Visiting Fellow, SRES
Forest history & forest policy
Phone: +61 (0)2 6125 3565
Fax: + 61 (0)2 6125 0746
E-mail: John.Dargavel@anu.edu.au

John has degrees from the Universities of Edinburgh and Melbourne and from the Australian National University. He has worked in the forest service in South Australia and for twenty years in Victoria as an industrial forester mainly concerned with management planning. He has lectured on forest economics, resource and management planning in the Department of Forestry, and has researched issues of forest policy as a Fellow in the Centre for Resource and Environmental Studies.

Professional Activities

My research interests lie in forest history and in the political economy of the forest sector. I have written extensively and critically on forest policy, the Regional Forest Agreement process, environmental conflicts and employment. A large part of my academic life has been concerned with convening groups of people with different perspectives and disciplines concerned with policy and history.

I enjoy the variety of disciplines that forest history draws me into. Currently I am writing a biography of Charles and Ruth Lane Poole. Charles was the Commonwealth's first forester and Ruth was the interior decorator who designed the furniture for the Prime Minister's and the Governor-General's residences that were opened in Canberra in 1927. Charles Lane Poole is particularly relevant to SRES as he ran the Australian Forestry School in Canberra from 1927 to 1944. Forestry training was transferred to the new Department of Forestry at ANU in 1965, and is now part of SRES.

Academic Highlights

Selected Publications

Dargavel, John, Mauro Agnoletti and Elisabeth Johann. 2005. Layered cultures of forestry. News of Forest History III(36/37)-part 1, pp.25-35.

Dargavel, John 2005. Forestry, in Short Overviews (ed. John Dargavel). Australia and New Zealand Forest Histories (Australian Forest History Society, Occasional Publications No. 1). Kingston, ACT: Australian Forest History Society, pp.25-32.

Dargavel, John 2005. Managing amidst conflict: the Huon District forests of Tasmania. In In search of excellence: exemplary forest management in Asia and the Pacific (Patrick B. Durst, Chris Brown, Henrylito D. Tacio and Miyuki Ishikawa). Bangkok: Regional Community Forestry Training Centre for Asia and the Pacific, FAO, pp. 239-250.

Dargavel John 2005. Charles Lane Poole in the transition from Empire. In Calver, Michael, Bigler-Cole, Heidi, Bolton, Geoffrey, Dargavel, John, Gaynor, Andrea, Horwitz, Pierre, Mills, Jenny, and Wardell-Johnson, Grant (eds) A forest conscienceness: Proceedings of 6th National Conference of the Australian Forest History Society Inc. Rotterdam: Millpress, pp.65-74.

Dargavel, John. 2004. The Fight for the Forests in retrospect and prospect. Australasian Journal of Environmental Management 11(3), pp.237-244.

Dargavel, John. 2004. Persistence and transition on the Wangites-Wagait Reserves, 1892-1976. Journal of Northern Territory History, 15: 5-19.