Research
Key research areas
- Transforming cities: city lives, city natures, city politics
- Sustaining urban and regional communities and environments
- Critical development studies
Transforming cities: city lives, city natures, city politics
Besides dominating the pattern of human settlement, cities are dynamic spaces which both mirror and mould social, cultural, political-economic and environmental processes. Research on this theme explores the transforming nature of urban spaces, places, politics and practices and the importance of the urban in contemporary transformations of governance, everyday residential life and human/non-human relations.
Current projects
Sustaining urban and regional communities and environments
We live in uncertain times when communities are confronting an environmental future shaped by anthropogenic climate change, and when economic foundations are being shaken. CURS researchers are working on projects to better understand this current context and to shape future pathways.
Current Projects
- Cultures of environmental management and regulation
- Rural climate change adaptation
- Enabling inter-agency data sharing to support the spatial analysis of social vulnerability in a transforming region
- Grassroots economic activism through food-based community enterprises
- Economic diversity and ethical economies
- Geographies of belonging
Critical development studies: decolonising research
A commitment to social justice and transformative politics both within Australia and internationally underpins this research area. CURS researchers work collaboratively with Indigenous people, social movements and non-governmental organisations and policy-makers locally and in the Asia-Pacific region, to address the spatial dimensions of human and environmental vulnerability and to help build spaces of possibility.
