Associate Professor Jessica Weir

Dr Jessica K Weir is an Associate Professor at the Institute who investigates human-environment relations, justice, societal norms and public sector governance, building on 20 years of public/private/community sector work. Her research practice seeks to resituate humans within their environments and more-than-humans within cultural and ethical domains. Her internationally recognised book Murray River Country (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2009) demonstrates how greater reflexivity matched with material action can lead to more just outcomes for people and nature. Jessica's research practice is fundamentally informed by over two decades of collaboration with Indigenous peoples, especially in southeast and western Australia. She seeks to work as an ally within a decolonial ethic. With the support of her research collaborators, she examines how diverse knowledge practices interact to circumscribe and transform public sector and societal understandings of topical issues, including climate change, fresh water, natural hazards, academic knowledge, and evidence-based policy and practice. Her research is in dialogue with human geography, Indigenous studies, decolonial studies, the environmental humanities, and science and technology studies. Jessica is currently leading and co-leading two projects funded by the Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre (BNHCRC). She is also an editorial board member of the Routledge Environmental Humanities Book Series, and a Visiting Fellow at the Fenner School of Environment and Society, The Australian National University. Jessica has held positions as Research Fellow at the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS), where she worked for ten years in the Native Title Research Unit and as a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Canberra.

Qualifications

• PhD, 2008, The Australian National University
• MEnv&Dev, 1999, The Australian National University
• BA, 1994, Macquarie University

Honours and Awards

• 2022 Emergency Management Professional Association award for Excellence in Emergency Communication – Research.
• 2021 Dorothy R Taylor award for best paper in Australian Geographer
• 2017-2020: 'Culture, Hazards and Indigenous Communities’, Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, $450,000
• 2016-2017: 'Research Utilisation Grant’, Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, $10,000
• 2014-2017: 'Scientific Diversity, Scientific Uncertainty and Risk Mitigation Policy and Planning', Bushfire and Natural Hazards Cooperative Research Centre, $560,000
• 2014: Keynote, Graduate Research Symposium, Department of Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley
• 2014: Visiting Scholar, Joseph A Myers Centre for Research on Native American Issues, Institute for the Study of Societal Issues, University of California, Berkeley
• 2013: Editorial Board, Environmental Humanities Book Series, Routledge
• 2012-13: Senior Research Fellow, University of Canberra
• 2007-2012: Research Fellow, AIATSIS
• 2012: Visiting Faculty, BIARI Institute Climate Change and Water, Brown University
• 2012: Keynote, Tapping the Turn international conference, The Australian National University
• 2011-2013: 'Changes to Country and Culture, Changes to Climate: Strengthening Institutions for Indigenous Resilience and Adaptation', Department of Climate Change and Energy Efficiency's National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF) Grants Program, $420,000
• 2011-2012: 'Managing Weeds on Native Title Lands', Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, $187,000
• 2011: Inclusion in the inaugural volume Best Australian Science Writing 2011, Pincock, S (ed), NewSouth, Sydney
• 2011: Founder of the AIATSIS Centre for Land and Water Research
• 2011: Internal bid to establish AIATSIS Centre for Land and Water Research, $45,000
• 2011: Program Convener of the National Native Title Conference 2011, 1-3 June 2011, Brisbane
• 2011: AIATSIS Award for Excellence and Commitment
• 2010: Special project for AIATSIS Council, $20,000
• 2009: Murray River Country book launch at the Melbourne Writers' Festival by Monica Morgan and John Doyle
• 2007-2013: Founding member of the Ecological Humanities group
• 2007-2012: Editorial Board, Native Title Research Unit Publications, AIATSIS

Selected Publications

Weir, JK 2021 Terrain: De/centring environmental management with Indigenous peoples’ leadership, Borderlands, 20(1): 171-206.

Williams, B and JK Weir 2021 Indigenous peoples and natural hazard research, policy and practice in southern temperate Australia: an agenda for change (opens in a new window), Australian Journal of Emergency Management, 36(4): 62-7.

Weir JK, Neale T, Clarke EA. 2021, The recalibration of our relationships with science (and nature) by natural hazard risk mitigation practitioners (opens in a new window). Environment and Planning E: Nature and Space.

Freeman, D, Williamson, B and JK Weir 2021, Cultural Burning and Public Sector Practice in the Australian Capital Territory (opens in a new window), Australian Geographer. 52(2): 111-129.

Smith, W, Neale, T and JK Weir 2021, Persuasion without policies: The work of reviving Indigenous peoples’ fire management in southern Australia (opens in a new window), Geoforum, 120: 82-92.

Weir, JK, 2020, So You Care About Indigenous Scholars?. ‘So You Care About Indigenous Scholars?’(opens in a new window) Poster Series, Ad Astra Comix: Canada.

Williamson, B, Markham, F and JK Weir, 2020. Aboriginal peoples and the response to the 2019–2020 bushfires (opens in a new window) Working Paper No. 134/2020, Centre for Aboriginal Economic Policy Research, Australian National University, Canberra.

Weir, JK, Sutton, S and G Catt, 2020. ‘Indigenous peoples’ fire management and the theory/practice of disaster justice’ (opens in a new window), in A Lukasiewicz and C Baldwin (eds), Natural Hazards and Disaster Justice: Challenges for Australia and its Neighbours, Palgrave Macmillan: Chicago, pp.299-317.

Weir, JK, Woelfle-Erskine, C, Diver, S, Fuller, S, and M Higgins, 2019. 'Investigating Best Practice: Doctoral Fieldwork with and without Indigenous Communities in Settler-Colonial Societies' (opens in a new window), ACME: An International Journal for Critical Geographies, 18(6):1300-20.

Weir, JK & Duff, N 2017, 'Who is looking after country? Interpreting and attributing land management responsibilities on native title lands' (opens in a new window), Australian Journal of Public Administration, 76(4):426-442.

Access All Publications

• Western Sydney University Staff Profile
• Google Scholar Profile (opens in a new window)

Contact

• Contact Jessica Weir