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Meet TLP Research Team
The Living Pavilion is a transdisciplinary and highly collaborative project. The team is comprised by various well established researchers and students interested in working, infusing and enhancing this project by bringing in their own expertise and lens to the understanding of this temporary event space. Their diverse and complementary research interests range from life cycle analysis, to theatre design, internal air-quality assessment, to biodiversity in urban landscapes, to environmental psychology. Broad research experience brings significant opportunities to the rigour and scope of evaluation required in understanding the complex systems that contribute to our urban environments as well as in understanding the processes and methodologies best employed from a Placemaking perspective to achieve best practice outcomes.
The team consists of researchers, and practitioners, from a host of universities including, Monash University, RMIT University, and the University of Melbourne. Our interdisciplinary approach, and collaboration across research projects, adds depth to the development and evaluation of our educational material and also facilitates an increasing awareness of the importance of the public realm.
Information on the research surrounding The Living Pavilion can be found here.
Tanja Beer
TLP Project Co-Director, Thrive Research Hub Melbourne School of Design The University of Melbourne
Dr Tanja Beer is a researcher with extensive experience in transdisciplinary research across the fields of expanded scenography (theatre & performance design), sustainability and community engagement. Her work integrates built environments, place-making, urban ecology and systems thinking. Working across artistic and scientific disciplines, international and national sectors, and academic and community contexts, her practice-led research explores the potential for creative engagement tools to catalyse ecosystem restoration and community vitalisation.
Zena Cumpston
Research Fellow, (Urban Environments)
Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub
University of Melbourne
Zena Cumpston is a Barkindji woman who has been working as a researcher for several years. In October 2018 Zena commenced as a Research Fellow (Urban Environments) with the Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, of the National Environmental Science Program. Her research is part of the Shared Urban Habitat project of the CAUL Hub, focussing on Indigenous perspectives of biodiversity in urban areas.
Kirsten Parris
TLP Ecological Researcher
Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub University of Melbourne
Kirsten Parris is an Associate Professor of Urban Ecology in the School of Ecosystem and Forest Sciences at The University of Melbourne, and the Leader of the NESP Hub for Clean Air and Urban Landscapes (CAUL). She has a deep affinity with frogs, and research interests that span urban ecology, conservation biology, animal behaviour, field survey methods and ecological ethics.
Luis Mata
TLP Biodiversity Project Leader
People, Nature, Place Research Program; Centre for
Urban Research, RMIT
Luis Mata is a Research Fellow with the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group, in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. He works as part of the National Environmental Science Programme – Clean Air and Urban Landscapes Hub, where he is contributing to The Shared Urban Habitat, a research project looking at addressing the broad question of how humans can effectively share the urban habitat with other species. Luis has a particular interest in developing protocols for bringing nature back into cities, including methods to understand how insects and birds disperse through a fragmented urban landscape.
Leila Farahani
TLP Social Research Expert People, Nature, Place Research Program; Centre for Urban Research, RMIT
Leila conducts industry and government-funded research in monitoring and evaluating public and green spaces, with a particular focus on how the built environment and physical structure of neighbourhoods impact residents. Leila’s research interests include greening, public life studies, liveability, sustainable urban development, socio-cultural studies and environmental psychology. She is currently working on a number of projects which are based upon monitoring and evaluating neighbourhood public and green spaces, liveability, sense of community and social life.
Rimi Khan
Senior Research Fellow, Melbourne Social Equity Institute
University of Melbourne
Rimi Khan is a Research Fellow at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne. Her research interests include the cultural lives of refugee and migrant young people, arts and cultural policy and ethical fashion. In 2015 she published a book, Art in Community: The Provisional Citizen, with Palgrave MacMillan.
Eugenia Zoubtchenko
Research Assistant, Melbourne Social Equity Institute
University of Melbourne
Eugenia Zoubtchenko is a research associate with the Melbourne Social Equity Institute. She has a background in architecture, participatory design and narrative audio, investigating human connection to place.
Cristina Hernandez-Santin
Thrive Research Hub
Melbourne School of Design
The University of Melbourne
Cristina has trained in ecology and sustainable cities, skills that she applies to her practice and research by working towards incorporating nature in indoor and outdoor spaces within the city. While working with Thrive Research Hub, she is working with placemakers across Australia working towards places that are good for people and nature.
Rachel Iampolski
PhD Candidate, Centre for Urban Research, RMIT
Rachel is a creative producer and researcher with a particular interest in place-making through art and human-centric urban and cultural policy. Rachel is a current PhD candidate in the Centre for Urban Research at RMIT University, exploring the intangible cultural heritage of reclaimed public spaces, with the aim of developing a framework for creating more culturally democratic cities.
Christina Renowden
Student, Office of Environmental Programs, University of Melbourne
Christina has a background in ecology and science communication/education. She is studying a Master of Environment, majoring in education and social change.
