Professor Margaret Somerville

Biography

Margaret Somerville is a Professor of Education in the School of Education and Director of the Centre for Educational Research. She began her academic career at the University of New England where she spent 10 years in adult, community and vocational education, after working in TAFE designing curriculum for Aboriginal adults returning to education. During her time at the University of New England she was Program Director of Adult and Vocational Education and developed pathways programs for entry to degree courses for low SES students. She was awarded the inaugural Vice Chancellors Equity Award for this and her work in supervision. She specialised in supervising alternative and creative methodologies in research and developed innovative cohort supervision with over 40 completions and a nil attrition rate. This continues as a scholarly interest in doctoral pedagogies particularly for students using different knowledge frameworks resulting in a Special Edition of the International Journal of qualitative Studies in Education and two individual journal articles.

In 2006 she was appointed Professor of Education and Campus Research Leader at Monash University where she led the 'Space place and body' Faculty Research Group to develop conceptual, theoretical and methodological resources for leading edge educational research. This led to a long term interest in research capacity building, an interest which continues in her participation in the Strategic Capacity Building in Australian Educational Research Project supported by the Australian Council of Deans of Education.

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Areas of Research / Teaching Expertise

A pioneer in place studies in education she has a long history of collaboration with Indigenous communities about their relationship to place. Her first of five authored books, 'Ingelba and the Five Black Matriarchs' with Aboriginal Elder Patsy Cohen, was described as 'the best politically informed oral history ever produced in Australia'. Her enduring focus in this work is in articulating what non-Indigenous Australians can learn about living in this land from the oldest continuing culture in the world. Her forthcoming book, 'Water in a Dry Land', to be published in Routledge's Innovative Ethnography Series, is an outcome of this long term research interest.

Throughout her research career, Margaret Somerville has been interested in developing and applying new theoretical concepts in space, place and body to research the big questions of our time. This began with her early collaborations with Aboriginal co-researchers when she was initiated into seeing the world through the lens of place. She has applied these concepts in relation to questions of safe bodies in a range of industries including mining, aged care, fire fighting. These core concepts have been applied in her research about how teachers learn to do their work, and how they learn about the places and communities in which they begin teaching. Her projects have been funded by six Australian Research Council grants, two AIATSIS national competitive grants, a philanthropic grant, and numerous industry research consultancies. 

The various strands of her research have come together recently as a research program about place and sustainability education for the Anthropocene. She has taken up the notion of the Anthropocene, a term coined to describe the new geological age of human induced planetary changes, in order to think and research creatively about the imperatives of education for sustainability in a post climate change world. Her most recent projects, which form part of this program of research, are a pilot project to map innovative sustainability initiatives across a region, and a participatory action research project linking teachers, teacher educators, and teacher education students to identify curriculum and pedagogies in primary school sustainability education. 

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Recent significant publications 2007-2011

Scholarly books

Somerville, M. (forthcoming, 2012) Water in a dry land: learning through artworks and stories. Innovative Ethnography Series. London and New York: Routledge.

Somerville, M., Davies, B., Power, K., Gannon, S. & de Carteret, P. 2011. Place pedagogy change. Netherlands: Sense Publishing.

Somerville, M. & Perkins, T. 2010. Singing the Coast: place and identity in Australia. Canberra, ACT: Aboriginal Studies Press.

Somerville, M., Power, K., & de Carteret, P. 2009. Landscapes and Learning: place studies for a global world. Netherlands: Sense Publishing.

Scholarly book chapters

Somerville, M. (In press). 'Thinking through country: literate practice for a sustainable world'. In M. Corbett & B. Green (Eds) Rural Education and Literacies Research: Transnational Perspectives, London and New York: Routledge. (Accepted 26/6/11).

Somerville, M.J. (In press). 'Textual genres and the question of representation'. In S. Delamont (Ed) The Edward Elgar Handbook of Qualitative Research in Education. Cheltenham, Camberley, UK & Northhampton, MA, US: Edward Elgar Publishing. (Accepted 12/4/11).

Somerville, M. (In press) The critical power of place. In G. S. Cannella & S. Steinberg, Critical Qualitative Research Reader. New York: Peter Lang. (Accepted 8/3/11)

Somerville, M. (In press). Singing the coast: writing place and identity in Australia. In J.T. Johnson and S. Larson. (Eds). A Deeper Sense of Place. Oregon: Oregon State University Press. Accepted Dec 2010. (Accepted 16/11/10)

Somerville, M. 2011. Art, Community and Knowledge Flows. In Fenwick, T. and Farrell, L. (Eds). Knowledge Mobilisation and Educational Research: politics, languages, responsibilities. London and New York: Routledge.

Somerville, M. 2009. Transforming pedagogies of water. In Somerville, M., Power, K., & de Carteret, P. (Eds) 2009. Landscapes and Learning: place studies for a global world, pp 207-224. Netherlands: Sense Publishing.

Somerville, M., Power, K., de Carteret, P. 2009. Introduction: place studies for a global world. In Somerville, M., Power, K., & de Carteret, P. (Eds) 2009. Landscapes and Learning: place studies for a global world, pp 3-20. Netherlands: Sense Publishing.

Somerville, M., with Marshall, C., Barker, L. & Bates, B. 2008. Flows and intensities: travelling water stories in inland Australia. In Mayne, A. (Ed). Beyond the Black Stump: Histories of Outback Australia, pp 305-328. Adelaide, SA: Wakefield Press.

Refereed journal articles

Devos, A. & Somerville, M. 2012. What constitutes doctoral knowledge? Issues of power and subjectivity in doctoral examination. Australian Universities' Review, 54(1).

Somerville, M. & Rennie, J. 2012. Mobilising community: place, identity formation and new teachers learning. Discourse: studies in the cultural politics of education. (Accepted 10/2/11) 

Somerville, M. & Green, M. 2011. A pedagogy of 'organised chaos': ecological learning in primary schools. Invited contribution to Special Edition of Children Youth and Environment, 'Place-based learning: connecting children, youth and their communities', 20(1), 14-34.

Tomaney, J. & Somerville, M. 2010. Climate change and regional identity in Latrobe Valley, Victoria. Australian Humanities Review, 49, 29-47.

Somerville, M., Plunkett, M. & Dyson, M. 2010, New teachers learning in rural and regional Australia, Asia Pacific Journal of Teacher Education, 38, 1, 39-55.

Somerville, M. 2010. A place pedagogy for 'global contemporaneity'. Journal of Educational Philosophy and Theory, 42, 3, 326-344.

Somerville, M. 2009. Rethinking literacy as a process of translation, Australian Journal of Language and Literacy, 32, 1, 9-22.

Somerville, M. 2008. Editorial, Guest Editor, Special Edition Emergent methodologies. 'Waiting in the chaotic place of unknowing': articulating postmodern emergence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 21, 3, 209-220.

Somerville, M. 2007. Place literacy. Australian Journal of Literacy and Language, 30, 2, 149-164.

Somerville, M. 2007. Postmodern emergence. International Journal of Qualitative Studies in Education, 20, 2, 225-243.

Refereed conference publications

Somerville, M. 2008, Bubbles on the Surface: a methodology of water. Refereed conference publication, Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Brisbane, Qld.Devos, A., Somerville, M., & de Carteret, 2008. A collective biography of place. Refereed conference publication. Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Brisbane, Qld.

Somerville, M. 2007. Space and Place in Education: still speaking from the margins. Refereed conference publication of the Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Fremantle, WA. 

Somerville, M. 2007. Becoming-Frog: a primary school place pedagogy. Refereed conference publication. Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Fremantle, WA.Somerville, M. 2006. A place pedagogy for new teachers. Refereed conference publication. Australian Association for Research in Education Annual Conference, Adelaide, SA.

Other (major exhibitions)

Somerville, M., with Badger Bates, Treahna Hamm, Chrissiejoy Marshall, and Daphne Wallace. 2010. Water in a Dry Land. Major Exhibition Albury City Regional Gallery, Albury NSW. Catalogue: Water in a Dry Land.

Somerville, M., with Badger Bates, Phoenix de Carteret, Treahna Hamm, Chrissiejoy Marshall, Sarah Martin and Daphne Wallace. 2008. Bubbles on the Surface 111. Major Exhibition Switchback Gallery, Gippsland, Victoria.  Catalogue, Always unfinished business: of singing the country, ISBN978-0-646-50638-8.

Somerville, M., with Badger Bates, Phoenix de Carteret, Treahna Hamm, Chrissiejoy Marshall, Sarah Martin and Daphne Wallace. 2007. Bubbles on the Surface 11. Major Exhibition, Switchback Gallery, Gippsland, Victoria. Catalogue, Thinking through country, DVD, Chrissiejoy Marshall and Dale Ross.

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