Associate Professor Carina Wyborn
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About
Dr Carina Wyborn is an interdisciplinary social scientist with background in science and technology studies, and human ecology. She works at the intersection of science, policy, and practice, where she is interested in understanding how decisions are made in complex and contested environmental management challenges. Carina is particularly interested in the capacities that enable future-oriented decision making, and the methods and practice that are used to support decision-making in the context of uncertainty. After completing her PhD at the ANU in 2012, Carina has been working internationally, in the United States, Colombia and Switzerland, working with government and non-government organisations on climate adaptation, wildfire governance, and biodiversity conservation. Carina holds an ARC Discovery Early Career Research Award, which involves research on foresight practices and anticipatory governance to identify methods that enable stakeholders to negotiate shared pathways for action in water reform in the Murray Darling Basin.
What makes me excited about working at IWF is the opportunity to work with a broad range of scientists, decision-makers, community members, and Traditional Owners, to envision desirable water futures for Australia and the Asia-pacific region.
Affiliations
Research interests
Understanding how to make decisions today that consider changes that may unfold in 50-100 years into the future is a pressing challenge. In some cases, we have good scientific information about those changes, in others, we really don’t, which means that we need to use our imagination to consider what changes may unfold, and what consequences they may have, and most importantly, what values we, as a society, want to maintain into the future. There is obviously a politics to all of this, because what is desired is often contested, as is the way that people understand what changes are taking place, and what is driving them. What makes me excited about working at IWF is the opportunity to work with a broad range of scientists, decision-makers, community members, and Traditional Owners, to develop creative approaches that draw on diverse knowledge to engage with this politics to envision desirable water futures for Australia and the Asia-pacific region.
Publications
Louder, E, Wyborn, C, Cvitanovic, C et al. 2021, 'A synthesis of the frameworks available to guide evaluations of research impact at the interface of environmental science, policy and practice', Environmental Science and Policy, vol. 116, pp. 258-265.
Colloff, M, Gorddard, R, Abel, N et al. 2021, 'Adapting transformation and transforming adaptation to climate change using a pathways approach', Environmental Science and Policy, vol. 124, pp. 163-174.
Cvitanovic, C, Wyborn, C, Glenn, E et al. 2021, 'Ten Considerations for Research Funders Seeking to Enhance Knowledge Exchange and the Impact of Marine Science on Policy and Practice', Frontiers in Marine Science, vol. 8.
Bednarek, A. T., Wyborn, C., Cvitanovic, C., Meyer, R., Colvin, R. M., Addison, P. F. E., Close, S. L., Curran, K., Farooque, M., Goldman, E., Hart, D., Mannix, H., McGreavy, B., Parris, A., Posner, S., Robinson, C., Ryan, M., Leith, P. 2018. Boundary spanning at the science–policy interface: the practitioners’ perspectives. Sustainability Science. doi:10.1007/s11625-018-0550-9.
Fazey, I, Schapke, N, Caniglia, G et al 2018, 'Ten essentials for action-oriented and second order energy transitions, transformations and climate change research', Energy Research & Social Science, vol. 40, pp. 54-70pp.
Wyborn, C 2015, 'Co-productive governance: A relational framework for adaptive governance', Global Environmental Change - Human and Policy Dimensions, vol. 30, pp. 56-67.
Wyborn, C & Bixler, R 2013, 'Collaboration and nested environmental governance: Scale dependency, scale framing, and cross-scale interactions in collaborative conservation', Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 123, pp. 58-67.
Wyborn, C, Jellinek, S & Cooke, B 2012, 'Negotiating multiple motivations in the science and practice of ecological restoration', Ecological Management and Restoration, vol. 13, no. 3, pp. 249-253.
Wyborn, C 2011, 'Landscape scale ecological connectivity: Australian survey and rehearsals', Pacific Conservation Biology, vol. 17, no. 1-2, pp. 121-131.
Cleland, D & Wyborn, C 2010, 'A Reflective Lens: Applying Critical Systems Thinking and Visual Methods to Ecohealth Research', EcoHealth, vol. 7, no. 4, pp. 414-424.
Wyborn, C & Cleland, D 2010, 'Fences and Windows: Using Visual Methods to Explore Conflicts in Land and Seascape Management', in Valerie Brown, John Harris, Jacqueline Russell (ed.), Tackling Wicked Problems: Through the Transdisciplinary Imagination, Earthscan Publications Ltd, London, UK and Washington DC, USA, pp. 161-170.
Wyborn, C 2009, 'Managing change or changing management: climate change and human use in Kosciuszko National Park', Australasian Journal of Environmental Management, vol. 16, pp. 208-217.