STAFF PROFILE
Professor Libby Porter
Professor Libby Porter is a Vice Chancellor's Principal Research Fellow.
She leads research on the politics of urban land, property rights and dispossession, critical urban governance, and decolonising urban planning.
Libby is a planner and urban geographer working on the role of planning and urban development in dispossession and displacement, and what we might do about it. Her research has examined Indigenous rights in urban and environmental planning; cities and diversity; gentrification and displacement through urban renewal; the impact of mega-events on cities; and urban sustainability; and urban informality. Her current work is in the areas of critical property studies, urban governance, decolonisation and settler cities, and on children’s sense of space and place.
Libby has held academic appointments in the UK and Australia and is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Prior to her academic life, she worked in urban planning practice and policy-applied research in both local and State Government in Victoria, and was a member of the Expert Advisory Panel for Melbourne 2030. She is currently Assistant Editor for Planning Theory and Practice, leading the Interface section, and is a co-founder of Planners Network UK.
She has published a number of books in her areas of expertise including:
- Planning in Indigenous Australia: From imperial foundations to postcolonial futures 2018 (with Sue Jackson and Louise Johnson)
- Planning for Co-existence? Recognizing Indigenous rights through land-use planning in Canada and Australia 2016 (with Janice Barry).
- Unlearning the Colonial Cultures of Planning 2010
- Whose Urban Renaissance? An international comparison of urban regeneration policies 2009 (with Kate Shaw).
Her work has featured in various media outlets including:
- The Conversation
- Arena
- The Drum: Time to rethink gentrification
- Assemble Papers Unlearning Planning Practice
- Glasgow 2014 legacy 'may not happen', BBC News Scotland, 31 October 2011
- PG Cert Academic Practice (University of Glasgow 2011)
- PhD (University of Melbourne 2004)
- BAppSc in Planning (RMIT University 1994)
- Porter, E.,Hurst, J.,Grandinetti, T. (2020). (In press) The politics of greening unceded lands in the settler city In: Australian Geographer, , 1 - 18
- Blatman-Thomas, N.,Porter, L. (2019). Placing Property: Theorizing the Urban from Settler Colonial Cities In: International Journal of Urban and Regional Research, 43, 30 - 45
- Spark, C.,Porter, L.,De Kleyn, L. (2019). 'We're not very good at soccer': gender, space and competence in a Victorian primary school In: Children's Geographies, 17, 190 - 203
- Porter, L.,Jackson, S.,Johnson, L. (2019). Remaking imperial power in the city: the case of the William Barak building, Melbourne In: Environment and Planning D: Society and Space, 37, 1119 - 1137
- Rogers, D.,Porter, L.,Steele, W.,Houston, D. (2019). Creating a thinking space for the rising stars of Australian urban geography In: Australian Geographer, 50, 141 - 143
- Jackson, S.,Porter, L.,Johnson, L. (2018). Planning in Indigenous Australia: From imperial foundations to postcolonial futures, Taylor and Francis, United Kingdom
- Porter, E. (2018). Postcolonial consequences and new meanings In: The Routledge Handbook of Planning Theory, Taylor and Francis, United States
- Gray, N.,Porter, L. (2018). The right to the city and its limits: Contested property claims, urban exceptionality, and the fight for relational space in Glasgow's Commonwealth Games 2014 In: Contested Property Claims: What disagreement tells us about ownership, Routledge, Oxon, United Kingdom
- Porter, E. (2018). From an urban country to urban Country: Confronting the cult of denial in Australian cities In: Australian Geographer, 49, 239 - 246
- Porter, L.,Steele, W.,Stone, W. (2018). Housing and Resilience-When, for Whom and for What? A Critical Agenda In: Housing, Theory and Society, 35, 387 - 393
2 PhD Completions5 PhD Current Supervisions
- Talking Country: Sharing Indigenous stories of place through mobile media. Funded by: ARC Linkage Project Grants 2018 from (2020 to 2024)
- Decolonising Settler Cities Symposium - Antipode Foundation International Workshop Award. Funded by: Antipode Foundation Grant 2017 from (2017 to 2017)
- Who owns the sustainable city? Urban redevelopment, sustainability and the politics of property rights in Australia, Brazil and Chile. Funded by: ARC Discovery Grant 2014 from (2014 to 2018)