Institute of Australian Geographers

LTAS Project: Geography -
http://www.altcexchange.edu.au/group/ltas-project-geography
This site provides access to background information, news and resources for those interested in the development of
threshold learning outcomes (‘standards’) for university-level Geography that is being undertaken during 2010 as part of the Australian Government’s Education Revolution.

A Discipline Reference Group (Geography) has been established to suport this work. It comprises:

Professor Iain Hay Chair and Discipline Scholar
Professor Lesley Head President IAG
Dr Stephen Legg DASSH Nominee
Dr Robyn Bartel Discipline Expert
Professor Kevin Dunn Discipline Expert
Professor Nigel Tapper Discipline Expert
Mr Brad Ruting Recent graduate
Dr Lorraine Craig Discipline Expert - jurisdiction outside Australia
Dr Donna Ferretti Relevant employer representative

More details - including how you can become involved - are provided at the website.

Call for abstracts is now open until March 31 for AAEE - The Australian Association of Environmental Educators Conference Leading Change: Living for One Planet to be held in Canberra 26-30 September 2010.

Further details can be found at http://www.conferenceco.com.au/aaee/.

The Conference has a particularly strong youth component to create a dialogue for leadership at the interface of the disciplines of Health, Education and Environment on the impacts of environmental change as we consider the second half of the UN Decade for Education for Sustainable Development.

Confirmed speakers include Carmen Lawrence, Tim Flannery, Clive Hamilton and Greg Bourne (CEO World Wildlife Fund).

Indigenous Geographies Marae-based Workshop 3-5 July 2010 @ Taumutu, NZ.

The Indigenous Issues Group of the Institute of Australian Geographers and The Indigenous Peoples’ Knowledge and Rights Commission of the International Geographical Union will join forces with Ngai Tahu and with New Zealand geographers to convene a pre-conference workshop and Indigenous Geography sessions at the Conference.

This will be held during the weekend prior to the Conference itself,[Saturday morning, 3rd July to Monday lunchtime, Monday 5th July 2010 @ Taumutu].

More Details are available at: http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/nzgs2010_wksh.htm

If you have news of events of interest to postgraduate students please send the information to the Secretary (Web), Julie Kesby, email: j.kesby@adfa.edu.au.
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Postgraduate Workshop at NZGS/IAG Conference in Christchurch 5 July 2010
(see http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/nzgs2010_wksh.htm for more details)

3.00-5.00pm, Monday afternoon, 5th July @ Rydges Hotel
Open to all postgraduate Geography students
A networking workshop covering issues of interest for postgraduate students in Geography. More detail to follow in due course at: http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/nzgs2010_wksh.htm
Cost: No Charge for conference registrants.

New Zealand Geographical Society Conference 2010
with the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG)
5-8 July 2010
Rydges Hotel, Christchurch, New Zealand
Conference website: http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/

The biennial conference of the New Zealand Geographical Society in conjunction with the Institute of Australian Geographers will be held in Christchurch, New Zealand 5-8 July 2010. Full details about the conference can be found at http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/ and further information concerning keynote speakers and field trips will be added in due course. The call for panel proposals and individual abstracts on any geographic theme is now open. The conference is open to geographers anywhere in the world and we especially encourage graduate students as well as established faculty to attend and present their work.

Panel proposals

Conference attendees are invited to submit proposals for panels, special sessions or workshops. Once approved by the programme committee, convenors will be responsible for issuing a call for papers and finding speakers. Each approved panel will be given one or two 80 minutes sessions of four speakers per session.

Panel proposals of a maximum of 400 words should be submitted through the conference website at http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/ no later than 31 January 2010. Early submission is welcome and encouraged.

General abstract submission

Speakers who are not assigned to a specific panel should submit an abstract of 250 words through the conference website at http://www.nzgs2010.org.nz/ and the programme committee will assign the paper to an appropriately themed session. The deadline for submission of abstracts is 1 April 2010.

If you have any questions about the conference programme, please contact Julie Cupples at julie.cupples@canterbury.ac.nz. If you have any questions about registration, the website, accommodation or any other conference-related matter, please contact the conference manager Eddy van Til at eddy@eenz.com.

We look forward to welcoming you in Christchurch in July 2010.

The NZGS2010 Organizing Committee
Department of Geography
University of Canterbury
Christchurch
New Zealand

Professor Iain Hay had conferred upon him by the Council of the Royal Geographical Society with the Institute of British Geographers (RGS/IBG), the Taylor and Francis Award 2009. This award is for excellence in the promotion and practice of teaching and learning in Geography in Higher Education and was presented by RGS/IBG President Sir Gordon Conway in London on 1st June.

Emeritus-Professor Harold Brookfield, Visiting Fellow in the Department of Anthropology, RSPAS, ANU, was elected a Corresponding Fellow of the British Academy at its 2009 annual meeting on 16 July. In this year, he is the only new Fellow with an Australian address. The British Academy writes the following about the Corresponding Fellowship:

“Corresponding Fellows are scholars living outside the UK who have attained high international standing in any of the branches of study which it is the object of the Academy to promote [i.e. across the humanities and the social sciences]. This is taken to mean even greater distinction that that required for Ordinary Fellowships. Up to ten elections are made in each year to the Corresponding Fellowship. There are currently 307 Corresponding Fellows”.

The IAG Conference Final Program for the Cairns IAG 2009 Conference “Balancing Choices and Effects in a Dynamic World’, James Cook University, Cairns, 28 September - 1 October has been added to the conference website:
http://www.iag.org.au/conferences-events/iag-conference-cairns-2009/
Final Conference Program for IAG 2009 Conference has been posted to conference website..
Note the new URL for the Sunbus company http://www.sunbus.com.au/sit_timetables/cairns/Northern_Suburbs.pdf.

Lesley Head awarded a Laureate Fellowship

The Minister for Innovation, Industry, Science and Research, Senator Kim Carr, announced on 22 June 2009, in a ceremony at Parliament House, that 15 world-leading scholars will be awarded Australian Laureate Fellowships worth around $2.7 million each.

One of the scholars awarded a Fellowship is the President of the Institute of Australian Geographers, Professor Lesley Head.

In announcing the awards Senator Carr said that the Australian Laureate Fellowship scheme takes the best elements of the previous Federation Fellowships scheme and adds a focus on team work, career paths and leadership. ‘As part of the Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme, successful fellows will lead and mentor the next generation of research leaders, helping to build Australia’s international competitive research capacity. The work will focus on areas of national economic, environmental, cultural and social benefit …’

The 15 successful Australian Laureate Fellows were selected from a highly competitive field of 148 researchers, and the Fellowships are worth around $2.7 million each.

Professor Head was awarded her Fellowship for work in the area of cultural environmental research: the missing link in multidisciplinary approaches to sustainability. The announcement of her award provided the following biographical information.

Professor Head is Professor and Head of the School of Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Wollongong. Her research has focused on long-term changes in the Australian landscape and the material and conceptual interactions that both prehistoric and contemporary peoples have had with these environments.

Professor Head’s project will bring together two main intellectual currents; geographical and archaeological understandings of long term environmental change, including anthropogenic contributions, combined with a critical social sciences perspective on relations between human and non-human worlds. This research will contribute to building Australia’s international research presence in the cultural dimensions of environmental sustainability, with particular strengths in ethnographic and related social science methods.

Professor Head was awarded her PhD in Geography from Monash University. She was appointed the King Carl XVI Gustaf Visiting Professor of Environmental Science at Kristianstad University, Sweden. She is the only Australian to have received this award. Professor Head was Director of the GeoQuEST Research Centre and has been elected a Fellow of the Australian Academy of Humanities and is currently the President of the Institute Australian Geographers.

Professor Head has been involved in a number of committees, and has been the Chair (2006-08) of the Australian Academy of Science National Committee for Geography.

Institute of Australian Geographers Conference 2009 in Cairns

‘Balancing Choices and Effects in a Dynamic World’
Cairns IAG 2009 Conference
James Cook University
Cairns
28 September - 1 October, 2009

The official conference website, with details of the programme and registration, can be found at: http://www.iag.org.au/conferences-events/iag-conference-cairns-2009/