MUSSE

The University’s Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute (MSSI) has created a website that acts as a virtual hub to showcase the breadth and depth of research on climate change in the University. The Climate Change pages are at http://www.climatechange.unimelb.edu.au/

“Climate Change is such a diverse field, and we have all these research endeavours, from Atmospheric Physics through to Social Welfare Policy “, says Dr Jon Barnett from MSSI.

“Our University is very strong across all the facets of climate change, which makes it unique,” Dr Barnett says. “This website is a vehicle to transfer that knowledge to the wider community.”

The website brings together all these staff and projects, and is growing. “It’s a work in progress, it’s evolving,” he said.

And students in the first-year climate change University Breadth Subject are finding the website particularly helpful as a way to better understand the broad domain of climate change. He believes the website will also be especially useful for early career researchers and RHD students who are looking to break into the field.

Climate Change is a key area in the work of MSSI – see http://www.unimelb.edu.au/ . The Institute highlights the research staff involved in sustainability studies with areas of study and principal research areas listed, as well as the disparate sustainability research groups, such as the School of Botany’s Australian Centre for Urban Ecology (ARCUE), a range of School of Engineering projects and the work at the Centre for Public Policy in the Faculty of Arts.

Sustainability is such an important issue. “At a comprehensive university like Melbourne you now have all these researchers from different fields coming together because of the urgency of the situation,” Dr Barnett said.

The websites could possibly contribute to creating more interdisciplinary research projects and cross-faculty collaboration in sustainability, with staff from different research backgrounds and with different skill sets, who are spread across the Parkville campus, finding each other via the web.

But the ‘virtual’ Institute also has another important function – communicating University research to the outside audience of policy makers and concerned general public.