Julia Werner Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia 2015

Julia Werner

Julia is a lecturer in landscape architecture at RMIT University. Before she worked at the University of Hanover, Germany, from where she also holds a Master degree in Landscape Planning and Design. Julia is the co-founder of Studio Urbane Landschaften, a multidisciplinary network for landscape design in Germany. She played a decisive role in developing the contemporary, interdisciplinary design approach outlined in Creating Knowledge (2008). A focus of her design work is on urban (water) landscapes. Currently she is conducting her PhD on the subject of the potential of creativity in the design of large-scale urban landscapes. Julia is also trained in Gestalt Psychotherapy, a holistic approach she incorporates in her teaching and research. Dr Judy Rogers is Program Director of the Bachelor of Design (Landscape Architecture), Bachelor of Urban and Regional Planning in the School of Architecture and Design at RMIT. Her research interests focus broadly on both sustainability education and policy. Her PhD employed narrative policy analysis as a way of revealing the power relationships embedded in sustainability talk and text. The thesis argues that if sustainability is to remain a worthwhile goal for all citizens and for government then ‘sustainability’ research must do more than develop techniques and methods to measure, monitor and map sustainability as a way of ensuring compliance, and shift towards an understanding of sustainability that acknowledges that it is ‘aspirational’, contested and open to interpretation. She has also developed and continues to teach in a fully on-line elective – Challenges in Sustainability – a course that foregrounds interdisciplinary understandings and dialogue as key to education for and through (rather than about) sustainability.

Abstracts this author is presenting: