Christian Kull
Fields of interest:
- environment and development
- political ecology, cultural ecology
- community-based resource management
- social aspects of environmental transformations
- land-use change and environmental history
- struggles over natural resource access and character
- landscape burning and fire management
- invasive species and plant movements
- Africa, Madagascar, and the Indian Ocean region
Research focus:
I focus on three broad research programs that investigate the social processes that transform landscapes in developing countries:
1. Environmental transformations and their causes. I investigate changes in land use and land cover and their social driving forces. I'm currently working on two projects under this theme. The first uses aerial photography to analyse land use change in highland Madagascar. The second investigates the movements of plants - whether cultivars or invasive species - around the world and how they shape regional landscapes. This project focuses on the case of acacias (wattles) in the Indian Ocean region.
2. The politics of conservation and development, specifically with respect to natural resource management. Based in a political ecology approach, I investigate how different interest groups, such as rural farmers, state foresters, and NGOs, struggle over natural resource management in the interests of livelihoods, development, and conservation. For example my recent work analyses historical conflicts between the French colonial state and Malagasy peasants over fire and conservation, as well as current difficulties with "community-based natural resource management" (CBNRM).
3. Fire management: local practice, science, and policy. Fire is both incredibly destructive and naturally renewing, a problematic hazard and key management tool. I investigate competing approaches to fire management in Madagascar and Australia.
I collaborate with colleagues in the School of Geography and Environmental Science's Political Ecology Research Group in researching a wide variety of changing and contested environments.
Student research:
Examples of potential research ideas for my work with honours, masters, or doctoral students:
- The politics of fire management in Australia
- Doing "community" based natural resource management in Africa
- Planning new protected areas in Madagascar: bottom-up (community-based), top-down (government imposed), or sideways (private investments)?
- The ethnoecology of fire in the grasslands of Madagascar
- Twentieth century land-use change in highland Madagascar
- Weed or miracle tree?: the Australian wattle tree, Acacia spp., goes global (Madagascar, South Africa, Hawaii, France...)
- Community-based fire and range management in a granitic mountain national park (Andringitra, Madagascar)
- Ground-truthing night-time fire images (GIS/remote sensing project)
- Regonal sustainable development in Nkomazi, South Africa
Publications:
Please email me for copies of any articles you cannot get from your library.
Publications on plant movements
- Rangan, Haripriya & Christian A. Kull, (2008) What makes ecology 'political'?: rethinking 'scale' in political ecology. Progress in Human Geography 32 (6) doi:10.1177/0309132508090215. link
- Breton, Catherine, Jenny Guerin, Catherine Ducatillion, Frédéric Médail, Christian A. Kull, André Bervillé (2008) Taming the wild and 'wilding' the tame: tree breeding and dispersal in Australia and the Mediterranean. Plant Science. doi:10.1016/j.plantsci.2008.05.013
- Tassin, Jacques, Ronald Bellefontaine, Edmond Roger, Christian Kull, (accepted/in press). Evaluation preliminaire des risques d'invasion par les essences forestieres introduites à Madagascar. Bois et Forêts des Tropiques.
- Kull, Christian A. & Haripriya Rangan, (2008). Acacia exchanges: wattles, thorn trees, and the study of plant movements. Geoforum 39 (3): 1258-72. link
- Kull, Christian A., Jacques Tassin, Gerard Rambeloarisoa, Jean-Michel Sarrailh, (2007). Invasive Australian acacias on western Indian Ocean islands: a historical and ecological review. African Journal of Ecology. DOI: 10.1111/j.1365-2028.2007.00892 link.
- Kull, Christian A., Jacques Tassin, Haripriya Rangan (2007). Multifunctional, scrubby, and invasive forests? Wattles in the highlands of Madagascar. Mountain Research and Development 27 (3): 224-31. link
Publications on fire
- Kull, Christian A. (2008). The useful and confounding ambiguity of fire: conflicts over fire use in Madagascar. Presentation at Pyrogeography and Climate Change miniconference (KITP, Univ. California-Santa Barbara). lecture video/podcast conference info
- Kull, Christian A. (2008). Landscapes of fire: origins, politics, and questions. 424-49 in Handbook of Landscape Archaeology, ed. Bruno David and Julian Thomas. Walnut Creek: Left Coast Press.
- Kull, Christian A. (2007). Fire. 667-73 in Encyclopedia of Environment and Society, vol 2, ed. Paul Robbins. Thousand Oaks, CA: SAGE.
- Kull, Christian A. (2004). Isle of Fire: the Political Ecology of Landscape Burning in Madagascar. University of Chicago Press, 324pp. web amazon
- Kull, Christian A. (2003). Fire and the management of highland vegetation. 153-57 in Natural History of Madagascar, eds. S. Goodman and J. Benstead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Kull, Christian A. (2002). Madagascar aflame: landscape burning as peasant protest, resistance, or a resource management tool? Political Geography 21 (7): 927-53. link
- Kull, Christian A. (2002). Madagascar's burning issue: the persistent conflict over fire. Environment 44 (3): 8-19.
- Kull, Christian A. (1999). Observations on repressive environmental policies and landscape burning strategies in Madagascar. African Studies Quarterly 3 (2), text online.
Publications on decentralization, devolution, and community-based management
- Scanlon, Lauren & Christian A. Kull, (accepted/in press 2008). Untangling the links between wildlife benefits and community-based conservation at Torra Conservancy, Namibia. Development Southern Africa.
- Dressler, Wolfram H., Christian A. Kull, and Thomas C. Meredith (2006). The politics of decentralizing national parks management in the Philippines. Political Geography 25 (7): 789-816. link
- Kull, Christian A. (2002). Empowering pyromaniacs in Madagascar: ideology and legitimacy in community-based resource management. Development and Change 33 (1): 57-78. link
Publications on land use change
- Kull, Christian A. (in press 2008). Saving the land with spades: human landscape transformations in the central highlands. XXX-XXX in Greening the Great Red Island: Madagascar in Nature and Culture, ed. Jeffrey C. Kaufmann. Pretoria: Africa Institute of South Africa.
- Kull, Christian A., Camellia K. Ibrahim, and Thomas C. Meredith (2007). Tropical forest transitions and globalization: neoliberalism, migration, tourism, and international conservation agendas. Society and Natural Resources. 20 (8): 723-37. link
- Kull, Christian A. (2005). Historical landscape repeat photography as a tool for land use change research. Norwegian Journal of Geography 59 (4): 253-68. link
- Kull, Christian A. (2000). Deforestation, erosion, and fire: degradation myths in the environmental history of Madagascar. Environment and History 6 (4): 421-50. link
- Kull, Christian A. (1998) Leimavo revisited: Agrarian land-use change in the highlands of Madagascar. Professional Geographer 50 (2): 163-176. link
Publications on conservation in Madagascar
- Marcus, Richard R. and Christian A. Kull (1999). Setting the stage: the politics of Madagascar's environmental efforts. African Studies Quarterly 3 (2) text online
- Kull, Christian A. (1996). The evolution of conservation efforts in Madagascar. International Environmental Affairs 8 (1): 50-86.
Publications on Madagascar's tapia (Uapaca bojeri) woodlands
- Kull, Christian A., Joelisoa Ratsirarson, and Gidehona Randriamboavonjy (2005). Les forêts de tapia des Hautes Terres malgaches. Terre Malgache 24: 22-58.
- Kull, Christian A. (2003). Uapaca woodlands. 393-98 in Natural History of Madagascar, eds. S. Goodman and J. Benstead. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.
- Kull, Christian A. (2002). The 'degraded' tapia woodlands of highland Madagascar: rural economy, fire ecology, and forest conservation. Journal of Cultural Geography 19 (2): 95-128. link
Publications on other topics
- Kull, Christian A. and Francis J. Magilligan (1994). Controls over landslide distribution in the White Mountains, New Hampshire. Physical Geography 15 (4): 325-341.
- Kull, Christian A. 1998. Mandeha tongotra: on foot in Madagascar. Appalachia 52 (206): 96-108.
Interviews:
- National Geographic
News interviews me:
"Wildfire fuels debate over land-burning in Africa"
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/06/0604_040604_ibity.html - "Madagascar creates millions
of acres of new protected areas"
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/05/070504-madagascar-parks.html
Teaching
GES 2660
Power and Poverty: the Geography of Uneven Development- GES 3350 / GYM 4350
Resource Evaluation and Management - GES 3330 / GYM 4330
Field Studies in Regional Sustainability - Field Trip to South Africa - IDA 5130
Environmental Revolutions
Previous Employment/Education
- Assistant Professor (2000-2003), Department of Geography, McGill University, Montréal, Québec, Canada
- PhD (2000) in Environmental Science, Policy and Management, University of California, Berkeley, California, USA
- MS (1996) in Forestry and Environmental Studies, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut, USA
- MA (1995) in Geography, University of Colorado at Boulder, Colorado, USA
- Fulbright Scholar (1992-3) in Geography, Universitetet i Oslo, Norway
- BA (1991) in Geography and Environmental Studies, Dartmouth College, Hanover, New Hampshire, USA
Address
- Room No: S122, Menzies Building
- telephone: +61 3 990 52913
- fax +61 3 990 52948
- Christian.Kull@arts.monash.edu.au