From one great uni to another

This week I finish up at RMIT after 8 amazing years. It has been an incredible journey, from the intensity of delivering the first jam-packed, Climate Change Responses course, to working with RMIT’s inspired?Enabling Impact Platforms?fostering high impact research on pressing, complex issues underpinned by?the SDGs?and an?ethical innovation approach, to helping govern the university’s research work as Chair of the Research Committee during a period when multiple challenges popped up and assumptions dropped away. I am lucky to have worked with so many stellar colleagues. Among the many I want to thank are my innovative colleagues in the Enabling Impact Platforms, the intellectual architects?Swee Mak?and?Calum Drummond, my wonderful co-Directors past and present,?Billie Giles-Corti,?Larissa Hjorth,?Naomi Stead,?Lisa Given,?Matt Duckham,?Gary Rosengarten,?Magdalena Plebanski,?Xavier Mulet?and?Anne-Laure Mention, as well as?Ilana Altas,?Martyn Hook,?Ralph Horne?and industry advisors including?Peter Seamer,?Adele McCarthy,?James Mant,?Mike Day,?Stuart Moseley,?Filipina Moore, and?Jonathan Spear.

Thank you too to my passionate Sustainability and Urban Planning colleagues especially our intrepid leader Andrew Butt. (For anyone looking for a mind- and career-opening course on sustainability – the?Bachelor of Environment and Society?is your course).?

And finally to my colleagues in the?Centre for Urban Research?– thanks for the laughs, support and inspiration, notably?Jago Dodson,?Wendy Steele,?Libby Porter,?Marco Amati,?Joe Hurley,?Ben Cooke,?Mel Neave,?Mel Davern,?Cecily Maller,?Mittul Vahanvati,?Erica Kuligowski,?and many others from the CUR family now working for sustainable, resilient futures in other ways, including?Karyn Bosomworth,?Susie Moloney,?Hartmut Funfgeld,?Blythe McLennan?and?Maddie Mitchell.

Big new opportunities now await at?La Trobe University?where, as of this week, I am so excited to be setting up the?La Trobe Climate Change Adaptation Lab, working alongside the wonderful?Todd Denham?and others to address the urgent issue of #climatechangeadaptation. For any budding PhD students out there, check out?two scholarships?that we currently have open. We’ll post more info about the Lab and other opportunities in due course, but in the meantime, thank you to our new colleagues in the?School of Humanities and Social Sciencesfor the warm welcome we have already received.