Our Team & Advisory Committee

Lauren Rickards is Associate Professor in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, Melbourne, where she co-leads the Climate Change Transformations program. A human geographer, Lauren’s work examines the ideas and discourses that shape how we interact with the environment, notably with issues of climate, land and food. Lauren is a Lead Author with the forthcoming IPCC report on Impacts, Adaptation and Vulnerability, a Senior Research Fellow with the Earth Systems Governance Network and a member of the Scientific Advisory Committee of Environmental Justice Australia. Prior to RMIT, Lauren was a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute at the University of Melbourne and an Associate Partner at RM Consulting Group.

Dr Susie Moloney is an Associate Professor in Sustainability and Urban Planning in the School of Global Urban and Social Studies and a member of the Centre for Urban Research (CUR), RMIT University.

Her research focuses on urban sustainability, land-use planning and climate change and the implications for policy and governance particularly at the local and regional scale. She has worked for both the public and private sectors in the urban planning and sustainability policy domains.

Over recent years she has worked on a range of applied climate change research projects with local and state government and community sector organisations. Susie has a particular interest in local climate change governance and has worked with and researched local governments and alliances for a number of years.

In early 2021, Susie joined Jesuit Social Services as the Executive Director Centre for Just Places, an initiative set up to address place-based disadvantage and enable resilient, inclusive and regenerative communities.

Haydie is a cultural geographer and professional editor. Her research interests include urban encounters, geographies of belonging and emotion and climate change adaptation.

In her editing practice, Haydie engages with a diverse range of contemporary research across the social sciences and arts. She brings her interest in collaborative, grounded research, along with her skills in editing and communication, to research translation for the Exchange.

Haydie is involved with several key projects for the Exchange, including How Well Are We Adapting? and the Hotspots Initiative. 

Heather works as Project Coordinator for How Well Are We Adapting (Job Share) and leads the development of an adaptive capacity checklist for the local government sector. 

Heather is a climate change and adaptation specialist working with government and not-for-profit sectors. She supports organisations to build their capacity to respond to climate change by developing and implementing strategic approaches that protect assets and services against climate change and manage the impacts of a hotter climate.

Dr Bronwyn Lay is the Climate Justice Lead, Federation of Community Legal Centres Victoria. With a background in criminal and family law, she completed her PhD on international land governance and environmental law at the European Graduate School in 2014. She subsequently worked as a legal consultant for international NGO’s and expert organisations on environmental crime, was the Director of the Caux Dialogue on Land and Security in Geneva and, back in Melbourne, worked as Coordinator of Ecological Justice for Jesuit Social Services and the Climate Exchange at RMIT University. She is widely published in a variety of forums on the subject of ecological justice and was trained as a French firefighter (Pompier) for five years.

Paula is the Statewide Climate Change Coordinator, who advocates on behalf of all ten Victorian Catchment Management Authorities (CMA). Paula provides a central point of contact for climate change researchers, policy makers and program managers seeking input, feedback or collaboration from CMAs. She provides executive support to the Victorian CMA Climate Change Forum, oversees the delivery of key climate change initiatives and represents Victorian CMAs on Statewide and National working groups.

Professor Head is a geographer whose research examines human-environment relations, both conceptual and material. That is, she want to understand how humans have physically changed earth’s systems, how we think about our place in nature, and how these two things are connected. In recent years she has worked mostly in cultural geography, with projects on backyard gardens, wheat and invasive plants. This developed from her earlier interest in Aboriginal land use, ethnobotany and fire. She started my research career using palaeoecology and archaeology to study long term changes in the Australian landscape, and the interactions of prehistoric peoples with their environments.

Her current role is Head of the new School of Geography at the University of Melbourne. Our aim is to build a world-leading School in which both human and physical geography are strong and can collaborate to help meet pressing social and environmental challenges.

She came to this position from many years at the University of Wollongong, where she was most recently ARC Australian Laureate Fellow and Director of the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (AUSCCER), and before that Head of the School of Earth & Environmental Sciences. She still retains strong research links with AUSCCER. Her main international collaborations are with colleagues in Sweden and Norway, established during her periods as King Carl XVI Gustaf Visiting Professor in Environmental Science, Kristianstad University (2005-06) and Visiting Professor, Department of Human and Economic Geography, University of Göteborg, Sweden (2012-14).

Bridget is a senior policy advisor at the Victorian Council of Social Service (VCOSS). Bridget works to highlight the needs of community organisations, and the vulnerable and disadvantaged people that they work with before, during and after emergencies as well as their needs in the mitigation, transition and adaptation to climate change.