Senior Lecturer - Deputy Head of School
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Geography-Geology Building |
| Room Reference | 406 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 7590 |
| Fax | +61 3 6226 2989 |
| Aidan.Davison@utas.edu.au |
I teach the following units, which are part of the BSc and BA major in Geography and Environmental Studies, and supervise KGA300 and BA and BSc Honours projects.
KGA205 Geographies of the Human Landscape – this core second year unit presents introduces the important contribution human geography can make to understanding social, cultural, political and economic issues.
KGA308 Global Political Ecology – this third year unit addresses the intersection of issues of environmental sustainability and social justice in relation to energy, water and food resources.
KGA319 Making Sense of Climate Change – this team-taught third-year unit offers an innovative, student-led approach to integrating and applying different forms of climate change knowledge.
1987 Bachelor of Science (First Class Honours) in Biochemistry and Microbiology, University of Tasmania.
1991 Postgraduate Diploma in Science and Technology Policy, Murdoch University.
1999 Doctor of Philosophy, Murdoch University. Thesis Title: Sustaining Technology: From sustainable development to the craft of moral life.
An interdisciplinary human geographer interested in social, cultural, political and ethical dimensions of environmental issues, I undertake theoretical inquiry and qualitative social research.
I have published one monograph and over 40 refereed articles and book chapters, as well as many conference papers and non-refereed publications. Alone and in collaboration with others, I have been awarded four nationally competitive grants.
Areas of research interest include:
• Re-inventing urban nature. What does and could nature mean in the city? Following this question, I have studied the role of urban experience in shaping Australian environmentalism (ARC Discovery 2003-2007, sole researcher) and the perceptions and behaviours of residents and land managers in relation to the urban forest (ARC Discovery 2009-2011, with J Kirkpatrick and others).
Urban nature, Adelaide, 2011 Urban nature, Los Angeles, 2011
• Values in practice. How can we understand the moral dimensions of everyday practice? Prompted by this question I drawn on philosophy of technology, science studies and cultural geography to explore the role of practical forms of reasoning in making sense of ideas such as sustainability and nature and in informing environmental social movements. My latest projects in this area focus on value-based controversy relating to thoroughbred horse racing (ARC Discovery 2013-2015, with P McManus, P McGreevy and S Roberts) and the role of community organisations in leading the ‘sustainability transition’ (with A Lyth, C Baldwin, P Fidelman).
• The politics of the new earth. How is social power mediated through environments? This question, a staple of fields such as political ecology and environmental justice, is taking on new relevance in an age of climate change in which no aspect of the earth can be assumed to be free of human involvement. My interests here include the neo-colonial politics of sustainable development, the cultural geography of native species and the political geography of climate change.
Kaseen Cook – A Mututalistic Human Ecology: Inspirations and Applications from Ecologically Intimate Aboriginal Communities
Mahni Dugan – Identity and Place as Factors in the Transition to Sustainability
Anna Egan – Uprooting Melbourne: A social history of Melbourne’s trees
Catherine Elliot – Community Responses to Post-Disaster Housing Projects in Aceh, Indonesia
Millie Rooney – Sharing in Australian suburbs
Chloe Rumsby – Developing audience-centric climate change communication in a science-saturated media environment.
Kamal Singh - A critical examination of approaches for sustainability within the Australian Tertiary Education Sector.
Roger Vreugdenhil - Transitioning Cycling into the Mainstream of Australian Urban Transport.
Philipa Watson - Sustainable housing for equity and energy efficient outcomes
2012 Sharon Moore (2012) Climate Change and Environmental Citizenship- Transition to a Post-Consumerist Future?
2011 Andrew Harwood: The political constitution of islandness: The Tasmanian problems and ten days on the island.
2010 Kate Booth: Place matters – finding deep ecology within towns and cities
University teaching is a great privilege and as vital in linking scholarship and social change as is research. In addition to valuing and enjoying my time with students, I conduct research related to teaching. With colleagues I led a national Australian Learning and Teaching Council project (2010-2011) that sought to improve teaching about climate change at four universities. I am currently involved in a community of practice at UTas that engages in education for sustainability.
I am a Fellow and elected member of the National Council (2013-14) of the Institute of Australian Geographers.
At the University of Tasmania, I am Deputy Head of the School of Geography and Environmental Studies and a member of the UTas Sustainability Committee, the Graduate Attributes Review Working Party, and the Faculty of Arts Learning and Teaching Committee.
Davison, A. 2010. Aidan Davison. In Raffaelle, R., Robison, W. and Selinger, E. (eds) Sustainability Ethics: 5 Questions. Automatic/VIP Press: Copenhagen, 85-94.
Davison, A. 2010. Afterword: Impure thoughts on messy cities. In R. Jaffe and E. Duerr (eds) Urban Pollution: Cultural Meanings, Social Practices. Oxford and New York: Berghahn, 198-202.
Lien, M. and Davison, A. 2010. Roots, rupture and remembrance: The Tasmanian lives of Monterey Pine. Journal of Material Culture 15(2): 233-253.
Davison, A. 2010. Unity in biodiversity? Reinventing nation and nature in Australia. Social Alternatives 29(3): 7-12.
Kirkpatrick, J.B., Daniels, G.D. and Davison, A. 2011. Temporal and spatial variation in garden and street trees in six eastern Australian cities. Landscape and Urban Planning 101(3): 244-252.
Davison, A. 2011. A domestic twist on the eco-efficiency turn: technology, environmentalism, home. In R. Lane and A Gorman-Murray (eds) Material Geographies of Household Sustainability. London: Ashgate, 35-49.
Davison, A.G. 2011. Governance and citizenship at home – A commentary. In Lane, R. and Gorman-Murray, A. (eds) Material Geographies of Household Sustainability. Ashgate: London, 211-215.
Kirkpatrick, J.B., Davison, A., Daniels, G.D. 2012. Resident attitudes towards trees influence the planting and removal of different types of trees in eastern Australian cities. Landscape and Urban Planning 107(2): 147-158.
Pharo, E., Davison, A., Warr, K., Nursey-Bray, M., Beswick, K., Wapstra, E., Jones, C. 2012. Can teacher collaboration overcome barriers to interdisciplinary learning in a disciplinary university? A case study using climate change. Teaching in Higher Education 17(5): 497-507.
Davison, A., Pharo, E., Warr, K., Abuodha, P., Boyd, D., Brown, P., Devereux, P., Egan A., Hart, G., McGregor, H., Rooney, M. and Terkes, S. 2012. Demonstrating distributed leadership through cross-disciplinary peer networks: Responding to climate change complexity. Sydney: Australian Learning and Teaching Council, ISBN 978 1 921916 74 8.
Davison, A. 2013. Making sustainability up: designs beyond possibility. In Walker, S. and Giard, J. (eds) Handbook of Sustainable Design. Oxford: Berg (in press).
Pearce, L., Kirkpatrick, J.B. and Davison, A. 2013. Using size class distributions of species to deduce the compositional dynamics of the private urban forest. Arboriculture and Urban Forestry (in press).
Pharo, E., Davison, A., McGregor, H., Warr W. and Brown, P. 2013. Using communities of practice to enhance interdisciplinary teaching: Lessons from four Australian institutions. Higher Education Research and Development (in press).
Davison, A. 2013. Longing for freedom in the Anthropocene. Wildlife Australia (in press).