The Early Career Researcher Fellowship program kicks off again in 2023 with two new early career researchers.
Natural Hazards Research Australia’s Fellowships recognise the value that can be achieved by supporting early career researchers to expand their research networks, create strong local and international collaborations, and to have the opportunity to compare the opportunities and challenges for natural hazards research in different geographic, societal, cultural and climatic settings.
Dr Kate Brady
Dr Kate Brady is a Community Resilience Research Fellow in the University of Melbourne’s School of Population and Global Health since completing her PhD in disaster recovery in 2020. Her research investigated what people who have been impacted by disaster consider to be helpful in their recovery. Dr Brady is also a Disaster Recovery Technical Adviser at the Red Cross. In her role, she was the lead end-user on the Bushfire and Natural Hazards CRC’s Recovery Capitals project. She was also a researcher on the CRC’s Community-led recovery Black Summer project and Centre-funded extension project, Community-led recovery: evidence, dimensions and supports for Community Recovery Committees.
Dr Brady’s Fellowship project will strengthen connections with international research partners and develop new collaborations relating to disaster recovery research, including opportunities to contribute to new research projects, translate international research findings to the Australian context and improve knowledge translation approaches and outputs. She plans to meet with research collaborators in North America who are excelling in their chosen area of research, identify what is working for them and what lessons we can use in the Australian context, and share the work in disaster recovery research that is being undertaken in Australia.
Dr Amelie Jeanneau
Dr Amelie Jeanneau is a Postdoctoral Researcher in the School of Architecture and Civil Engineering at the University of Adelaide. She completed her PhD in environmental modelling in 2020, highlighting the importance of simultaneously considering wind and water-driven soil erosion for dryland agricultural regions. The results are directly relevant to land managers and policymakers in applying corrective measures to ensure better erosion management in the future.
Dr Jeanneau’s Fellowship project aims to identify the challenges, knowledge and successes faced by fire managers around collaborative planning and implementation of bushfire risk reduction strategies to build more resilient management practices in Australia. She plans to travel to Portugal to meet with experts in community-centred methods for landscape-scale bushfire risk reduction strategies, assess whether this concept can be applied in an Australian context and co-design and deliver a participatory workshop to define best practices for effective collaborative risk reduction strategies.
Dr Phillipa McCormack
The Centre’s 2022 Fellow was Dr Phillipa McCormack (University of Adelaide) whose research focuses on climate change adaptation law and governance. She used her 2022 Fellowship to establish new collaborations between US and Australian fire law scholars by presenting at the International Association of Wildland Fire’s Climate and Fire Conference 2022 in Pasadena, California and Melbourne, Australia. Read more about her experience here.
Dr McCormack's current Fellowship project is designed to build a community of researchers and interested stakeholders who share the goal of developing more adaptive, future-oriented bushfire laws, policies and strategies. She plans to design and launch a new website that collects and presents existing knowledge and expertise about law and policy for adaptation-oriented bushfire prevention, preparation, response and recovery, and will use the new website as a hub for a Wildfire Law and Policy Network. The Network will help to enhance the effectiveness and climate-adaptiveness of Australia's bushfire mitigation and hazard reduction laws by creating a space to test ideas about legal reform, translate cutting-edge science into legal and policy impact and support the development of early- and mid-career researchers in legal and governance research.
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ECR Development Fellowships are available to PhD-qualified researchers employed in research positions in research institutions or universities, for up to five years after their graduation and up to $15,000. It is also open to full-time PhD students who have successfully completed the equivalent of two years of full-time study. The Centre also offers funding up to $7,500 as part of the ECR Industry Fellowships, available to PhD-qualified researchers employed in industry for up to five years after their PhD graduation. Find out more about the Fellowship programs and how to apply here.