I am a Professor in Geography and Planning at Macquarie University. My research and teaching experiences focus on Indigenous-led Geographies, University-Community engagement and practice-based learning. I take an applied, action-oriented and collaborative approach to research and teaching characterised by community partnerships, co-creation of knowledge and an ethics of reciprocity. As a result at the heart of my life-work are innovative co-authored and co-created projects with academic colleagues, community partners, students and Country.

My current research is Indigenous-led and place-based focusing on creative co-production of shared knowledge with mutual benefits. Ongoing collaborations include:

 

The Bawaka Collective which is an Indigenous and non-Indigenous, more-than-human research collective established in 2006 with Dr Laklak Burarrwanga, Ritjilili Ganambarr, Merrkiyawuy Ganambarr-Stubbs and Banbapuy Ganambarr, four senior Yolŋu sisters from Northeast Arnhem Land with their daughter, Djawundil Maymuru, and Dr Sarah Wright and Dr Sandie Suchet-Pearson. The Collective’s work promotes a deeply collaborative Indigenous-led understanding of time/place, extending more-than-human methodologies and challenging human centred, non-Indigenous and Western understandings (and practices) within the academy and beyond it. Our group’s work centres Indigenous ontologies to include Country as a co-author (Bawaka et al 2024, 2023, 2022, 2020; 2019; 2016; 2013) in publications and ethics review processes.

 

Winaga-li Gunma Gali, a Gomeroi/Kamilaroi-led group of researchers, teachers, and practitioners who aim to support cross-cultural, interdisciplinary, and intergenerational knowledge sharing to enable healthier Gomeroi/Kamilaroi Country.

 

The Power of Public Spaces project involves an interdisciplinary team of academic and professional investigators from Macquarie University and NSW Government and is funded through an Australia Research Council Linkage Research Program grant. Our project explores how public spaces are planned, created, cared for and shared in an Australian context. Sustaining public spaces now, and into the future, needs to support and centre First Nations truth-telling, design and values.

 

As a Principle Fellow of Advance HE, I am passionate about innovative teaching, reflection for learning, and co-creation of curriculum in the area of experiential and work integrated learning (WIL). I have developed innovative content in the curriculum through developing on-line role plays, running international fieldschools, co-creating curriculum with international community partners and enhancing community-university relations. 

I teach in the areas of critical development geographies and applied human geography and planning. I am currently convening:

GEOP2010 Theory and Methods in Human Geography

GEOP6080 Theory and Methods in Human Geography

GEOP2060 Geography and Planning Field School

GEOP4080 Planning Experience (PACE)