This multi-phased research led by Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow Professor Chris Gibson (2025-2030) is developing a novel place-based approach connecting economic geography with social and cultural insights.
Planning for more inclusive energy transitions, the research team will track where investments in renewables and clean manufacturing hit the ground, and with what effect, while uncovering overlooked regional skills and initiatives, and First Nations’ perspectives.
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Documenting the economic geography of decarbonisation: the ‘where’ and ‘what’ of transitions for Australian regions.
Tracing investments across scales, and supply chains, while capturing global and geopolitical dimensions of wind, solar, ‘clean’ manufacturing and critical minerals.
Mapping the structure, geography and financing of firms to the on-the-ground impacts of investment capital in regional communities.
Comparing port and inland regions targeted for decarbonisation projects.
Revealing the complex, multifaceted people and places at the intersection of economic, social, and environmental forces to counter perceptions of regions as passive recipients of change.
Amplifying the unheeded capacities for workers and households to enact change, and to lead and participate in overlooked sustainability initiatives.
Understanding the actual regional experience of decarbonisation—in employment shifts, social division and conflict, housing crises, and skills mismatch.
Generating data on grassroots and bottom-up responses to transition in industrial regions.
Listening to Country and First Nations’ stakeholders, supported by ADP’s Indigenous Knowledge Place.
Building a team of Indigenous scholars to track self-determination, jobs, and enterprise development in and alongside decarbonisation projects.
Redressing a lack of engagement with First Nations’ perspectives in literature and practice amid transitions, for meaningful consultation.
Incorporating Indigenous-developed principles of respectful communication, holistic benefit sharing, land stewardship, and reciprocity, for improved outcomes.
Synthesising and spatialising qualitative and quantitative data across the wider project with GIS tools to drive holistic understanding and translate findings for new and diverse audiences.
Visualising alignments and asymmetries between decarbonisation investment flows and extant communities and conditions.
Revealing vernacular community and First Nations’ capacities, expertise, and outcomes while protecting sovereignty over cultural knowledge.
Developing improved governance frameworks that foster reciprocal relationships between state and community actors and ensure just and place-based transformation approaches.
Reporting and advocating recommendations of how best to catalyse regional transitions.
Collaborating and comparing with global experts to internationalise findings.
For information about opportunities to work or collaborate with us, contact us future-regions.admin@sydney.edu.au
