Valerie A. Brown AO, BSc MEd PhD, Professorial Fellow, Human Ecology, Fenner School of Environment and Society, Australian National University.  Director of the Local Sustainability Project, a collaborative research program working with whole-of-community change in Australia and overseas, 1995 -2017.  

Emeritus Professor of the University of Western Sydney after being its Foundation Chair of Environmental Health 1996-2002. Awarded an Officer of the Order of Australia for national and international advocacy for sustainable development.  Author of eight books and over 50 papers on socio-environmental issues and social change. 

Valerie was a member of the National Health and Medical Research Council 1984-92, and CSIRO Council 1986-2004.  In 1999 she was appointed an Officer of the Order of Australia for national and international research, policy development, and advocacy for sustainable development.

She was inaugural Professor of Environmental Health at the University of Western Sydney 1995-2002.  

Valerie is currently working on collective learning as a tool for transformational change.  Over 300 collective learning workshops have been delivered across Australia and in Nepal, Europe, Malaysia, Fiji and China. Her 100 research papers and 10 books explore the human capacity for transformational change.

Professional activities

I work with collaborative action research teams on locally sustainable responses to global social and environmental pressures. Past research programs have addressed the capacity for collective decision-making in the Local Government, community development, public health, and environmental management sectors; and establishing the Indigenous communities' environmental health workforce development program. My recent projects include principles for whole-of-community engagement in the Murray-Darling Basin; an interactive collective knowledge framework; and transformational change in regional collaboration for natural resource management.

PhD supervision includes theses on collective responses to complex socio-environmental issues in public health, environmental management, indigenous and community-based natural resource management, and urban planning.

During my time as a Fenner associate I have published six books (2005), (2005), 2008), (20010) (2012), (20014) with international publishers; 15 book chapters; and 17 journal papers; with a total of over 2500 citations. I have given lectures and workshops in Human Ecology, Integrated Studies, and Human Futures, and acted as primary supervisor for eleven ANU PhD students with Robert Dyball as Chair of the panels.

In 2017 I am supervising 2 PhDs, submissions due in 2018, (one co-supervised with Lorrae Van Kirkhoff), and finalising two invited chapters for international publications on collective learning. I am currently writing two books, one on Collective Thinking with Dr. John Harris, and one on Cooperative Evolution with Emeritus Professor Chris Bryant. Estimated publication dates 2019.