Climate Change Postgraduate Research Translation Award Recipients Announced

A key priority for MSSI is engagement on sustainability issues with communities beyond the University.

Good engagement often involves a process of research translation, that is, taking research findings and communicating them in a way that is appropriate and digestible for non-academic audiences.

The Postgraduate Climate Change Research Translation Award aims to support postgraduate students to translate their research findings for communities and stakeholders in effective and meaningful ways.

Climate change research that is well communicated has the potential to transform decision-making, attitudes, behaviour, policies and processes in ways that will ultimately reduce emissions and/or help communities adapt to the effects of global warming.

It is not always easy for postgraduate students to find the time to translate their research findings for target communities and stakeholders. Yet research translation outputs can often be the most impactful outcomes of a PhD and set researchers up for future research and engagement opportunities. The Foodprint Melbourne project is a recent and excellent example of impactful research translation.

Congratulations to award recipients

The Climate Transformations Cluster received a high quality of diverse and exciting applications for this Award. We are pleased to announce our two successful recipients of this Award and their research translation projects.

Ceren Ayas

Justice as a bridge: Linking social equity and low-carbon transitions
The Award will support Ceren to produce a decision-making tool on just energy transitions based on her research, which will be disseminated to expert groups and the civic sector. During fieldwork in Turkey, Ceren will also conduct a strategy design workshop with key civil society transition proponents using the decision-making tool in an interactive workshop format. She will use key learnings from the tool and the workshop to generate communications pieces for a public audience.

Carolina Contreras

Mapping blue carbon governance
Blue carbon projects involve conservation and restoration of coastal ecosystems to capture carbon emissions for extended periods of time, and provide livelihoods for coastal communities. In order to provide more democratised access to blue carbon research Carolina will develop an online resource to map existing blue carbon projects and provide place-specific policy assessments. The information map will be made available to the broader blue carbon community including researchers, project proponents and communities, potential investors, NGOs and advocates.

For more information: anna.dunn@unimelb.edu.au