment from the sediment record of wetland sites, with emphasis on the changes wrought by European settlement; the latter is also the subject of research by doctoral candidate Ros James. Funded by a University Research grant, Dr Robyn Bartel is working on a project to explore possibilities to reduce the risk of land clearance through more effective regulation. Associate Professor Baker has continued his research into Holocene sea levels with field trips to Cape Naturaliste, WA, and Kangaroo Island in South Australia. He is working on a solar cycle model and its correlation with extreme rainfall events in eastern Australia. Dr. Rajaratnam is conducting research related to wildlife conservation in the Lower Kinabatangan Wildlife Sanctuary in Sabah in North Borneo. Amongst Archaeology and Palaeoanthropology staff, Professor Michael Morwood (the leader of the archaeological team that discovered the remains), along with Australian and Indonesian colleagues, have attracted media attention with research related to the tiny human species Homo floresiensis (nicknamed “the Hobbit” by the media), with publications in the international journal Nature in 2004 and 2005. Professor Peter Brown analysed the skeletal remains found on the Indonesian island of Flores, concluding that they represented a hitherto unknown human species. Professor Iain Davidson convened a session at the Society for American Archaeology in Puerto Rico on the Cognitive Significance of Stone Tools and, along with his co-convenor, Dr April Nowell of the University of Victoria, British Columbia, has a contract to publish a volume arising from the symposium. As an ARC funded Postdoctoral Fellow in the School, Dr Mark Moore continues to conduct research into cognitive evolution through the analysis of stone tools. Additionally, Dr Peter Grave has continued to conduct analyses of ceramics in Turkey. Professor Davidson has jointly edited (with Professor Alan Atkinson, Associate Professor John Ryan and Dr. Andrew Piper) a collection of essays from the HFRC about the Heritage of the New England Region, to be published by Allen and Unwin. Working for the Heritage Futures Research Centre, Dr. Pam Watson has been engaged in a number of research consultancies related to the historical archaeological heritage of the New England region, including a survey of World War II Tank Traps, heritage assessment of the Wollomombi Wild Dog Fence, assessment and excavation of the Armidale Shopping Arcade, and an assessment for the Nymboida and Barool National Parks and Mann River Nature Reserve. Associate Professor Wendy Beck is working on establishing standards for benchmarking related to teaching in Archaeology degrees, and is about to commence a project working with traditional owners to document the history and cultural association of a site at Mount Yarrowyck, near Armidale. Dr June Ross, with Dr Mike Smith (National Museum of Australia) undertook an expedition to Geosurveys Hill in the Simpson Desert to study a group of gigantic Aboriginal geometrical stone arrangements as much as 300 metres in length – first recorded by anthropologist Norman Tindale more than 40 years ago. As well, funded by AIATSIS, they have been working on a number of excavations, all aimed at establishing the timing and form of human settlement patterns within the Lake Amadeus Basin. Doctoral candidate, Leila McAdam, is examining the stylistic patterning in Australian Aboriginal beaded personal ornaments from museum collections as an approach to studying symbolism. Click here to view a list of recent Publications from SHES. |