Lesley Head

Lesley Head is an Australian geographer specialising in human-environment relations.

Biography

Head completed her doctoral degree at Monash University in Melbourne, Australia. She began her research career using palaeoecology and archaeology to study long term changes in the Australian landscape, and the interactions of prehistoric peoples with their environments. More recently, she has focused on relationships between humans and plants, such as backyard gardens, and issues of sustainability and climate change.

Head is the director of the Australian Centre for Cultural Environmental Research (AUSCCER). a former president of the Institute of Australian Geographers and has chaired the National Committee for Geography of the Australian Academy of Science. In 2005-06 she was King Carl XVI Gustaf Visiting Professor of Environmental Sciences at Hogskölan Kristianstad (Kristianstad University), Sweden. From 2010 to 2014 she was an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow.

Publications

• Cultural Landscapes and Environmental Change (Arnold, 2000) ISBN 978-0-340-73113-0
• Backyard: nature and culture in suburban Australia (with Pat Muir, University of Wollongong Press, 2007)
• Ingrained : A human bio-geography of wheat (with Jennifer Atchison and Alison Gates, Ashgate, 2012) ISBN 9781409437871
• Second Nature: The History and Implications of Australia as Aboriginal Landscape (Syracuse University Press, 2013)
• Hope and Grief in the Anthropocene: Re-conceptualising human–nature relations (Routledge, 2016) ISBN 9781138826441