Mentors

Professor Carl Grodach

Monash Art Design & Architecture
Monash University

Carl Grodach is Foundation Professor of Urban Planning and Design at Monash University. His research focuses on economic development and land use planning in relation to urban manufacturing and industrial lands, cultural industries, and circular economies. His books include Urban Revitalization: Remaking Cities in a Changing World (Routledge) and The Politics of Urban Cultural Policy: Global Perspectives (Routledge). He was the inaugural Director of Monash Urban Planning and Design from 2017-2022 and is currently co-Editor-in-Chief of the journal City, Culture, and Society (Elsevier).

Associate Professor Crystal Legacy

Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning
The University of Melbourne

Crystal Legacy is Associate Professor of Urban Planning at the University of Melbourne, Australia where she is also the Co-Director of the Informal Urbanism Research Hub. She resides on Wurundjeri Country where she writes, teaches and works with communities on issues related to urban transport politics, public participation and the post-political city. She publishes in a range of academic journals, provides critical commentary for local and national media outlets, and works in solidarity with a range of community-based groups seeking climate just outcomes in transport planning. Crystal is an Editor of the journal Planning Theory and Practice and is the co-Chair of the Australasian Cities Research Network.

Dr Natalie Osborne

School of Engineering and Built Environment
Griffith University

Dr Natalie Osborne is an environmental planner and urban geographer and a white settler living on unceded Jagera and Turrbal Country. She is interested in social, spatial, and climate justice, resisting alt-right, eco-fascist, & neo-colonial responses to social and environmental crises, and working towards collective liberation. She is a co-producer of Radio Reversal, a critical theory and politics program broadcast on 4ZZZ 102.1FM, and an organiser with the Brisbane Free University.

Professor Kristian Ruming

Centre for Housing and Urban Research
Macquarie University

Kristian Ruming is a Professor and Australian Research Council Future Fellow. He is Director of the Macquarie University Housing and Urban Research Centre. He is an urban and economic geographer with research interests centring on issues of urban governance, housing and planning.

Dr Hayley Henderson 

Master of Public Policy and Master of Public Administration
Crawford School of Public Policy 

Dr Hayley Henderson is Senior Lecturer at the Crawford School of Public Policy and teaches urban policy in the Master of Public Policy and Master of Public Administration. The urban policy elective, Public Policy in Cities, focuses on principles and methods for analysing and addressing problems in cities related to equitable and sustainable development. Hayley is passionate about working with partners in practice to develop equitable and resilient cities. Hayley is Senior Researcher within the Institute for Infrastructure in Society (I2), where she works with colleagues on the social dimensions of urban policymaking and delivery. Specifically, her research is related to the social benefits and risks of urban policies and projects, as well as the institutional and governance settings that enables collaboration between stakeholders in urban governance. Hayley’s research is primarily focused urban revitalisation and waterway catchment planning in Australian and Argentine cities, though she also conducts comparative studies that involve other South American, European and North American cities. She is co-founder of Superdiversity Research Australia and recipient of the 2023 Peter Harrison Memorial Prize for Urban Planning. She is Director, Inclusion, Diversity, Equity and Access of the Crawford School of Public Policy. 

Professor Libby Porter

Centre for Urban Research 
RMIT University 

Professor Libby Porter is Director of the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University where she researches and educates on planning and urban geography.  Motivated by social and ecological injustice, her work is about how urbanisation creates forms of dispossession and displacement and what we might do about it. Her research aims to sharpen our understanding about the relationship between land and housing justice, the displacing effects of urban renewal, critical questions of urban governance and the politics of property. 

Dr Annah Piggott-McKellar

School of Architecture and Built Environment  
Queensland University of Technology

Dr Annah Piggott-McKellar is a DECRA Research Fellow at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), specialising in the social dimensions of planned relocation as a response to climate change. Her research focuses on how communities experience and engage with relocation processes, particularly in the Pacific and Australia. Over the last seven years Annah has undertaken research in Fiji and Australia where communities have relocated with government assistance, resisted relocation, or relocated independently. Her work explores the lived experiences of those affected by relocation, examining local-decision makings, governance, trade-offs, and long-term outcomes. She is particularly interested in how place attachment, livelihoods, mobility, and well-being interact with adaptation pathways. Annah is currently working on two Australian Government funded research projects looking to inform more inclusive, just, and context-responsive relocation policies and programs across Fiji, Australia, and Alaska (USA).