Human Interactions
with the Environment: from prehistoric Australia to
the suburbs
Professor Lesley Head
What do suburban backyards and
Aboriginal lands have in common? They are both places where people interact with
nature. Both are key sites of environmental transformation and meaning.
As a geographer, Lesley Head’s research interests focus on long term changes in the Australian landscape and the interactions of both prehistoric and contemporary peoples with these environments. She has worked in many parts of Australia, including the East Kimberley, the Flinders Ranges, Alice Springs, and the backyards of Wollongong.
This work is necessarily interdisciplinary, drawing on a range of analytical tools from cultural geography, archaeology and palaeoecology.
Understanding the cultural basis of environmental decision-making, particularly in the environments we most take for granted - is an important contribution to a variety of land and resource management debates in Australia.
Lesley is the author of two internationally published books, Second Nature. The history and implications of Australia as Aboriginal landscape (Syracuse University Press, New York) and Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Change (Arnold, London). She will go to Sweden in August to be the King Carl XVI Gustaf Visiting Professor in Environmental Science at Kristianstad University for the northern academic year 2005-06. This poses some domestic challenges as she has two teenage children who now have lives (and surfboards) of their own. She and her archaeologist husband are approaching this adventure with their usual mixture of negotiation, compromise and bribery.
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Aboriginal communities and |
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