Month in review: May 2017

May went so quickly that when it finished I felt like I wouldn’t have anything to write here. But the reality is it probably went quickly because there was a lot going on. So here it is… This is how May presented itself.

Research

When I was still in New Zealand I joined an international project about Urban climate adaptation strategies. At that stage I was at Lincoln University and didn’t need ethics approval to undertake the research interviews there. At JCU the rules are different, so this month I applied for the Human Ethics Committee, got the approval, and undertook a couple of interviews, besides scheduling others.

I have also received a grant for a new research project entitled Economic benefits of urban climate. To be able to investigate the economics of urban comfort, I have first to define urban comfort in Cairns, and Human Ethics was needed for this as well. So a second application was submitted and approval has been granted. I then worked on the questionnaire which will be available online very soon. If you live in Cairns and would like to support this project, keep an eye on this space.

On the “research dissemination” front, I’ve presented a TESS seminar about some research I’ve completed in Christchurch before joining JCU. The full information including the recording is here.

Also this month, I had the great pleasure of coming across the work of Sascha Roesler, who has an interesting approach to microclimate and architecture anthropology. His work relates to the discussions I have been focusing on for the last few years, and we have been discussing the possibility of some upcoming contributions. More on this later.

Writing

A couple of journal articles have been submitted this month (yay!!). One was the resubmission of a revised paper for Landscape Review and the second one was written in Portuguese and has been submitted to Cadernos do PROARQ, from Brazil.

The On Sustainability conference will take place next January at JCU here in Cairns, and I have been working on an abstract for this conference as well.

Teaching

This month brought two good news regarding teaching: I am now registered as an advisor in the College of Science and Engineering at JCU; and I have got a Blended Learning grant to support design teaching cross-campus. I have been teaching studio-based classes since 2008, but cross-campus and at times ‘non-face-to-face’ design teaching is new to me. This grant will help to set up a new subject at JCU (Design Communication – EV2120) to be delivered in Cairns and Townsville simultaneously.

Learning

On 30th May the Tropical North Queensland Planning Symposium took place at the Cairns Institute at JCU. It was a great opportunity to hear about the work done by the Cairns Regional Council and local professionals.

So this was May, June has already started and some good news are already on the way. Let’s hope that next month’s review brings a lot of good things too.