Postcard from Adjunct Professor Ian Hannam

Bachelor of Arts, 1976
Bachelor of Letters, 1978
Master of Letters, 1985

“After completing my Diploma in Agriculture at Wagga Agricultural College (1966-1968) under the then NSW State Government Trainee system, I commenced work with the NSW Soil Conservation Service in Merriwa, in central NSW.

At the time, being a rather isolated place and with the urge to continue my education, I enrolled as an external B.A. student at UNE in 1970 (1970-1975). Little did I know at the time that this would be the beginning of a wonderful and rewarding life and a lifelong association with UNE.

The nature of my departmental work meant that the focus of my B.A was on physical geography, under the inspirational Professor Ian Douglas, then head of UNE’s Department of Geography. Immediately following the B.A, Prof. Douglas supervised my postgraduate Bachelor of Letters (1976-1977) degree. The Litt.B became the M.Litt (UNE) in 1985.

By the time I had completed the Bachelor of Letters, the focus of my departmental work had changed considerably, and I had become increasingly involved with legal aspects of land use decision-making following the introduction of new environmental planning and assessment legislation in 1978.

This led me into a PhD to research legal and policy aspects of “soil’’ through the Macquarie University Law School and Graduate School of the Environment (1985-1991). Soon after completing the PhD my work and life experiences really changed.

By the mid-1990s I had begun to receive invitations to undertake specialist environmental law and policy reform consultant projects on soil and agricultural issues with United Nations agencies (UNDP, UNEP, United Nations University and UNFAO), which led to multiple visits to countries like Iceland, China, Mongolia, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Thailand.

Through this work, which had become my full-time occupation by the late 1990s, I developed an association with specialist environmental law institutions in Brazil, Argentina, Paraguay, Namibia, Uganda, France, Sweden, Switzerland, Turkey, Germany and Serbia. Overall, I had over 100 trips offshore.

In 1999 I became a member of the IUCN World Commission on Environmental Law (WCEL) and, soon after, Chair of its Specialist Law Group on Soil, Desertification and Agriculture.

It was my global work and WCEL activities that brought me back in contact with UNE. Through a chance meeting with Professor Paul Martin (Director of the Australian Centre for Agriculture and Law (AgLaw)) in the early 2000s, and undertaking engagements with AgLaw, I was appointed Adjunct Associate Professor in AgLaw (since renamed the Agriculture and Law Research Hub), which continues today.

I met my wife Lynda (who grew up in Gunnedah), when I was in Merriwa and she has been a focal part of this fabulous journey of working and travelling throughout the world, because of those initial steps I took with the UNE BA way back in 1970. It was a fantastic career with many wonderful accomplishments.

We now live on a 20-acre largely forested property in South-East Queensland, where we are active participants in the SEQ Land for Wildlife program and koala conservation. It’s good to be involved in practical conservation issues, especially after 30-odd years of trapsing around the world.”