The value of human-nature interactions: Meet Prof Catherine Pickering

This month’s Researcher Profile features Professor Catherine Pickering from the School of Environment and Science. Catherine’s research focuses on human-nature interactions, and she is chair of the Griffith Biodiversity Working Group and landscape advisor for the University. She shares with us her journey to becoming a researcher, her current research on community gardens, how she fosters engagement with biodiversity on the Griffith campuses and her advice for early career researchers.  

What path led you to becoming a researcher?   

Nature has always been an important part of my life and has been the cornerstone of my career as an academic and researcher.

Starting as a young child spending time in nature, it has been a source of joy, be it playing fetch with my dog, going camping in national parks or exploring local parks and forests. This shaped my choice of degree, where I studied botany and zoology at the Australian National University, before going on to do honours and a PhD looking at the ecology of plants in the Australian Alps. After a post-doctoral fellowship assessing desert ephemeral plants after rain in Arizona, I returned to Australia to take up a lectureship at Griffith University in environmental sciences. Over the following years my teaching and research has flourished, and it has been a delight to live and work in South East Queensland surrounded by so much nature, including on the campuses of Griffith University. 

Can you tell us a bit about the projects you are currently working on?  

Some recent research projects included using social media texts and images to assess how people engage with nature and specific species in national parks in Australia, South Africa, Portugal, Argentina and Nepal. With millions of people sharing content every day, we can tune in to better understand the activities and values of park visitors which can contribute to conservation, park management and sustainable nature-based tourism. 

A big focus for research over the next few years will be nature in gardens: specifically community gardens as part of a new Australian Research Council Discovery project. With more of us living in cities, and cities expanding and densifying, the value of local community gardens are growing involving social, economic, health and environmental benefits. We are looking at over 800 community gardens across Australia to find out where they are (which towns, cities, rural areas), who can access them (social equality/inequity in how they are distributed) and climate change risks to them. Later on we will assess how the gardens are run, what they grow and how they grow their plants. The results will help assess how communities benefit from gardens, and how they are contributing to the conservation of agrobiodiversity and enhance food security in uncertain times. 

What motivates or inspires your research?

My research, teaching and service promotes positive human-nature interactions.

 As part of this, we use the campuses at Griffith University as living laboratories, and foster staff, students and community engagement with biodiversity on the campuses. Our campuses are globally significant, contain many rare and threatened plants and animals, and are in the top 10% of university campuses for biodiversity (number of species) globally. On the Gold Coast campus, the gardens demonstrate a wide range of green solutions using native plants, enhancing the life of staff, students and the community. Working with teams of staff and students, I have authored five biodiversity books about animals on our campuses, and growing native plants in pots and small gardens, in schools and trees in streets and gardens across South East Queensland. More information about plants and animals on our campus and these books can be found on the Griffith Biodiversity website and in the new Ecological Stewardship Plan. I also post regularly about research, teaching and biodiversity on the campuses on Instagram (professor.pickering). 

Do you have any advice for researchers just starting out?  

The key advice I provided to early career researchers is:  

1. Identify what you are passionate about, and your skills and strengths. 
2. See how these can match and support the goals of your organisation, so your research has meaning for you and for the organisation. 
3. Look for easy wins to support initial success while contributing to longer-term harder goals. 
4. Seek out great people to collaborate with including those with complementary skills as well as where you and whole team can grow capacity. 
5. Look for how you can obtain multiple benefits from actions including ensuring your research is ethical and has public good outcomes, so you can look back on your career with joy and pride that it has made a positive difference. Most importantly, make it fun!

Griffith is proud to produce world-class research contributing to the Sustainable Development Goals.      

Are you thinking of pursuing a research degree?     

 If you would like to find out more, check out the research study web page.