Dr Monica Green is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Education, Federation University Australia (Gippsland). Her teaching and research focuses on community- and place-based sustainability pedagogies in primary schools and university-school partnerships. She has conducted extensive empirical research on sustainability curricula and practice, and has authored more than 30 publications in journals, book chapters and conference proceedings. In 2015 she published Children, Place and Sustainability (Somerville & Green) with Palgrave Macmillan.
Dr Susan Plowright now lives at the foot of the rolling hills of South Gippsland and is currently exploring her research interests in educational philosophy and a pedagogy of ‘going visiting’ for teaching ethical, generous and inventive judgments and decision-making skills. She is working on a range of projects, some on a casual basis, through the School of Education at Federation University Gippsland campus, and sees her research as a civic contribution to necessary, creative, just and sustainable transformations on a regional-global scale.
Nicola F. Johnson is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, Edith Cowan University. Until October 2018, she lived in Gippsland for eight years. She is currently supervising a number of advanced research students in their examination of their own practice within regional locations, and has shifted from ‘only’ focusing on the use of technologies within society and education to including regionality issues. Nicola has co-edited two collected volumes, authored three research monographs and published over 25 journal articles. She has also published Critical Perspectives on Technology and Education (Bulfin, Johnson & Bigum, 2015) with Palgrave Macmillan.
This book showcases a compilation of research partnerships produced by the Federation University Gippsland School of Education. Through this book, readers will gain valuable insights into how education research initiatives can help adapt to an age characterized by massive regional/global economic, environmental, identity, cultural and social shifts. The respective chapters address the universal human and researcher condition in a regional setting, highlighting how individuals and groups are seeking to achieve transformation with their regional, educational research. On the whole, the compilation showcases a specific university in a regional context that is now responding to change by rejuvenating, reinventing, re-envisioning and rethinking its research, its identity and its relationality.