Research into sustainable urban and rural development
Research overview
Researchers at the University of Melbourne are addressing the challenges of uneven development and helping to establish economically viable, socially just, environmentally sustainable, and safe and healthy communities. See also the Melbourne School of Design.
Projects we're involved with
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A World Apart in the Same City: Women’s Experience of Urban Forced Displacement
Coming soon.
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Bower Studio
Bower Studios are a sequence of Master of Architecture build/consult/design projects at The University of Melbourne’s School of Design. They involve students working alongside indigenous groups in remote locations in Australia, Thailand and Papua New Guinea to improve their built environments.
- Communities, Kava, Court Orders: The Ways of Possessing the Pacific City
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Economic, Political and Cultural Brokers in Remote Papua New Guinea
This project aims to understand the role of brokers in shaping flows of knowledge and wealth at in resource frontiers in Papua New Guinea; the intent is to investigate the demands that brokers service, their positioning, and the tensions they mediate. The project plans to generate new knowledge by studying cultural, political and economic brokers in a region where encounters with church, state and corporations are comparatively recent.
- Enhancing urban resilience in Honiara
- Localising the SDGs in Pacific Island Cities and Towns
- Pacific Resilience in a Warming, Urban World: Planning Adaptation Pathways for Informal Cities
Our partners
Our people
Recent publications
Our researchers contribute to a large range of publicly-accessible publications.
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See all recent publications
Asafo, D., 2021. The Racism in Climate Change Law: Critiquing the Law on Climate Change-Related Displacement with Critical Race Theory. Berkeley J. Int'l L., 39, p.249. Link
Baker, C.M., Campbell, P.T., Chades, I., Dean, A.J., Hester, S.M., Holden, M.H., McCaw, J.M., McVernon, J., Moss, R., Shearer, F.M. and Possingham, H.P., 2022. From climate change to pandemics: decision science can help scientists have impact. Frontiers in Ecology and Evolution, 10. Link
Barnett, J., Jarillo, S., Swearer, S.E., Lovelock, C.E., Pomeroy, A., Konlechner, T., Waters, E., Morris, R.L. and Lowe, R., 2022. Nature-based solutions for atoll habitability. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B, 377(1854), p.20210124. Link
Bird, Z., Iese, V., Des Combes, H.J., Wairiu, M. and Yuen, L.B., 2022. Assessing the impacts of climate change on domestic crop production: Experience and perception of local farmers in North Malaita, Solomon Islands. Link
Bird, Z., Wairiu, M., Combes, H.J.D. and Iese, V., 2021. Religious and cultural-spiritual attributions of climate-driven changes on food production: a case study from North Malaita, Solomon Islands. Beyond Belief: Opportunities for Faith-Engaged Approaches to Climate-Change Adaptation in the Pacific Islands, pp.39-56. Link
Bordner, A., Barnett, J. and Waters, E. 2023. The Human Right to Climate Adaptation. npj Climate Action 2, 43: https://doi.org/10.1038/s44168-023-00079-w
Bordner, A.S., Ferguson, C.E. and Ortolano, L., 2020. Colonial dynamics limit climate adaptation in Oceania: Perspectives from the Marshall Islands. Global Environmental Change, 61, p.102054. Link
Brown, J.R., Lengaigne, M., Lintner, B.R., Widlansky, M.J., van Der Wiel, K., Dutheil, C., Linsley, B.K., Matthews, A.J. and Renwick, J., 2020. South Pacific Convergence Zone dynamics, variability and impacts in a changing climate. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 1(10), pp.530-543. Link
Cai, W., Santoso, A., Collins, M., Dewitte, B., Karamperidou, C., Kug, J.S., Lengaigne, M., McPhaden, M.J., Stuecker, M.F., Taschetto, A.S. and Timmermann, A., 2021. Changing El Niño–Southern oscillation in a warming climate. Nature Reviews Earth & Environment, 2(9), pp.628-644. Link
Dun, O., Klocker, N., Farbotko, C. and McMichael, C., 2023. Climate change adaptation in agriculture: Learning from an international labour mobility programme in Australia and the Pacific Islands region. Environmental Science & Policy, 139, pp.250-273. Link
Farbotko, C., Boas, I., Dahm, R., Kitara, T., Lusama, T. and Tanielu, T., 2023. Reclaiming open climate adaptation futures. Nature Climate Change, 13(8), pp.750-751. Link
Frere, T., Mulalap, C.Y. and Tanielu, T., 2020. Climate change and challenges to self-determination: case studies from French Polynesia and the Republic of Kiribati. Yale Law J, 129, pp.648-673. Link
Gibson, K.E., Barnett, J., Haslam, N. and Kaplan, I., 2020. The mental health impacts of climate change: Findings from a Pacific Island atoll nation. Journal of anxiety disorders, 73, p.102237. Link
Iese, V., Kiem, A.S., Mariner, A., Malsale, P., Tofaeono, T., Kirono, D.G., Round, V., Heady, C., Tigona, R., Veisa, F. and Posanau, K., 2021. Historical and future drought impacts in the Pacific islands and atolls. Climatic Change, 166(1-2), p.19. Link
Iese, V., Halavatau, S., N’Yeurt, A.D.R., Wairiu, M., Holland, E., Dean, A., Veisa, F., Patolo, S., Havea, R., Bosenaqali, S. and Navunicagi, O., 2020. Agriculture under a changing climate. Climate change and impacts in the Pacific, pp.323-357. Link
Jarillo, S. and Barnett, J., 2022. Repositioning the (Is) land: climate change adaptation and the atoll assemblage. Antipode, 54(3), pp.848-872. Link
Jarillo, S. and Barnett, J., 2021. Contingent communality and community-based adaptation to climate change: Insights from a Pacific rural atoll. Journal of Rural Studies, 87, pp.137-145. Link
McEvoy, D., Tara, A., Vahanvati, M., Ho, S., Gordon, K., Trundle, A., Rachman, C. and Qomariyah, Y., 2023. Localized nature-based solutions for enhanced climate resilience and community wellbeing in urban informal settlements. Climate and Development, pp.1-13. Link
McMichael, C., Schwerdtle, P.N. and Ayeb-Karlsson, S., 2023. Waiting for the wave, but missing the tide: Case studies of climate-related (im) mobility and health. Journal of Migration and Health, 7, p.100147. Link
McMichael, C. and Katonivualiku, M., 2020. Thick temporalities of planned relocation in Fiji. Geoforum, 108, pp.286-294. Link
Mortreux, C., Jarillo, S., Barnett, J. and Waters, E., 2023. Climate change and migration from atolls? No evidence yet. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 60, p.101234. Link
Narsey, S., Brown, J.R., Delage, F., Boschat, G., Grose, M., Colman, R. and Power, S., 2022. Storylines of South Pacific Convergence Zone changes in a warmer world. Journal of Climate, 35(20), pp.6549-6567. Link
Nunn, P.D., McLean, R., Dean, A., Fong, T., Iese, V., Katonivualiku, M., Klöck, C., Korovulavula, I., Kumar, R. and Tabe, T., 2020. Adaptation to climate change: contemporary challenges and perspectives. Climate change and impacts in the Pacific, pp.499-524. Link
Pascoe, S., Dressler, W. and Minnegal, M., 2021. Storytelling climate change–Causality and temporality in the REDD+ regime in Papua New Guinea. Geoforum, 124, pp.360-370. Link
Piggott-McKellar, A.E. and McMichael, C., 2021. The immobility-relocation continuum: Diverse responses to coastal change in a small island state. Environmental Science & Policy, 125, pp.105-115. Link
Thornton, F., McNamara, K., Dun, O., Farbotko, C., McMichael, C., Yee, M., Coelho, S., Westbury, T., James, S. and Namoumou, F., 2020. Multiple mobilities in Pacific Islands communities. Forced Migration Review, (64). Link
Trundle, A., 2021. Climate resilience through sociocultural mobility: Reframing the Pacific’s urban informal settlements as critical adaptation pathways. Development Bulletin, p.70. Link
Trundle, A., 2020. Resilient cities in a Sea of Islands: Informality and climate change in the South Pacific. Cities, 97, p.102496. Link
Yee, M., McNamara, K.E., Piggott-McKellar, A.E. and McMichael, C., 2022. The role of Vanua in climate-related voluntary immobility in Fiji. Frontiers in Climate, 4. Link
Photo: Jon Barnett