ANU Human Ecology Forum

The Human Ecology Forum is an informal gathering of a vibrant but shifting cast of academic staff, PhD and Honours students, as well as interested members of communities beyond the University, such as the Nature and Society Forum, and CSIRO.

Where: School of Resources, Environment and Society, Room 101 (at the top of the stairs from the front entrance) in the Forestry Building (48) in Linneaus Way, Australian National University.

Next Session: Friday 18 May

Coping and Managing under Uncertainty
Michael Smithson, School of Psychology

There is a widespread tendency to view uncertainty negatively, whereas any
truly strategic management of uncertainty requires a more balanced appraisal
of it. Moreover, people think of uncertainty as if there are genuinely
different kinds, so they resist attempts to reduce it to one kind (such as
probability). Uncertainty presents us with the following adaptive
challenges:
1.      Dealing with unforeseen threats and solving problems.
2.      Benefiting from opportunities for exploration, discovery and
innovation.
3.      Crafting good outcomes in a partially learnable world.
4.      Dealing intelligently and sociably with other humans.
This talk explores a fundamental issue that besets decision makers who must
deal with uncertainty such as risk managers, planners, policy makers: How
can we adaptively and effectively work with uncertainty?

There is a 2007 calendar of presentations and if you would like to be informed of upcoming speakers, you can join our mailing list.

Forum convener: Robert Dyball

Themes covered by the Forum are broad, and represent the considerable intellectual breadth of the Forum members and their interests, but revolve around research topics of complexity (of social and ecological systems), Human Ecology, rationality, environmental policy, science, social science and research issues of methodology, transdisciplinarity and theory. To give you an idea, previous forum topics and speakers are available in our archives. We aim to support scholarly research by previewing members' conference papers, journal articles and student 'milestone' seminars (such as thesis proposals, mid-term reviews, etc), and also to provide a discussion forum for policy-makers and non-ANU researchers with similar interests - all of which provides a valuable opportunity to enrich the experiences of ANU research students. The Human Ecology Forum is not a seminar series, it is first and foremost a 'space' where interested people can contribute and receive feedback on current or upcoming research interests and in a constructive environment. In this, sessions at the Forum can range in form from lectures through to open, completely unstructured discussions.

Photos courtesy of Alan Fox

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Last modified: 11 May, 2007
Author: Human Ecology Forum convenor

The Australian National University. Australian CRICOS Provider No. 00120C