ILWS - Institute of Land, Water and Society
Researchers
Associate Professor Ian Gray
Ba Macquarie, GDipRecPlan Canberra CAE MA PhD ANU
School of Humanities and Social Sciences
Director, Rural Social Research
Associate Professor Ian Gray whose research interests cover sociology of community, rural society, local government, urban society, transportation and the environment, has extensive experience in research on rural social and environmental issues.
He has attracted national competitive research grants totalling over half a million dollars. His research projects include a study of farm coping strategies and another on experience of drought funded by the Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation; an ethnographic study of farming practice for the Land and Water Resources Research and Development Corporation; a quantitative project on structural adjustment and catchment management for the MurrayDarling Basin Commission; and research on small town sustainability and community capacity for environmental management funded by the Australian Research Council. His latest research project is on regional transport with the Local Government and Shires Associations of New South Wales. He is also working on a project investigating attitudes to regionalism with a colleague at Griffith University . The work involves consideration of the prospects for changing our systems of governance to give greater autonomy and voice to regional communities.
"My research has moved from community and political sociology through the sociology of agriculture and the environment," says Ian, who sees social relationships within communities, and between local communities and governments, as crucial to the sustainability of regional Australia .
Ian's writing spans topics relating to rural communities and the culture of farming including many publications on current issues related to rural society and social change. He has published in Australian and international journals, including The Australian Journal of Social Issues, Sociologia Ruralis, Journal of Environmental Policy and Planning and the Journal of the Community Development Society . His books include Politics in Place: Social Power Relations in an Australian Country Town, Cambridge University Press, 1991; and with other authors he has written Immigrant Settlement in Country Areas, AGPS, 1991; Coping with Change: Australian Farmers in the 1990s, Centre for Rural Social Research, 1993, Australian Farm Families' Experience of Drought, Rural Industries Research and Development Corporation, 1999 and A Future for Regional Australia: Escaping Global Misfortune , Cambridge University Press, 2001.
Ian's undergraduate teaching covers community analysis and environmental sociology, while he supervises eight higher degree students conducting research on rural communities, transport and associated issues.