School of Geography - Theses
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ItemFuel loads and fire: A palaeoecological analysis of long-term fire and fuel dynamics in Bundjalung National Park( 2022)Catastrophic bushfires have increased in size, frequency, and intensity in eastern and south-eastern Australia over recent decades. Due to the extensive environmental, social, and economic implications of these wildfires, management and mitigation attempts for catastrophic fire has been made topical by media, academics, and authoritative bodies. Central to these discussions, and the dominant paradigm explaining wildfire abundance, is climate change and increasing ignition sources. A very recent focus on landscape management provides a counterpoint to this climate change narrative, and highlights changing fuel loads as a potential driver of fire. If Australia is to effectively combat catastrophic fires, it must first understand the drivers at play. The amount, type, and condition of vegetation (i.e. fuel) present in landscapes is influenced by both climate change and land management practices. To better understand their individual roles in driving fuel loads and fire, there is an urgent need for long term data which can distinguish between the influences of changing climate and changing land management practices. This study analysed long-term fire and fuel dynamics in Bundjalung National Park, an area stretching from the eastern seaboard inland in northern New South Wales (NNSW), that was impacted by the large-scale 2019/2020 Black Summer Bushfires. The project focused on how fuel loads and fire respond to important local and regional drivers, such as changes in climate, sea level, and anthropogenic land management through the Holocene (and Anthropocene). A sediment core from Wangar Swamp in Bundjalung National Park was analysed using a set of palaeoecological approaches selected to assess changes in fuel loads and fire activity. This analysis allowed a reconstruction of the changes in fuel loads and fire activity through the Holocene to the present in this part of NNSW. The research disproves the classification of Bundjalung National Park as a wilderness area, by revealing the region as a cultural landscape that has been carefully and meticulously managed by Bundjalung people through the Holocene. Manipulation of ecological processes allowed Bundjalung to reduce wildfire and maintain an Allocasuarina spp. dominated (fire disliking) vegetation through the application of cultural burning. The removal and suppression of cultural practices after British Invasion incurred significant changes on fire and fuel load dynamics at Bundjalung National Park. A six-fold increase in flammable Eucalyptoid vegetation, and the ultimate removal of pyrophobic taxa has turned a once balanced landscape, into a region awaiting, and promoting its next catastrophic fire.
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ItemHotter in the city: Experiences of spinal cord injury during heat waves in Melbourne.( 2022)As a direct result of anthropogenic climate change, Melbourne will likely experience heat events of greater duration, intensity and regularity (Steffen et al., 2014). The impacts of these heat waves will not be evenly felt, however, and people living with a disability will likely experience disproportionate vulnerabilities and be exposed to particularly profound challenges. The bodies of literature that aim to map and understand the context-specific impacts of climate change have thus omitted primary accounts from the disabled community, leaving a void in existing knowledge and understanding that it is vital to address. This research aims to address this knowledge gap by listening to and learning from the experiences of people living with a spinal cord injury (SCI) as they live and move through Melbourne during periods of extreme heat. Additionally, this project contrasts the researched lived experience of people living with SCI with local, State and Federal government policy that seeks to govern these experiences, to explore the nuances of policy thinking and framings and their misalignment with the interests of people living with SCI in Melbourne. This research also takes the step of considering strategies that might better support the health and agency of this particular social group. This thesis uses a novel duet of qualitative methods – semi-structured interviews and a virtual go-along interview – to examine structural and systemic barriers to equal access to space, resources and services and thus to equitable participation in a warming world.
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ItemDigital Encounters with War Imagery: Making Sense of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine War( 2022)On 24th February 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, triggering a war that is unfolding to be the largest in Europe since 1945 by its scale of destruction (BBC, 2022). This war continues to be broadcasted on a digitised stage that has allowed for intimate exposure of the conflict and its disastrous consequences to different publics worldwide (Coleman & Sardarizadeh, 2022). As this phenomenon of digitisation persists, there is a pressing need to explore the transformative power of digital media, as we increasingly encounter it as a window into the war throughout our everyday lives. Positioned within the sub-discipline of Cultural Geography, this thesis aims to explore how we make sense of war through digital media encounters, using the case study context of the 2022 Russia-Ukraine conflict. It will do so by addressing two research questions: (1) How is the Russia-Ukraine war represented through digital imagery? and (2) How do everyday encounters with digital media affect our capacity to make sense of the Russia-Ukraine war? Underpinned by Non-Representational Theory, this thesis utilises three methods of autoethnography, qualitative content analysis and semi-structured interviews. Though a ‘non-representational style’ of engagement, this thesis places a heightened attention on affect, embodiment and process in its analysis and presents its findings through various composite narratives. This thesis aims to challenge knowledge rooted in representational thought about how digital media affects us, and instead offer a non-representational understanding of digital media that acknowledges the affective, embodied and processual forces within these encounters that transform our capacity to make sense of the war it depicts.
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ItemHaving a child in a pandemic: exploring the experience of pregnancy, birth and postpartum during 2021( 2022)Having a child marks a major transition in the life of a woman, creating a new identity for her to take on as she becomes a mother. Social support, cultural normality and respectful maternal health care have the potential to support the woman in positively experience her transition to motherhood. The COVID-19 pandemic effected these mitigated factors, public health measures to slow or stop the spread of the virus have limited social contact and changing the provision of healthcare. Whilst demographers predicted that the social and economic effects of the pandemic would see a decrease in the number of babies being born, early data suggests during 2021 we also saw an increase in births in NSW public hospitals. This increase represents an interesting and unexpected shift in fertility trends that had otherwise been in decline for many years and presents an interesting backdrop for the challenges the COVID-19 pandemic presents to the experience of having a child. This thesis combines quantitative and qualitative methods through a social constructionist framing to explore the experience of having a child during the COVID-19 pandemic. Here individuals’ perceptions of their experience are examined, from the decision to conceive through to postpartum. Previous research in this space has been conducted from the nursing, midwifery or health sciences perspectives, which focuses on medical care rather than the social implications of the changed experience. Through the use of a geographic and temporally bound case study, those who have birth in Greater Sydney and the surrounding areas during 2021, this thesis provides a novel geographic perspective. During 2021, New South Wales experienced 106 days of mobility restrictions commonly referred to as lockdown, which dramatically changed the experience of having a child. The geographic perspective employed here provides insight into how experiences of transition to motherhood are shaped by space and place, using this not only to ground perceptions of experience, but also to contextualise the increase seen in birth rates in New South Wales and Australia during 2021. Insights from the in-depth interviews suggest that the rise in birth-rates during the COVID-19 pandemic was likely to be attributed to decisions around the timing of births, rather than to the increase in the total number of children that a woman would have in the longer run.
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ItemFeeling climate change in Barwon South West: Emotions, place and adaptation governance( 2022)Climate change is experienced in the everyday through relationships with humans, non-humans, and the places that hold them. Despite this, the practice of climate adaptation tends to be understood through the technocratic disembodied lens of global climate science. Climate adaptation professionals working at the local-scale engage with both ways of knowing. This thesis analyses the climate emotions of 10 climate adaptation professionals working in Barwon South West, a region of Victoria, Australia. This region is vulnerable to many climate-change impacts including bushfires, sea-level-rise and heatwaves. Through walking interviews in valued places, associative mapping, narrative-thematic analysis, and poetic methods, I drew out the powerful emotional forces shaping and shaped by these adaptation professionals’ relationships with place, people, climate imaginaries and work. Climate change impacted participants relationships with place, infusing them with a sense of grief, but participants also engaged with place to find solace and relief. Climate emotions were triggered by past, present and future climate imaginaries; dystopian future imaginaries produced anxiety, while local-scale imaginaries were associated with hope and agency. These emotions were consciously and unconsciously managed by participants. Overall, emotions about climate were fundamental features of participants’ lives in and outside the workplace. This thesis illustrates the emotional, peopled practice of adaptation governance, highlights the power of emotions to responses to climate change and reveals how participants find agency and wellbeing in the face of climate change.
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ItemGoverning Rock Fishing Risk on Australian Coasts: A qualitative study of framing, social power, and collaboration( 2022)Rock fishing is a form of recreational fishing where anglers cast lines off coastal rock forms. It is frequently described as Australia’s ‘deadliest sport’. Although 7% of Australia’s population participate in rock fishing, most rock fishing deaths are concentrated in a relatively small number of locations. Around half of these deaths involve Australian residents born overseas and from non-English speaking backgrounds. Increased efforts over recent decades by governments and community organisations to reduce rock fishing death and injury have had limited success. The qualitative study reported here aims to contribute to ongoing efforts to effectively govern risks associated with rock fishing. It does so by exploring how stakeholders in diverse government and non-government organisations frame people, define problems, allocate responsibilities, and perceive other stakeholders involved in rock fishing. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with thirty-five participants drawn from the main rock fishing states of New South Wales, Western Australia, and Victoria. Thematic and frame analysis identified: (1) how participants distinguished between people who fitted within a cultural identity of ‘rock fishers’ and other groups who rock fished; (2) clarified the ways in which different understandings of problems related to different understandings of responsibility; and (3) investigated potential for disagreement amongst different sub-groups of stakeholders, particularly between those with certified expertise and those with experiential expertise. Findings suggest that the effectiveness of current rock fishing risk governance is impaired by formal governance structures that fail to account for the contradictions between how rock fishing risks are experienced by diverse costal users and how it is governed. Insights from this study help to identify policy-relevant opportunities for improved collaboration between stakeholders who seek to govern rock fishing risk in Australia.
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ItemNot/ at Risk: A Case Study of Young Adult Perspectives on COVID-19 and Vaccination in Melbourne( 2021-12-07)Given the importance of vaccination in halting the spread of the COVID-19 pandemic across the globe, research on vaccine intention and hesitancy in specific place-based contexts is vital (Butter et al. 2021; Craddock 2000; Dubé & MacDonald 2020; Piltch-Loeb et al. 2021). Within Australia, studies exploring COVID-19 vaccine intentions both before and after the development of vaccines demonstrated varying results, meriting further analysis at a cohort level (Alley et al. 2021; To et al. 2021; Davis et al. 2021; Edwards et al. 2021). However, little research has explored young adult perspectives despite their increasing importance in the vaccine rollout, increased susceptibility to the delta variant, and higher risk of adverse effects from vaccination. To address this research gap, this thesis presents a case study of young adult experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne – the epicentre of the pandemic in Australia - and examines primary drivers and barriers towards vaccine intention as informed by broader socio-spatial and temporal contexts. A vaccine hesitancy-specific risk culture and healthism framework informs this study, predicated on vaccine decision-making reflecting an individual’s commitment to minimising personal risk and maximising health benefits (Peretti-Watel et al. 2015). Through semi-structured interviews conducted in July of 2021, this thesis explores the attitudes and beliefs of young adults during a critical period, as the delta variant presented an emerging threat, but vaccine access was still largely age-restricted. Two major themes emerged: COVID-19 risk perception among young adults was experienced at multiple scales, from the global to individual; and perceived marginalisation of young adults by a conservative government in the vaccine rollout was experienced through the lens of past vulnerability and potential future insecurity.
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ItemMuseums in the time of COVID-19: visitor participation and experience at Immigration Museum and Sovereign Hill( 2021)Immigration Museum, Melbourne and Sovereign Hill, Ballarat are two iconic sites of Victoria, the cultural capital of Australia. Tied together by their histories of immigration, I aim to decipher the socio-cultural impacts of these sites during the precarious time of COVID-19. Through the perspective of eight interview participants and their shared multimedia, I analyse the visitor experience during 2021. The research findings are organised around the central themes of representation, time, and culture: representation meaning static versus progressive representations of the world at these sites; time meaning the COVID-19 reflections on these sites; and culture meaning how these sites foster connection and creativity during a crisis. I argue that these museums are fundamental to our sense of state identity, provide an escape from reality, and transport us to both confronting and optimistic times. In providing an insight into these sites during the time of COVID-19, this research contributes to the emerging scholarship of place-making, identity, social media and community during a time of disconnect at museums globally.
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ItemCitizenship in crisis: international students, food insecurity and the COVID-19 pandemic in Melbourne( 2021)Between the months of March and December 2020, food insecurity emerged as key issue among the international student community of Melbourne. The onset of the COVID-19 pandemic resulted in widespread job losses, and many international students - whose temporary migrant status rendered them with limited access to state support - experienced serious difficulties in accessing food. This thesis explores the nexus of citizenship and food insecurity in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic by drawing on 54 semi-structured, in-depth interviews with international students attending Victorian higher education institutions; 48 were conducted as a part of the Talking Hunger project on student food insecurity in Victoria and six were follow-up interviews. This research fills a gap in current qualitative work on the experiences of food insecurity among higher education students and adds to a growing body of literature concerning the dynamic nature of citizenship in moments of crisis. Theorising citizenship as the entitlements and responsibilities derived from membership to a community, I bring the practice and status elements of citizenship together in conversation with international students’ lived experience of food insecurity during the COVID-19 pandemic. In doing so, I discuss participants’ reflections on the nature of their membership to formal institutions namely the state and education institutions within the context of an acutely felt and interconnected experience of COVID-19 induced food insecurity. Furthermore, I demonstrate how students engaged in novel practices of citizenship based in care, empathy and solidarity in responding to food insecurity. This thesis therefore makes a contribution to the literature on food insecurity and citizenship in moments of crisis.
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Item(re)Creating after the ‘Black Saturday’ bushfires: examining the role of creative disaster recovery projects in Strathewen, Victoria, Australia( 2021)Due to climate change-induced intensifications in bushfire frequency and magnitude, Australian recovery initiatives are experiencing unprecedented pressure to support individuals and communities who have been affected by or involved in bushfire events. In response, organisations across Australia have begun to promote alternative recovery avenues, including that of creative recovery. In the wake of the 2009 Black Saturday bushfires in Victoria, Regional Arts Victoria (RAV) provided funding to 42 creative recovery projects through its Arts Recovery Quick Response Fund (2010). While these creative recovery projects varied in artistic medium, participant type, and spatial and temporal scale, they were all community-led initiatives designed to aid in individual and community recovery journeys. Drawing primarily on 12 semi-structured interviews with individuals involved in creative recovery projects conducted or installed in the town of Strathewen, Nillumbik Shire, this research examines the function and effects of these projects following Black Saturday. Thus far, geographical analyses have addressed the role of the creative arts within mental health recovery (see Duff, 2016; Smith, 2021), place-making (see Hawkins, 2013; Hawkins & Price, 2018) and experimentations with therapeutic practice (see Boyd, 2015). Building upon the findings and theoretical bases of these works, this thesis offers a novel exploration of creative approaches to disaster recovery. Through a micro-political analysis, the scope of this research also extends to evaluate the potential for a complementary relationship to develop between creative recovery projects and established, conventional methods of bushfire recovery.