STAFF PROFILE
Dr Megan Nethercote
Megan Nethercote is a research fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT.
Dr Nethercote was awarded a Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Fellowship in 2017 and is based in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies. Her research investigates the impacts of urban intensification, and of capitalist political economy in particular, on households and cities. Her current work focuses on high-rise apartment development, and also the functions of housing and households under neoliberal shifts.
Dr Nethercote has experience working on several major, multi-institution interdisciplinary Australian Research Council (ARC) Linkage grants with a range of government and industry partners. She currently manages ARC Linkage Project HOME, which is a large empirical study of infill apartment development across four international cities (Melbourne, Perth, London and Barcelona), to understand how we might characterise 'good' design for apartment developments and the institutional settings that encourage and impede its delivery. This research involves collaboration with industry partners, the Department of Premier and Cabinet, and the City of Melbourne, and responds to heightened national and international scrutiny surrounding the proliferation of substandard apartments and mounting pressure to better regulate this.
Dr Nethercote was awarded Malcolm Moore Award in April 2017 to pursue additional research on the political economy of apartment development, and specifically attempts to interrupt or contest ongoing housing commodification and financialisation. Through a pilot study with social enterprise Nightingale Housing, Dr Nethercote is investigating alternative relationships between land and housing, including understandings of their progressive possibilities to reorientate us towards de-commodification, and its impacts on households and communities.
She earned her PhD from RMIT University where she examined Indigenous housing policy reform and tenancy management in town camp communities. Prior to undertaking her PhD, Dr Nethercote worked as an architect on large civic and residential developments at international architectural practices in Melbourne and London.
- PhD – RMIT
- Bacherlor of Architecture – University of Melbourne
- Master of Architecture – University of Edinburgh, UK
- Nethercote, M. (2017). (In Press) When social infrastructure deficits create displacement pressures: Inner city schools and the suburbanization of families in Melbourne In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, , 1 - 22
- Nethercote, M.,Horne, R. (2016). Ordinary vertical urbanisms: City apartments and the everyday geographies of high-rise families In: Environment and Planning A, 48, 1581 - 1598
- Nethercote, M. (2015). Operationalizing a responsibility agenda in Australia's indigenous communities: Confused, doubtful and subversive public housing tenants In: Housing, Theory and Society, 32, 171 - 195
- Nethercote, M. (2015). Neoliberal welfare, minorities and tenancy support In: Social Policy and Society, , 1 - 18
- Nethercote, M. (2014). Reconciling policy tensions on the frontlines of Indigenous housing provision in Australia: reflexivity, resistance and hybridity In: Housing Studies, 29, 1045 - 1072
- Habibis, D.,Birdsall-Jones, C.,Dunbar, T.,Scrimgeour, M.,Taylor, E.,Nethercote, M. (2011). Improving housing responses to Indigenous patterns of mobility In: Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute Final Report No. 162, , -
- Whitzman, C.,Worthington, M.,Mizrachi, D. (2010). The journey and the destination matter: Child-Friendly Cities and children's right to the City In: Built Environment, 36, 474 - 486
- Living Change: Adaptive housing responses to climate change in the town camps of Alice Springs. Funded by: National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility Climate Change Research Grant Pre-2014 from (2012 to 2013)