Joe Powell
Education
D.Litt. (Monash, 1983) Ph.D. (Monash, 1969) M.A. (Liverpool, 1962) B.A. Hons. (Liverpool, 1960)
Research Interests
Joe Powell's main research interests focus on the interactions between pioneer settlement, environmental attitudes and the development of policy and practice in the related areas of resource appraisal and environmental management, chiefly in nineteenth and early twentieth century Australia but with excursions to include North American and New Zealand cases.
They include studies of the international movement of settlement ideologies and resource/environmental management ideas within the British Empire, and between the USA and a range of comparable Western societies. Author of fourteen books andmonographs in these fields. Important subsidiary interests include the history of Western geographical thought in society at large and in formal education contexts, especially in relation to nationalistic and imperialistic influences.
Past president, Institute of Australian Geographers; former editor, Australian Geographical Studies; currently member ofeight national and international editorial boards, geography and history; until recently executive member, IGU Commission on the History of Geographical Thought; member, National Committee for Geography of the Australian Academy of Science, etc. Long-established research liaison with universities in Britain, New Zealand, North America, France, India and Israel; recently appointed Visiting Fellow and Research Affiliate, Research School of Social Sciences, Australian National University, in conjunction with Monash position, from 1998.
Contacts with resource management agencies in all Australian states and associated federal bodies in Canberra.Policy-related consultancies centred on historical research. Teaching emphasises inter-relationships between society,environment and cultural, technological and other aspects of the development imperative in 'New World' countries, principallyAustralia, USA , Canada and New Zealand, and historical treatments of environmental policy and the evolution of urban andregional planning - as broadly summarised in Mirrors of the New World (1977, 1978) Environmental Management inAustralia, 1788 - 1914 (1976), and An Historical Geography of Modern Australia (1988, 1991).
Selected Recent Publications
1. Books and monographs
Watering the Garden State. Water, land and community in Victoria, 1834 - 1988, Sydney, 1989
Plains of Promise, Rivers of Destiny. Water management and the development of Queensland, 1824 - 1991, Brisbane,
1991
Griffith Taylor and 'Australia Unlimited', Brisbane, 1993
'MDB' The emergence of bioregionalism in the Murray-Darling Basin, Canberra, 1993
In Press: Watering the Western Third. Water, land and community in Western Australia, 1826-1996, Perth, 1997-1998
2. Journal articles and book chapters
Historical geography and environmental history: an Australian interface, Journal of Historical Geography, 22, 1996,253-273
'Frontier' development in Australia, in Y. Gradus and H. Lithwick (eds), Frontiers in Regional Development, London and
Lanham, US, 1996, 125-142
Origins of modern environmentalism, in I. Douglas, R. Huggett and M. Robinson (eds), Companion Encyclopedia ofGeography, London, 1996, 274-292
Marginal notes? Recent works in Australian environmental history, Australian Geographer, 27, 1996, 271-277
Interfusing aesthetics, ecology and history: disputing a non-convergent evolution, Environment and History 3, 1997,
117-125 In Press
Past imperfect, future tense: 'civic conjugations in Australia and New Zealand, Journal of Historical Geography, 1997
Disputing dominion: environmental sensibilities, historical consciousness and academic discourse in Australia, 1900 - 1950, in A. Buttimer and S. Brunn (eds), Text and Image: Social Construction of Regional Knowledges, Institut für Landerkunde, Leipzig, 1997
The pulse of citizenship. Reflections on Griffith Taylor and 'Nation-Planning', Australian Geographer, 1997
Enterprise and dependency: water management in Australia, in T. Griffiths and L. Robin (eds), Ecology and Empire,
Edinburgh, 1997
Classics in human geography: Meinig's On the Margins of the Good Earth, Progress in Human Geography, 1998
Address
- Room Number : S224 Menzies Building
- Phone Number: +61 3 990 52914
- joe.powell@arts.monash.edu.au