Associate Professor Alexandra Crosby
Chief Investigator

Alexandra Crosby is Crosby is an expert in design ethnography and visual communication
design. With Dr. Vanni, she co-founded Mapping Edges Design Studio, which has conducted relevant place-based design
research across Sydney. She has a background is in visual communications and the ethnographic methods of International Studies. She develops and uses interdisciplinary research methods, such as hybrid forms of mapping and experimental futuring to understand the complexity of situations and communicate possible futures.

Associate Professor Ilaria Vanni
Chief Investigator

Ilaria is an expert in place-based design research, archival and ethnographic research. She is a researcher and teacher with a focus on trandisciplinary projects. Her broad field of research is cultural histories, with a particular focus on visual and material cultures. Sh explores these through three lenses: urban activism; design practices, in particular permaculture and urban gardening; and transculturation and objects, especially in relation to the Italian diaspora and colonial histories.

Dr. Sarah Jane Jones
Chief Investigator

Dr Sarah Jane Jones is an expert in urban digital wayfinding and visual communication design. Her practice-based research explores wayfinding design approaches that draw together ecological, historical and cultural narratives. Central to this is investigating the relationship between physical signage and digital wayfinding methods, and the creation of new, multi-layered and interpretive wayfinding experiences.

Professor James Goodman
Chief Investigator

Dr. James Goodman is an expert in the politics of social change and climate change. He conducts research into global politics, socio-cultural change and climate justice. He draws from a disciplinary background in political sociology, international relations, political economy and political geography, and has led several large collaborative research projects. He has published six authored or co-authored books, and nine edited or coedited books, and has supervised 19 doctoral students.

Profesor Donna Houston
Chief Investigator

Dr. Donna Houston is a leading cultural and urban geographer with an international reputation for her research on urban nature.
cultural dimensions of climate change, care and more-than-human ways of thinking about cities and places. She has extensive experience with the use of participatory, storytelling mapping and codesign workshop methods, working with diverse groups and stakeholders, including government, NGOs citizen groups, artists, scientists and private industry.

Professor Juan Francisco Salazar
Chief Investigator

Juan Salazar is an internationally recognised creative researcher, practitioner and
leading figure in the environmental humanities working across multimodal approaches including film and video, radio.
games and digital storytelling. He was director of the acclaimed documentary The Bamboo Bridge (with geographer Katherine
Gibson) about the Mekong River in Cambodia. He was co-editor of the major 2022 Biennale of Sydney book rivus: a Glossary of Water (Roca and Salazar, 2022).

Dr. Shannon Foster
Bangawarra Director

Shannon Foster is a Sydney D’harawal Saltwater Knowledge Keeper, educator and artist and has been teaching her family’s stories to a range of audiences for over twenty years. Shannon has completed her PhD in the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges at the University of Technology, Sydney researching and documenting her family’s Narinya stories (Living Dreaming). This project will be codesigned in consultation with Kinniburgh and Foster’s Aboriginal SME, Bangawarra.

Joanne Kinniburgh
Bangawarra Director

Joanne’s operates between architecture, performance and Connection to Country, with a focus on possible futures for art, architecture and the built environment on Aboriginal Country. Joanne’s research relates architecture and representations of Country to larger political and historical contexts through a critical spatial practice, challenging the colonial/European domination of confiscated Aboriginal land for contemporary architecture. This project will be codesigned in consultation with Kinniburgh and Foster’s Aboriginal SME, Bangawarra.

Holly O’Neil
Research Assistant

Holly is an anthro-artist, joining the project as a research assistant and ARC PhD candidate. Holly’s work aims to tell creative and engaging stories that explore the intersections of science, design, and storytelling. Her current research focuses on utilising ethnographic methodology and narrative, visual documentation to tell human and more-than-human stories.