Associate Professor in Physical Pyrogeography
I have just started a half-time, 3 year research position with the Fire Centre, working on a project with Natural Hazards Research Australia about bushfire hazards at the Rural-Urban Interface. My role will be to use past patterns of house loss, to predict how fires spread through the interface as a function of the spatial layout of the buildings and gardens. Many suburbs around Hobart and beyond are at high risk of a repeat of the 1967 bushfire (which killed 62 people) or worse, so this is very topical. The other half of my time is through the University of Wollongong, where I have been at the Centre for Environmental Risk Management of Bushfire since 2007, and director since 2020.
My background is as an ecologist. I graduated from the University of York in 1985 with a BSc in Biology, then did an MSc in Information Technology before getting a 3-year job as a research assistant on deer and sheep behavioural ecology projects at the University of Cambridge. Then in 1991 I married an Australian and came to Darwin for 13 years working in Wildlife Research for the NT government on seed dispersal, conservation reserve design and fire ecology. Lastly, I have been at Wollongong for 18 years where I specialise in all matters relating to empirical evidence of bushfire impact and the effectiveness of risk mitigation measures. I have published 133 peered reviewed articles and 50 reports in my career.
