Geography Honours and Masters projects

Research opportunities in the School of Geography, Earth and Atmospheric Sciences.

See the supervisors involved in Geography in the School, and the projects they'll be working on in the coming year.

Critical Raw Materials – policy decisions and issues

Bikes in cities, particularly grassroots initiatives to encourage cycling.

The impacts of community groups on community resilience.

This project would be perfect for someone interested in risk, resilience, and the roles that community groups play in the context of disaster risk reduction. Approximately 10 non-profit community groups have received financial support as part of their collaboration with the CEDRR project - we want to assess the impacts of those funds. This project would involve qualitative interviews with leaders from these organizations to establish what the funds were used for and the 'impacts' of those expenditures; this would be followed by a literature review on the 'value' of those impacts. There is much scope for creativity in the context of measuring 'impact', as we are keen for non-monetary and social measures to be included.

Insurance and flood risk reduction at the household scale.

At the moment, flood insurance is becoming a controversial and important topic. For some households, the updating of flood modelling carries significant financial implications as their insurance premiums rise significantly (e.g., as much as four times). Insurance is also central to how households perceive and implement flood risk mitigation, but with the decision-making is relatively under-studied. The CEDRR project has data for approximately 2000 engagements and we would like to analyze these data in the context of mentions of insurance. These qualitative data would be analyzed to establish the role(s) of insurance in terms of changes to risk reduction actions. There is also quantitative data for these households, including mentions of insurance, which might be analyzed.

Looking back to secure our future: environmental reconstruction of Aboriginal Caring for Country.

A case study from Thunder Swamp, Dja Dja Wurrung Country. This project is in collaboration with Dja Dja Wurrung Traditional Owners to understand the environmental history of Thunder Swamp, an important Dan Dja Wurrung cultural place.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Prof Michael-Shawn Fletcher
  • Make an enquiry

Truth Telling about Country: ground-truthing the pre-1750 vegetation GIS layers that guide environmental restoration.

This project will use empirical data on actual pre-1750 vegetation to assess the accuracy of the current modelled pre-1750 vegetation GIS layers used for environmental accounting and restoration.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Prof Michael-Shawn Fletcher
  • Make an enquiry

Guiding river recovery efforts.

The Queensland Disaster Recovery Funding Arrangements (DRFA) team need to develop guiding principles and information to understand how to invest money after Cyclone Jasper.  Using the Queensland Aquatic Ecosystem Rehabilitation Process (AERP) values impacted by the cyclone need to be determined and documented.  This work could use remotely sensed information and/or develop recommendations on how to collect new data across the spectrum of physical, ecological, cultural and spiritual ecosystem services.

Mapping people and places.

Historic gold mining around Beechworth has left physical evidence and a historical record of the miners.  The Magpie Creek diggings have been placed on the heritage register as they had only one European miner and 150 Chinese miners.  This work would look at available LiDAR data to understand how the site was worked and altered. It would also look at the historical record to understand who was working the mine, and when.  The work would help improve the details of the heritage registry.

Archaeomagnetism of Budj Bim volcanic landscape: was fire technology used to engineer one of the oldest aquaculture system in the world?

This project tests the applicability of paleomagnetic techniques on lava flow from the UNESCO World Heritage cultural landscape in Western Victoria to provide evidence for fire technologies by Indigenous people and date canals construction.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Agathe Lise Pronovost
  • Make an enquiry

Unravelling hydroclimate changes in southern Australia using cave deposits

Fieldwork will be undertaken in March ors April 2025.

In this project, U-Th ages will be measured along the profile of a flowstone drill core taken from Kelly Hill Cave (Kangaroo Island, SA) to determine past intervals of positive moisture balance over the last several hundred thousand years. Comparison with ice core, ocean sediment, and insolation data will be used to evaluate the drivers of these long-term regional moisture changes.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Prof Russell Drysdale
  • Make an enquiry

Climate change-related migration and relocation.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Prof Celia McMichael
  • Make an enquiry

Resettlement of people with refugee backgrounds in regional Australia (quantitative and/or qualitative datasets may be available for students to work with.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Prof Celia McMichael
  • Make an enquiry

The Taskforce on Nature-related Financial Disclosures (TNFD).

Major corporations and financial institutions have recognized that they can no longer overlook the dual crises of nature and climate. The TNFD is a recent initiative driven by the market, aimed at incorporating risks linked to the nature crisis into financial practices. While nature disclosures are currently voluntary, there is a clear trend toward making them mandatory, similar to the path taken by the Taskforce on Climate-related Financial Disclosures (TCFD). In our schools, we could explore how to navigate the risks through GIS. There is also a lot of political ecology that we could encourage the students to explore.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Sofia Lopez-Cubillos
  • Make an enquiry

Reconstructing depositional environments and Late Quaternary landscapes of the Werribee Delta.

Although not strictly speaking a “delta” the Werribee River delta is a large fan-shaped depositional landform dominantly built from fluvial fine-grained sediments. A series of buried soils are intercalated with the sediments and provide a fantastic opportunity to reconstruct longer-term changes in depositional dynamics and/or environmental conditions. Despite its proximity to Melbourne, very little data exists to document the stratigraphy, geomorphology and chronology of this major sedimentary landform. However, these data are urgently needed to improve our understanding of climate-driven changes in fluvial system dynamics and refine our ideas of late Quaternary environments in the Melbourne region. This is particularly important in the context of recent discoveries of megafauna and archaeological remains. This thesis aims to document the stratigraphic framework of the Werribee River and use a combined sedimentological and geochronological approach to learn about late Quaternary changes in river dynamics and environments.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Jan-Hendrik May
  • Make an enquiry

Assessing historic meander dynamics with biogeographic and geochronological methods along the Central Murray River.

Along most of its long channel, the Murray River is a meandering river characterized by high but variable sinuosity, hundreds of cut-off oxbows, and well-developed point bars – together providing evidence for lateral migration. Despite the geomorphic, ecological and hydrologic importance of meandering across the Murray floodplain, very little is known about pre-European meandering rates or the effect of 20th-century river regulations. This thesis aims to document and evaluate riverine changes across the pre- to post-European boundary and establish rates for lateral channel dynamics using biogeographic, sedimentological and geochronological methods across selected point bar sequences on the Central Murray River.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Jan-Hendrik May
  • Make an enquiry

A new geological tide gauge record from French Island, Victoria.

This project will use sediments accumulated in the coastal wetlands of French Island (Westernport Bay) to reconstruct how the coastline and relative sea level has changed since the 19th century. The project involves fieldwork to collect sediment samples and laboratory work to look at microfossils to reconstruct past changes.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Juliet Sefton
  • Make an enquiry

Holocene evolution and sea-level change recorded in Port Campbell, western Victoria.

This project will use sediments accumulated in the saltmarsh environment in Port Campbell National Park to reconstruct past sea-level variability over the past 5,000 years. The project will involve a multi-day field trip to collect sediment samples and laboratory work to look at microfossils to reconstruct past changes.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Juliet Sefton
  • Make an enquiry

Improving proxies and chronologies of coastal wetland sediment records for new geological tide gauges in southeast Australia.

This project will interrogate the use of traditional paleoecological techniques (microfossils such as foraminifera and diatoms) and new proxy techniques (biomarkers, sedDNA) to improve reconstructions of past sea-level change.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Juliet Sefton
  • Make an enquiry

Historical to satellite era coastal change at Rekohu/Wharekauri/Chatham Island, Aotearoa New Zealand.

This project will use remote sensing techniques to characterize and quantify the pattern of coastal change on this far-flung archipelago 900 km east of New Zealand.

  • Project type: Honours or Masters
  • Supervisor: Dr Juliet Sefton
  • Make an enquiry

Next steps

Once you've found a researcher you'd like to work with, we encourage you to get in touch with them and talk about potential projects.

Learn more about graduate study

Apply for the Bachelor of Science (Honours)
Apply for the Master of Geography
Apply for the Master of Environment