Lecturer
BA Hons (IA), PhD (UTAS)
| Contact Campus | Sandy Bay Campus |
| Building | Geography-Geology Building |
| Room Reference | 427 |
| Telephone | +61 3 6226 1866 |
| Fax | +61 3 6006 2989 |
| Stewart.Williams@utas.edu.au |
KGA171 The Global Geography of Change
KGA308 Global Political Ecology (co-taught)
KGA513 Planning Placement
KGA518 Planning and Managing for Climate Change
KGA519 Planning Project
Grad Dip and Masters degrees in Environmental Management and Planning (Course coordinator from semester 2, 2012, onwards)
I am a human geographer with expertise in qualitative methods for use in understanding the world, and a penchant for socio-cultural political theory. These interests have informed my work in teaching, research and community engagement as I continue to employ a number of different approaches in various my practices and projects. The emphasis here is often on managing real-world problems such as health, hazards and housing in the context of planning for more sustainable communities.
My current projects include work with colleagues at UTAS and elsewhere to look at ‘Climate change adaptation and the built environment’; ‘Enhancing bioenergy transformation’; and a “Tipping point study’ to evaluate homelessness services in Tasmania.
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Images of South Farm Road, South Hobart, and the persistence of the 1967 Hobart bushfires © Stewart Williams
(Photo-documentation in ‘Re-presenting the post-disaster landscape’ in preparation for Landscape Review)
My research brings uncomfortable questions about the delivery of social justice and democracy to bear on everyday concerns of health, housing and happiness: Is our approach to the management of natural hazards focused on unrealistic goals of too simply trying to control nature and retain/restore the status quo? What about social inclusion and political participation for all human and nonhuman actors? Is our response to climate change an instance of the post-political? Where does temporality fit into these landscapes? And how might peripheral places – such as islands – contribute to the debates on these big issues?
Natalie Smith
Kamal Singh
Roger Vreugdenhil
I was Honorary Treasurer for the Institute of Australian Geographers (IAG Inc.) 2006-2010 and chaired DIER's Community Advisory Panel evaluating a Light Rail proposal for Hobart in 2010-2011.
Williams, S. (2012) “Anoraks, train timetables, bus rides and biscuits: taking on the impossible politics of climate change”, Local-Global: Identity, Security, Community (in press).
Williams, S. (2012) “Coherent unity or fracture and flow: the problematic island polity” in G. Baldacchino (ed.) The International Political Economy of Divided Islands, Palgrave Macmillan (in press).
Jacobs, K.A. and Williams, S. (2011) “What to do now? Tensions and dilemmas in responding to natural disasters: a study of three Australian State Housing Authorities” International Journal of Housing Policy 11 (2) 175-193.
Williams, S. and Jacobs, K.A. (2011) “Introduction: Disasters, housing, actuarialism and the securitisation of risk”, Housing Studies 27 (2) 185-95.
Williams, S. and Hay, P. (2011) “Living on… A conversation about island peoples, places, politics and poetry, Island, 124 8-16
Williams, S. (2010) “On islands, insularity and opium poppies: Australia’s secret pharmacy”, Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 28 (2) 290-310.
Williams, S. (2010) “Drugs, Geography of” in B. Warf (Ed.) Encyclopedia of Geography, Sage, London, Thousand Oaks, New Delhi.
Jacobs, K.A. and Williams, S. (2009) Natural Disaster Preparation and Response: Issues for State Housing Authorities, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Melbourne.
Williams, S., Jacobs, K.A., Newton, P. and Blakeley, E. (2009) Natural Disaster Preparation and Response: A Guide for State Housing Authorities, Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute, Melbourne.
Williams, S. (2008) “Rethinking the Nature of Disaster: from failed instruments of learning to a post-social understanding”, Social Forces 87 (2) 1115-1138.
Bradshaw, M. and Williams, S. (1999) “Scales, Lines and Minor Geographies: Whither King Island?”, Australian Geographical Studies, 37 (3) 248-267.
