Staff Profile
Trish Fanning
| Room: | E8A 314 |
|---|---|
| Phone: | +61 2 9850 7979 |
| Fax: | +61 2 9850 7972 |
| Email: | pfanning@gse.mq.edu.au |
Profile
My mother claims I ate the sand out of my sandpit when I was a little girl, so maybe that's where it all began! I loved Physical Geography at school, and took the opportunity to enrol in Macquarie's fledgling Environmental Studies undergraduate program in the early 1970s, when the world was just starting to wake up to the impacts that humans were having on their environment. With an Honours degree in geomorphology and ecology under my belt, I first went to work at the University of NSW on an Australian Water Resources Council catchment management project. I moved to a tutoring position while completing a Masters degree on erosion processes in arid western NSW. More than 25 years later, I still consider the arid zone my second home and now take my own students out there to experience the 'big sky' country, and the myriad of issues that face pastoralists as they struggle to make a living, while at the same time provide environmental stewardship of land that belongs to all of us. I am also co-director of the Western NSW Archaeology Program (WNSWAP), an interdisciplinary program of research into the history of Aboriginal occupation and human-environment interactions, and in 2002 completed a PhD in Environmental Studies at Macquarie University, based on WNSWAP research.
Research Interest
Landscape evolution and environmental change in arid and semi-arid areas on geological and human time scales: my research ranges from detailed monitoring of geomorphic processes to investigation of landscape change going back a hundred years to tens of thousands of years.
Geoarchaeological frameworks for investigating the surface archaeological record: this is an innovative area of research, where the sciences and humanities come together to understand the record of human interactions with the environment in arid Australia in the past. WNSWAP has been awarded over half a million dollars in research grants since 1996, and produced 3 PhD graduates and many Masters and Honours research projects.
Rural land degradation, particularly soil erosion: long term monitoring of the Australian rangelands is ongoing, and forms the basis for teaching units in semi-arid land management at postgraduate level.
Antarctic geoscience: I spent a summer at the Australian Antarctic base of Mawson in 2002-3, and am co-author of a well received paper published in the journal Geology in 2007. We investigated the history of the East Antarctic ice sheet (EAIS) using cosmogenic dating of glacial erratics, left perched on mountain tops as the icecap melted since the Last Glacial Maximum, 18000 years ago.Teaching
I am Director of Environmental Science, a postgraduate degree program in the GSE.
I convene, co-convene or contribute to:
- GSE803 Science in Environmental Management
- GSE807 Environmental Measurements and Analysis
- GSE808 Management of Degraded Environments
- GSE813 Semi-arid Land Management
- GSE899 Research Communication
Service and Outreach
I am Director of Higher Degree Research for the Division of Environmental and Life Sciences and the Divisional representative on the University's HDR committee. I also sit on the Programs and Scholarships sub-committee. I am also the HDR co-ordinator for the GSE.
Professionally, I am an active member of a range of professional bodies, and am currently the President of the Australian and New Zealand Geomorphology Group (ANZGG). We are hosting the 2009 International Conference of the Association of Geomorphologists, and I am part of the Local Organising Committee for that conference, to be held in Melbourne from 7th to 11th July, 2009.
Community engagement is an important component of my professional life, and in particular to be able, through my research grants, to provide paid employment for Aboriginal people in western NSW to work on the recording and analysis of their own material culture.
Selected Publications
- Allen H.A., Holdaway S.J., Fanning P.C. & Littleton, J. (in press) Footprints in the sand: appraising the archaeology of the Willandra Lakes. Antiquity.
- Fanning P.C., Holdaway S.J. & Rhodes E.J. (in press) A new geoarchaeology of Aboriginal artefact deposits in western NSW, Australia: establishing spatial and temporal geomorphic controls on the surface archaeological record. Geomorphology.
- Fanning P.C., Holdaway S.J. & Rhodes E.J. (2007) A geomorphic framework for understanding the surface archaeological record in arid environments. Geodinimica Acta 20(4), 275-286.
- Holdaway S.J. & Fanning P.C. (in press) Assemblage Accumulation as a Time Dependent Process in the Arid Zone of Western New South Wales, Australia. In: Holdaway SJ and Wandsnider LA (Eds.) Time in Archaeology: Time Perspectivism Twenty Years Later. University of Utah Press.
- Holdaway, S.J., Shiner, J., Fanning, P.C. & Witter, D.C. (2007). Cores, Tools and Nuclear Bodies: Characterization of Stone Artifact Assemblages from Arid Australia. In S.P. McPherron (Ed.) Tools versus Cores: Alternative Approaches to Stone Tool Analysis, pp. 178-197. Cambridge Scholars Publishing: Newcastle. ISBN 1-84718-117-1.
- Holdaway, S., Fanning, P.C. & Shiner, J. (2006) Geoarchaeological Investigation of Aboriginal Landscape Occupation in Paroo-Darling National Park, Western NSW, Australia. Research in Anthropology and Linguistics-e No. 1, Dept. of Anthropology, University of Auckland, Auckland. ISBN 0-9582744-0-1 http://researchspace.auckland.ac.nz/handle/2292/325
- Holdaway SJ, Fanning PC & Shiner J. (2005) Absence of evidence or evidence of absence? Understanding the chronology of indigenous occupation of western New South Wales, Australia. Archaeology in Oceania 40, 33-49. ISSN 0003-8121Mackintosh A., White D., Fink D., Gore D.B., Pickard J. and Fanning P.C. (2007) Exposure ages from mountain dipsticks in Mac.Robertson Land, East Antarctica, indicate little change in ice sheet thickness since the Last Glacial Maximum. Geology 35(6), 551-554.
- Shiner J., Holdaway S.J., Allen H. & Fanning, P.C. (2007) Burkes Cave and flaked stone assemblage variability in western New South Wales, Australia. Australian Archaeology 64, 35-45.
- Shiner, J., Holdaway, SJ, Allen, HA & Fanning PC. (2005) Understanding Stone Artefact Assemblage Variability in Late Holocene Contexts in Western New South Wales, Australia: Burkes Cave, Stud Creek and Fowlers Gap. In C. Clarkson and L. Lamb (eds) Lithics Down Under: Australian Perspectives on Lithic Reduction, Use and Classification. British Archaeological Reports, International Monograph Series No. S1408, pp. 67-80. Archaeopress: Oxford. ISBN 1841718513.