Dr Jennifer Carter
BA Qld., BSc Qld., BSc(Hons) Qld., PhD N.Territory
Position: Senior Lecturer, Geography
Office: D1.17
Tel: +61 7 5459 4496
Email: jcarter@usc.edu.au
Teaching areas
- Introduction to Environmental Studies
- Rural and Regional Sustainability
- Cultural Geography and Demography
Research areas
- Indigenous people’s interests in environmental management
- Rural and regional communities and environmental management
- Sense of place and place-identity
- Animal geographies and the human nature divide
- The social dimensions of environmental management
Profile
Dr Jennifer Carter is a geographer specialising in environmental, cultural and rural geographies. She explores the nexus between humans and their environments, and is particularly experienced in working in cross-cultural settings. She has conducted extensive research with Indigenous people from different parts of Australia in environmental management, cultural heritage, land use planning and protected area planning. She has also worked with institutions and farmers in Zimbabwe and the South Pacific in ways that bring environmental and rural people’s issues together to build sustainable futures. Dr Carter has worked in multi-disciplinary and cross-sectoral research partnerships, comprising staff from government and non-government organisations, the private sector, and academia.
Dr Carter also has interests in working with communities to explore their notions of place and how each place has a perspective and is a lifeworld for its inhabitants. Her other interests are those of native wildlife and conservation. Originally an ecologist, she has now expanded these interests to adapt to new theoretical debates and understandings about animal geographies and how to transcend the human-nature divide and help people engage more interactively with their natural environments.
Publications
Electronic copies of various academic papers from Dr Jennifer Carter are available on the USC Coast Research Database website.
Research grants
- Processing of Canarium indicum nuts: adapting and refining techniques to benefit farmers in the South Pacific. Wallace H and Carter J. Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research, 2008-10.
- Indigenous attachment, engagement and protocol in natural and cultural resource management. Carter J. Burnett Mary Regional Group, 2006-7.
This project aims to understand the place-specific notions of Indigenous attachment to country and social relationships present, and represent these within community engagement processes and protocols specific to two Indigenous communities in the Burnett Mary region.
- Enabling natural resource management organisations to effectively support weed management practices in urban, peri-urban and rural Southeast Queensland. Carter J. Southeast Queensland Catchments, 2006-7.
This project is investigating the awareness about, and barriers to, effective weed management by various farmer groups in southeast Queensland. An Honours candidature is attached to this project.
- A pilot study into the potential dispersal of aquatic weeds by water birds, Carter J, Tindale N. Southeast Queensland Catchments, 2006.
This project aims to investigate the interactions between water birds and aquatic weeds in southeast Queensland, and to provide recommendations that will prevent the dispersal of these weeds by water birds. This research has helped to establish a cross-faculty undergraduate special research project.
- Indigenous aspirations for participation in world heritage protection at Fraser Island. Carter J, Aberdeen L, Hollinsworth D. Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences Internal Research Grants Scheme: Regional Research, 2005-6. This research will gather data about processes that might better link natural and cultural sustainability within management arrangements for Fraser Island and/or the Great Sandy Region.
- GIS modelling of raptor habitat: a scoping study on the Sunshine Coast. Carter J, Dyer P, Tindale N. University Research Grant, University of the Sunshine Coast, 2004-5.
Coastal development pressures on the Sunshine Coast are fragmenting the habitats of many vertebrate species including wide ranging species such as raptors. This research aims to understand how raptors use existing habitat by using a Geographic Information Systems (GIS) framework to model digital data including land use and community observations.
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