Biography

Dr Jess McLean is Discipline Chair of Geography and Planning at Macquarie and does research on how humans, more-than-humans, environments and technologies interact to produce geographies of change. Her research focuses on digital technologies, water politics, climate action and activism. She teaches smart urbanism, Anthropocene politics, liveable cities, social change processes, and environmental justice. In 2020, her monograph, entitled Changing Digital Geographies: Technologies, Environments and People, helped shape the emerging subdiscipline of digital geographies. Jess was founding co-Editor-in-Chief of the open access Digital Geography and Society journal and was an Associate Editor of Transactions of the Institute of British Geographers (2022-2024). She is currently looking at shadowing as a research practice and examining digital refusal by individuals, communities and institutions. 

Teaching

Units that Jess McLean currently convenes:

SSCI2001 Problems, Solutions, Uncertainty

SSCI3004 Becoming a Change-maker

GEOP8030 Smart Urbanism

GEOP3030 Liveable cities

Research student supervision

Jess McLean is currently taking on new PhD and Masters of Research students in the following areas:

• Digital technologies - including digital sustainability, digital justice, feminist digital action, digital geographies, gender and the digital.
• Water cultures - urban and rural contexts, Indigenous knowledges and rights with respect to water, power and water cultures.
• Anthropocene studies - climate change, water dilemmas, justice in the Anthropocene.

Current HDR students:

Sarah Prebble: Digitally-mediated human-nature relationships in sustainable Cities: Urban Forest governance in Melbourne and Sydney

Elise Frost: Relational placemaking through outdoor exercise practices in Sydney 

Christian Marando: Urban biodiversity conservtion volunteering in Dharug Ngurra

Previous HDR student supervision:

Elisabeth Nicolson: Dancing the earth and dreaming song to restore the balance- Exploring the role of Aboriginal song and dance in the environmental crises

Malcolm Campbell: Autistic Identity and Community Engagement through social media

A/Prof Corrinne Sullivan: Indigenous Australian experiences of sex work: Stories of Agency, Autonomy and Self-Determination (PhD)

Dr Rosy Sabiha Yeasmin: Ethical Political Ecology of Tourism in the Chittagong Hill Tracts of Bangladesh: Engaging with Indigenous and Gender Concerns (PhD)

Dr Wayne Williamson: Community and government planning authority use of social media in planning practice: a mixed methods analysis from Sydney (PhD)

Emily Speed: What folk are saying: representations of Indigenous Australians, decolonisation, and Australia’s National Folk Festival  (MRes)

Solomon Frank: Canine-Human Music on Social Media: Interspecies Entanglements in the Twenty-first Century (MRes)

Elise Frost: "Our River”? Diversity, values, and community engagement in planning for Dyarubbin, Penrith (MRes)