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Dr Martin Mulligan

Position	Senior Research Fellow
School / Work Unit	Global Studies, Social Science &Planning
Contact Details	+(61 3) 9925 2725 martin.mulligan@rmit.edu.au
Location	Building: 37 Level: 5 Room: 32 City Campus
Portfolio	Design & Social Context

Qualifications

B.Sc. (Hons) University of Sydney; PhD RMIT University 1994

Teaching/Work responsibilities

Deputy Director and Senior Research Fellow, Globalism Institute

Project manager for Australian sites in the Community Sustainability research project.

Member of the editorial board of the journal Local-Global: Studies in Community Sustainability on Community Sustainability

Research Interests

Before joining the Globalism Institute in 2004, I worked for 10 years in the innovative Social Ecology program at the University of Western Sydney where I developed new courses in areas related to ecological thinking and environmental education. During this time I conducted the research for a book titled Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought and Action co-authored with Prof. Stuart Hill and published by Cambridge University Press (2001). This book was nominated for both the NSW Premier’s Prize for history writing and the Queensland Premier’s Prize for history writing. With Professor William Adams of Cambridge University, I collected and edited a volume of writings published under the title Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-Colonial Era by Earthscan (London, 2003). I am interested in ways of deepening discourses on sustainability through the promotion of ‘ecological literacy’ and in exploring how a deeper ‘sense of place’ can bring together concerns for the environmental and social sustainability of local communities. In particular, I am interested in how we Australians might rethink our attitudes to water by ‘re-immersing’ ourselves in the hydrological cycle. Ecological Pioneers was dedicated to the memory of the great Australian poet and conservationist Judith Wright, who died just before it was published, and I subsequently worked for more than three years to organise a festival that would celebrate and extend her legacy. Held in March 2005, the Two Fires Festival of Arts and Activism attracted around 1,000 participants and it featured an impressive list of leading Australian writers, musicians, film-makers, activists and scholars. More than 20 of these prominent people are contributing to a book that will explore Judith Wright’s legacy on the interplay between art and activism (currently under consideration by Cambridge University Press). I also have a long-term association with Sri Lanka and I am working on a proposal for a collaboration with researchers at Ruhuna University in southern Sri Lanka on how local communities are recovering from the devastating impacts of the tsunami.

Notions of sustainability; sense of place and local community resilience; rethinking water; local and social histories; community sustainability and nation building in Papua New Guinea.

Recent Research

‘Creating Resilient Communities: A comparative study of “sense of place” and community wellbeing in Daylesford and Broadmeadows’. Project funded by VicHealth.

Current Research

• Globalisation and Community Sustainability – Negotiating the Local and the Global in the Hamilton region of Victoria;
• A new approach to community development in Papua New Guinea – working with the PNG Department for Community Development.
• Rethinking Water in the Australian Context
• The creative tension between arts and activism.

Research Projects

Manager of data collection for an investigation of the relationships between community arts and community wellbeing funded by an ARC Linkage Grant (with VicHealth as the industry partner). Research for this project is being conducted in St Kilda, Broadmeadows, Daylesford, and the Hamilton region.

Senior researcher in the Globalism Institute’s Local-Global research project in the Hamilton region of Victoria, in research funded by the Handbury Trust and managed by Dr Yaso Nadarajah.

Publications/Other

Books

Adams, William M. and Martin Mulligan, Decolonizing Nature: Strategies for Conservation in a Post-Colonial Era,Earthscan, London, 2003.

Mulligan, Martin and Stuart Hill, Ecological Pioneers: A Social History of Australian Ecological Thought and Action, Cambridge University Press, Melbourne, 2001.

Book Chapters

Davison, Aidan and Martin Mulligan, ‘Dissolving the Boundaries of the City: Eco-imagination and the Ecology of Compassionate Democracy, in Peter Willis and Pam Carden, eds,Lifelong Learning and the Democratic Imagination: Re-visioning freedom, justice and community, Flaxon, Queensland, 2004.

Mulligan, Martin ‘Sparks fly: When Life, Work and Research Collide’, in Hilary Byrne-Armstrong, Debbie Horsfall and Joy Higgs, eds, Critical Moments in Qualitative Research, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, 2001.

Refereed Journal Articles

Cameron, John, Martin Mulligan and Virginia Wheatley ‘Building a Place-Responsive Society through Inclusive Local Projects and Networks’ Local Environment, 9, 2, 2004, pp. 147-161.

Davison, Aidan and Martin Mulligan, ‘Rethinking the Art and Craft of Green Politics: Rehabilitating the Culture of Rhetoric for a More Inclusive and Inspiring Form of Ecopolitical Practice’,Ecopolitics Thought & Action, vol. 1, no. 3, 2002, pp 41-54.

Mulligan, Martin, ‘Re-enchanting Conservation Work: Reflections on the Australian Experience’, in Environmental Values, vol. 10, no. 1, pp 19-33.

Refereed Conference Proceedings

Mulligan, Martin ‘The Aesthetics of Messiness in Sustaining Local Diversity: Researching the Impacts of Gentrification through Hermeneutic Inquiry’, Proceedings of The Passionate City symposium, RMIT University, 2004.

Other Publications

Creating Resilient Communities: A Comparative Study of ‘Sense of Place’ and Community Wellbeing in Daylesford and Broadmeadows, (with Paul James, Chris Scanlon and Chris Ziguras) VicHealth, Melbourne, 2004.

‘Learning the Language of Leaves’, Dialogue, 23, 1 (Academy of Social Sciences, Canberra), 2004.

Foster-Smith, Julie and Martin Mulligan, ‘Decolonising Psyches for Intercultural Travel’, paper delivered at World Indigenous People’s Conference on Education held in Alberta Canada in August 2002.

Mulligan, Martin, ‘Sparks Fly: When Life, Work and Research Collide’, in Hilary Byrne-Armstrong, Debbie Horsfall and Joy Higgs, eds, Critical Moments in Qualitative Research, Butterworth-Heinemann, Oxford, UK, 2001.

Mulligan, Martin, ‘Towards a “whitefella dreaming”: Re-enchanting Nature Conservation “work””,Overland, vol. 161, no. 1, 2000, pp 58-61.

Mulligan, Martin, ‘Reading Storied Landscapes: Recognising Land Rights’,Arena Magazine, no. 39, pp 39-42.