Helen Ross

Biography

Professor Helen Ross manages social sciences in the School of Agriculture and Food Sciences, the University of Queensland. She is an interdisciplinary social scientist (environmental psychologist and anthropologist) specialising in social aspects of sustainable rural development, including shared responsibility for agricultural extension. In teaching, she is responsible for a Masters degree program in Rural Development, teaches about environment and community, and supervises PhD students. In her research she focuses particularly on people-environment relationships, sustainability and resilience, and collaboration processes for natural resource management and rural development. She also conducts research on social aspects of water management, and climate change adaptation. Her recent research projects include studies of community resilience in two regions of Australia, capacity building for Integrated Water Resource Management in the Pacific, and theoretical papers on resilience. Her current projects, with collaborators, are on collaboration as a solution to wicked policy problems, and managing Moreton Bay (Brisbane area) as a social-ecological system.

Research Interest

Agribusiness and rural development