iDEA Conference 2020

Katrina Anderson is a general practitioner, academic and medical educator who cares passionately about patient centred holistic health care. She is an Associate Professor at the Australian National University Medical School and also Chair of the Canberra Region Medical Education Council and has been an educator of medical students, junior doctors and GP registrars for over 25 years.

As a GP Katrina works with refugees and asylum seekers and has a specific interest in how psychological and emotional experiences interface with the physical and how people manage stress and anxiety under a variety of different circumstances. She has training in a number of different psychological therapies that bring body and mind together to empower people to live full, rich and meaningful lives. Katrina tries to practise what she preaches and so her other passion, mountains and wilderness is crucial to her own wellbeing.

The Threatened Species Commissioner champions the implementation of the Threatened Species Strategy and practical conservation actions to recover our most threatened plants and animals. Using the principles of science, action and partnership, the Commissioner works with conservation organisations, governments, community and the private sector to improve the trajectory of our threatened species.

Dr Box has a PhD in Plant Sciences and began her career in the Department of the Environment and Energy working on threatened species assessments. Since, she has worked with the community to design and deliver programs focused on threatened species conservation, including through her leadership of the Green Army.

Dr Box has also worked in partnership with scientists and landholders to deliver the Emissions Reduction Fund and most recently worked on the Paris Agreement in the Department’s international climate change area.

Dr Susie Burke is an environmental psychologist, therapist, climate activist and parent, with many years of experience working on climate change and disasters. A key interest is in the role that psychology plays in helping us understand the causes, impacts and solutions to climate change and other environmental threats, including natural disasters. For 17 years she was the senior psychologist at the Australian Psychological Society and developed numerous resources, training programs and workshops on these topics, including the Climate Change Empowerment Handbook, the Psychological First Aid Handbook, and other materials on coping with climate change, raising children for a climate altered world, and disaster preparedness and recovery. She is now working in private practice as a psychologist in Castlemaine, consulting to councils, groups and organisations, and running workshops and individual sessions to help people cope with and come to terms with climate change, including how to raise children in and for a climate altered world. Susie is a Fellow of the Australian Psychological Society. She is raising bike riders, school strikers and fruit trees, and is very pleased that her council has just declared a Climate Emergency in the Shire.

Misha started work in climate policy in 1997 when she was at AusAID/DFAT and involved in developing a government position to take to the Kyoto negotiations - the outcome being a national disgrace (Australia negotiated an 8% INCREASE in emissions).

Misha finished her Masters degree in Environmental Law while leading the Australian Government’s agricultural science department at the Australian Embassy in Vietnam, and now leads the Global Health Alliance Australia - a peak body representing 47 global health organisations.

Most recently, she co-authored a report called “From Townsville to Tuvalu: the health impacts of climate change in the Asia-Pacific” and is now working on implementing the nine-point plan contained in the report.

She was invited to discuss the health impacts of climate change with Federal MPs and Senators at the launch of the re-established Parliamentary Friends of Climate Action in October late last year, and she looks forward to hearing your views too!

Simon Corbell is the Chief Advisor to Energy Estate – a strategic consulting, transaction advisory and project development company. Simon has more than two decades of senior experience in public policy leadership, governance and implementation. He was previously Deputy Chief Minister and Minister for the Environment and Climate Change of the Australian Capital Territory from 2008-2016 and was most recently the Victorian Renewable Energy Advocate for the Victorian Government. His advocacy for a strong climate change policy for Canberra saw the ACT achieve national and international recognition as a best-practice jurisdiction, on track for 100% renewable energy by 2020.

He is widely recognised as a leader in the areas of renewable energy, climate change mitigation and adaptation, urban sustainability and public transport. Simon is an Adjunct Professor at the University of Canberra, an Honorary Associate Professor at the ANU and is a Patron of the Smart Energy Council.

Richard Denniss is the Chief Economist and former Executive Director of The Australia Institute. He is a prominent Australian economist, author and public policy commentator, and a former Associate Professor in the Crawford School of Public Policy at the Australian National University in Canberra, Australia.

Prior to working at The Australia Institute, Richard was the Strategy Adviser to the Leader of the Australian Greens, Senator Bob Brown, was Chief of Staff to the then Leader of the Australian Democrats, Senator Natasha Stott Despoja, and held teaching and research jobs at Australian universities.

He is known for his ability to translate economics issues into everyday language. Richard has published extensively in academic journals, is a regular contributor to The Monthly and Quarterly Essay, as well as producing columns in The Canberra Times and The Australian Financial Review. His books include the best-selling

Affluenza (with Dr Clive Hamilton),

Econobabble, and recently

Curing Affluenza. In 2020 one of his projects is a national speaking tour of

Why Economics is Broken (and what we can do to fix it).

Associate Professor Ben Edwards is a Senior Fellow at the ANU Centre for Social Research and Methods where he is focused on policy relevant research on child and youth development and advising and supporting longitudinal studies (Growing Up in Australia: The Longitudinal Study of Australian Children, the Longitudinal Study of Australian Youth, Ten to Men, and a new longitudinal of children in the Philippines). Internationally, he advised the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) on the measurement of non-cognitive skills in longitudinal studies. Ben is Co-Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues.

He is an expert in longitudinal studies of child and youth development, linkage of administrative data to surveys and longitudinal studies of disadvantaged groups such as refugees.

Associate Professor Edwards has undertaken consultancies for the OECD, the Australian Government Departments of Prime Minister and Cabinet, Social Services, Education, the New South Wales Departments of Premier and Cabinet, Families and Community Services as well as the Benevolent Society and the Smith Family.

Jenny Edwards is the sole owner and Director of Light House Architecture and Science, a multi-award-winning practice that integrates science into the design process to deliver highly efficient, climate resilient homes in the Canberra region.

She is not an architect. Jenny has a Masters degree in science and is an ACT licensed Building Energy Efficiency Assessor. She has been doing theoretical energy efficiency testing of designs using thermal performance simulation software, and physical building-envelope testing of built projects, since 2009 (and is very proud of her thermal camera, blower door and now PM2.5 meters).

With over 100 projects in Canberra, Light House has demonstrated that there is growing demand for smaller, smarter, sustainable housing. Jenny and her team are also passionate about communicating the science and architecture of sustainable housing to a broad audience, and they regularly participate in educational and public awareness raising events.

In 2019, Jenny was awarded the Clem Cummings Medal by the ACT branch of the Institute of Architects in recognition of her contributions to architecture and the built environment. In 2015, she won the 'Outstanding in Industry' award from the ACT branch of the National Association of Women in Construction. In 2018 her personal home won the national HIA GreenSmart Sustainable Home of the Year award. Jenny is very big on walking the talk and advocating for evidence-based home design.

Cormac Farrell is a Principal Consultant with Umwelt with experience in Bushfire Management, Environmental Impact Assessment, Ecology and Landscape Management.

He has worked extensively throughout Australia on bushfire protection projects in NSW, Queensland, Tasmania, Western Australia and Victoria. His project experience includes school bushfire shelters, developing detailed prescriptions to minimise the impact of hazard reduction treatments on listed species, and specialist studies on habitat utilisation for hazard reduced areas.

Cormac has specialist skills in the management of pollinator networks in both urban and rural landscapes, particularly in terms of incorporating flowering species into urban planting schemes to provide year-round forage for bees and other critical pollinators. These specialist set of skills has seen him take on an additional and unusual role – Head Beekeeper for the Australian Parliament.

Sharon Friel is Professor of Health Equity and Director of the Menzies Centre for Health Governance at the School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet), Australian National University. She was Director of RegNet from 2014-2019.

Prof Friel is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia and co-Director of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in the Social Determinants of Health Equity. She was the Head of the Scientific Secretariat (University College London) of the World Health Organisation Commission on Social Determinants of Health between 2005 and 2008. In 2014, her international peers voted her one of the world’s most influential female leaders in global health.

Sharon’s interests are in the political economy of health; governance, policy and regulatory processes related to the social determinants of health inequities, including trade and investment, food systems, urbanisation, climate change. Her 2019 book “Climate Change and the People’s Health” highlights the importance of addressing the global consumptagenic system.

Dr Robert Glasser is the former Head of the UN Office for Disaster Risk Reduction (UNISDR).

He was appointed as Special Representative of the UN Secretary-General for Disaster Risk Reduction in January 2016.

Prior to his UN service, from 2008, Dr. Glasser was the Secretary General of CARE International, a major non-governmental humanitarian organisation, active in over 80 countries. From 2003-2007, Dr Glasser was the Chief Executive of CARE Australia. Prior to joining CARE, he was Assistant Director General at the Australian Agency for International Development.

Professor Mark Howden is Director of the Climate Change Institute at the Australian National University. He is also an Honorary Professor at Melbourne University, a Vice Chair of the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) and a member of the Australian National Climate Science Advisory Committee. He was on the US Federal Advisory Committee for the 3rd National Climate Assessment and contributes to several major national and international science and policy advisory bodies.

Mark has worked on climate variability, climate change, innovation and adoption issues for over 30 years in partnership with many industry, community and policy groups via both research and science-policy roles. Issues he has addressed include agriculture and food security, the natural resource base, ecosystems and biodiversity, energy, water and urban systems. Mark has over 420 publications of different types. He helped develop both the national and international greenhouse gas inventories that are a fundamental part of the Paris Agreement and has assessed sustainable ways to reduce emissions. He has been a major contributor to the IPCC since 1991, with roles in the Second, Third, Fourth, Fifth and now Sixth Assessment Reports, sharing the 2007 Nobel Peace Prize with other IPCC participants and Al Gore.

Dr Arnagretta Hunter is a physician and cardiologist. She understands medicine through our human biology, the social determinants of health and the broader environmental context. Before medicine she completed a BA(Hons) in political science at University of Melbourne and has both MBBS and MPH from University of Sydney with a particular interest in health policy. She trained at St Vincent’s Hospitals in Sydney and Melbourne, and worked as a cardiologist in Wagga Wagga for several years before moving to Canberra in 2014. She was a Clinical Senior Lecturer with UNSW Medical School and now teaches at ANUMS. She has also taught with the RACP programs in NSW and ACT.

She writes and speaks about health and climate change with work through the ANU Climate Change Institute and as ACT Chair for Doctors for the Environment Australia. She is a member of the Climate and Health Alliance, and is on the Friends Advisory Board for the National Rural Health Alliance. She is a 2019 Churchill Fellow, assessing the role of narrative in health and is a Visiting Fellow in 2020 at RegNet ANU.

Professor Lindenmayer is a world-leading expert in natural resource management, conservation science, and biodiversity conservation. His work on wildlife conservation has, for many years, led world research in this area. His areas of expertise include integrating farm production and environmental management, terrestrial ecology, wildlife and habitat management, environmental monitoring, fire management, zoology and forestry sciences.

David Lindenmayer currently runs 6 large-scale, long-term research programs in south-eastern Australia, primarily associated with developing ways to conserve biodiversity in farm land, wood production forests, plantations, and in reserves and national parks. He has maintained some of the largest, long-term environmental research programs in Australia, with some exceeding 35 years in duration.

David Lindenmayer has published more than 1230 scientific articles including over 765 peer-reviewed papers in international scientific journals and 47 books. He one of the world's most productive and highly-cited ecologists with a Google Scholar H-Index of 120. He was included in the 2019, 2018, 2017, 2015, and 2014 Clarivate Highly Cited Lists (https://clarivate.com/hcr/2017-researchers-list/). In 2018 and 2019, David Lindenmayer was listed among the top 2000 Highly Cited Researchers (h>100) according to Google Scholar Citations public profiles across all disciplines (http://www.webometrics.info/en/node/58). In addition, in 2017 he was listed in the top 50 Australian scientists across all disciplines. David Lindenmayer is a member of an elite group of 0.5% of scientists globally that have published > 10 peer-reviewed scientific articles in international journals annually each year for the past decade.

Lindenmayer is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow (held from 2103-2018), a member of the Australian Academy of Science (elected 2008), Fellow of the Ecological Society of America (elected in 2019), and was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia (AO) in 2014. His conservation and biodiversity research has been recognised through numerous awards, including the Eureka Science Prize (twice), Whitley Award (seven times), the Serventy Medal for Ornithology, and the Australian Natural History Medallion. In 2018, he was awarded the prestigious Whittaker Medal from the Ecological Society of America.

Siobhan is a highly skilled engaged legal anthropologist who has over twenty years of experience working with Indigenous people in Australia and the Pacific on land, resource management, environment and development issues. Her commitment to the practice of engaged anthropology means that she produces research that contributes to high-impact policy and legal outcomes. She has contributed both research and policy outcomes in the following areas: land reform, gender and natural resource managment, climate change, disaster management, legal pluralism and the operation of customary institutions.

She is currently engaged in three major research projects: (1) issues related to gender and climate change in Oceania; (2) ethnographies of 'natural' disaster and particularly the concepts of 'vulnerability' and 'resilience; and, (3) how to adapt the family law system to better meet the needs of Indigenous, refugee and migrant families.

Forbes is an anaesthetist and intensive care physician at Western Health, Melbourne, Australia. He remains passionate about making seemingly small environmental, financial and social sustainability changes to how we practise medicine, and magnifying those changes through every nation’s hospitals.

Forbes is currently collaborating with colleagues at the University of Melbourne and friends within the Doctors for the Environment (DEA) examining ways to make hospitals more sustainable and being stewards for earth’s extraordinary biodiversity.

Virginia is the Inaugural Indigenous Postdoctoral Fellow with the Australian National University’s School of Regulation and Global Governance (RegNet) and the Fenner School of Environment and Society. She is a practising lawyer and duty solicitor, a former associate & researcher with the Federal Court of Australia in Sydney and professional member of the NSW Law Society and Women Lawyers Association of NSW. Former Senior Legal Officer of the Australian Law Reform Commission and inquiry into ‘Family Violence & Commonwealth Laws: Improving Legal Frameworks’ (ALRC 117), Executive Officer of the NSWGovernment’s ‘Aboriginal Water Trust’ and criminal defence lawyer with NSW Legal Aid.

Virginia is the winner of the WEH Stanner Award for the best thesis by an Indigenous author, titled, ‘A web of Aboriginal water rights: Examining the competing Aboriginal claim for water property rights and interests in Australia’. She is in demand as a Keynote Speaker on Indigenous water law and governance, Indigenous traditional knowledge systems and the intersectionality of western intellectual property regimes and the Indigenous commercialisation of native foods and medicines.

A lifetime member of the Golden Key International Honour Society and Magistrate for the NSW Law Society’s ‘Mock Trial Competition’.

Virginia is Partner Investigator (PI) with an ARC Linkage Grant, ‘Garuwanga: Forming a Competent Authority to Protect Indigenous Knowledge’ ($244,000) to “govern and administer a legal framework in order to ensure consent of Indigenous communities is obtained for access to Aboriginal traditional knowledge and to establish a fair and equitable benefit-sharing mechanism for use of that knowledge”.

Dr Marshall is a Research Associate of the ANU Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) and a member of the AuSI Advisory Board.

Andrew Maynard is a Tasmanian now living and working in Fitzroy, Australia. Andrew Maynard Architects was established in 2002 after Andrew won the Asia Pacific Design Award's grand prize for his mobile work station, THE DESIGN POD.

Distinctive, exciting and radical, Andrew is also a founding board member of Nightingale Housing - a non-for-profit organisation creating ethical, socially sustainable and cost effective housing, whilst also revolutionising the developer-dominated housing market.

Andrew is an innovative and inspiring architect whose work has been published globally and exhibited worldwide - from New York, Budapest and Osaka; to Milan, Sao Paulo and Tokyo.

THE AGE newspaper says of Andrew: “His concepts include a man-eating robot, a bicycle made of plywood and “Poop House” - a structure made from human excrement. Images of the archetypal mad scientist spring to mind, but architect Andrew Maynard, like his designs, comes across as measured and eloquent.”

Russell Miles is Director of the Climate Resilience and Development Section, Sustainability and Climate Change Branch, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade. For five years he has led the team responsible for UNFCCC negotiations on adaptation, loss and damage, climate finance, capacity building, and human rights issues. He is Australia’s representative on the UNFCCC Warsaw International Mechanism for Loss and Damage, and co-chair of the UNFCCC Taskforce on Climate Displacement. He also leads on integrating climate action into the Australian Aid Program and guiding the Department’s work to implement Australia’s climate finance commitments.

Previously Russell worked for 16 years in the Australian Government’s Aid Program (AusAID) - as Director of NGO and Human Rights Policy and Engagement Section; and as a Policy and Program Manager in the Country Strategies section; the Indonesia Stability and Human Security Unit; the Vietnam Program; Governance Policy Team and Humanitarian Response Department. He was posted to Hanoi for three years as head of the governance team. Russell has also worked for four years in Oxfam America's Humanitarian Response Department with a focus on disaster response and risk reduction in Africa and South Asia.

He holds a Master’s Degree in Economics (International, Development and Environment). He recently undertook post graduate studies covering polar politics, climate science and policy interactions; and completed a Postgraduate Certificate in Antarctic Studies including field work at Scott Base in Antarctica. Russell has significant work experience in Australia, the USA, Singapore, India, Sri Lanka, Indonesia, Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, Ethiopia, Sudan and the UK.

Charlie Prell is a sheep farmer from Crookwell, an hour north of Canberra in the Southern Tablelands of NSW. He is one of four farmers under the Crookwell 2 windfarm. He has had 20 years of experience in renewables, focusing on wind farms. He is a strong public supporter of the benefits wind farms can bring to small regional communities. He is a passionate advocate for an inclusive “benefit sharing” model for wind farm developments, where the whole community benefits from a windfarm, not just the few who host the turbines. He worked as the NSW Regional Organiser for the Australian Wind Alliance from July 2014 until August 2019.

He was part of the working group and then the steering committee that formed “Farmers for Climate Action”. He was previously co-chair and is currently deputy chair of Farmers for Climate Action. He is passionate about the health and well-being of small regional communities and in assisting these communities to meet the challenge of climate change. He also promotes the opportunities that meeting these challenges can bring to individual farmers and the small regional communities where they live.

Shane Rattenbury, is a member of the multi-member district unicameral ACT Legislative Assembly representing the electorate of Molonglo for the ACT Greens since 2008. He was the first Speaker in any Parliament in the world representing a Green political party. He is the current Minister for Climate Change and Sustainability, Minister for Justice, Consumer Affairs and Road Safety, Minister for Corrections, and Minister for Mental Health.

Sotiris Vardoulakis is Professor of Global Environmental Health at the ANU National Centre for Epidemiology and Population Health, which he joined in September 2019 from the Institute of Occupational Medicine in Edinburgh where he was Director of Research and Head of the WHO Collaborating Centre on Occupational Health. Sotiris is founding co-chair of the International Consortium for Urban Environmental Health and Sustainability (Healthy-Polis) and Honorary Professor at the European Centre for Environment and Human Health at University of Exeter Medical School. Previously he was Head of the Environmental Change Department at Public Health England and held academic positions at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine and the University of Birmingham. He was one of the lead authors of the first UK Climate Change Risk Assessment and contributor to the National Adaptation Programme. He served as a member of the NICE (National Institute for Health and Care Excellence, UK) Public Health Advisory Committee on Air Pollution. Over the last 20 years, he has advised national and local governments and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization and the European Parliament, on the health effects of climate change and air pollution, and on environmental sustainability and urban health. Sotiris has been involved in numerous research projects, including field studies, environmental modelling, risk assessment and policy analysis in Europe, Africa, Asia, Australia and the Pacific. His main research interests include climate change and health, air pollution and health, sustainable cities, sustainable transport, exposure assessment, epidemiology, health impact assessment, and environmental public health communication and policy. He is specialty chief editor (Health and Cities) for Frontiers in Sustainable Cities.

Dimity Williams MBBS(Hons) FRACGP is a General Practitioner. She has been the Biodiversity Convenor for Doctors for the Environment Australia since 2013. She has overseen the development of DEA's Biodiversity Policy and communications on this topic and spoken in various forums about the ways in which the diversity and health of living things is essential for our wellbeing. Prior to this role she was on the National Management Committee and Victorian Secretary. Dimity is also a Co-Founder of the Kids in Nature Network which seeks to reconnect children to nature. Their signature event, Nature Play Week runs each April and highlights the many great things happening in the nature connection space for children.

Dr Ken Winkel is a medical academic within the School of Population and Global Health [MSP&GH] at the University of Melbourne and Honorary Fellow of the University's Medical History Museum. Concerned with the connection between Nature and Medicine, he was the Director of the Australian Venom Research Unit (AVRU) 1999-2015 and has now moved to the Centre for Health Policy. He is a Fellow of the Australasian College of Tropical Medicine (ACTM) and a member of the Biodiversity Committee of the Doctors for the Environment Australia. He is an alumnus of the University of Melbourne (PhD in the Immunology Division, Walter and Elisa Hall Institute; WEHI), the University of Queensland (MBBS) (BMedSci in Malaria Immunology, Tropical Health Program, QIMR) and the Swiss Tropical Institute.

He co-developed of the award winning ‘Sharing Place, Learning Together’ Indigenous science education and engagement project with Maningrida School in Arnhem Land and co-curated the University’s ‘Venom: Fear, Fascination and Discovery’ exhibition. He currently co-ordinates the MSP&GH teaching into the MD course, leads the co-ordination of the University’s new ‘Our Planet, Our Health 1’ interdisciplinary One Health breadth subject and also teaches on ‘Medicine, Natural History and Design’ in the University’s School of Design [amongst other things]. In June 2005 he was awarded the Vita Lampada Medal for Excellence in Medical and Health Education, from the Royal Children's Hospital and Health Service District, Brisbane, Queensland. In July 2007 he was awarded the ACTM Medal for Distinguished Contribution to Tropical Medicine. As a medical student he investigated the diet of the enigmatic marsupial mole, infected mice with malaria, excavated ancient owl coprolites in exothermic caves and chased leishmania parasites in Brazil [amongst other things]. Nowadays, he is keen to promote a more biophilic medicine for the 21st century.