Our unique postgraduate programs focus on the Asia-Pacific, which is affected by disasters ranging from tsunamis to earthquakes to volcanic activity.
As a Higher Degree by Research student, you can choose from a wide range of topics to research, including climate change, environmental migration and human trafficking; disaster policy making and reform in developing countries; politics of crisis and disaster communication; cultural institutionalism and disasters, and more.
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Associate Professor Akhilesh Surjan
Associate Professor Surjan is proactively engaged with the issues of disaster-environment-climate risk reduction, global change and sustainability in the context of human settlements.
Meet Akhilesh
Associate Professor Supriya Mathew
Supriya Mathew is an environmental health researcher leading the climate change research program at Menzies. Her research team focuses on improving climate resilience in remote Australia through citizen scientist-led research data collection, collation of lived experiences of residents of remote Australia and co-designing of adaptation and mitigation solutions with remote residents and stakeholders.
Research Interests:
- Climate impacts and adaptation
- Low carbon health care
- Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander health
- Culturally and Linguistically diverse populations and climate impacts
- Remote populations
Dr Rodney Eksteen
Dr Eksteen is available to supervise Higher Degree by Research (HDR) students (PhD, Master by Research) across the following research domains:
- Community-Based Disaster Risk Reduction (CBDRR): Evaluating participatory safety models, community resilience frameworks, and public health interventions in vulnerable or remote settings.
- Disaster Vulnerability in Informal Settlements: Investigating structural fire spread, early warning technologies (e.g., community smoke alarm networks), and community adaptation mechanisms in low-income settlements.
- Incident Command Systems (ICS) & All-Hazards Response: Examining command structures, multi-agency coordination, extended-duration incident management, and institutional responses during major crises and pandemics.
- Disaster Risk Governance & Strategic Policy: Translating high-level disaster management policy into operational, inter-agency practice across local, provincial, and national jurisdictions.
- Simulation & Experiential Learning in Emergency Management: Designing and testing immersive simulations, incident management exercises, and operational readiness curricula.
Can't find a suitable supervisor. What can I do?
If you've been unable to find a supervisor from the list above, you can use the researchers portal to find researchers from related fields.
- Use one or two keywords to narrow down the list of researchers.
- Each research profile will indicate if the researcher can supervise.