Author, Producer, Researcher, Manager, Educator, Consultant

Associate Professor Paul Brown is an educationalist, researcher, community artist and creative producer. For over thirty years he has successfully integrated university research, teaching and leadership with arts practice, community engagement and consultancy – across humanities, environment, science and community development fields.

Environmental issues, theatre and film production, communications and community engagement are central to his practitioner and academic interests. He has published in fields of environmental humanities, eco-criticism, creative arts practice, conservation and sustainability, atomic arts, earth history, and science and technology studies. His recent practice-based research includes an oral history and performance project on South Asian development issues, a major international arts program linking creative artists with communities that have experienced nuclear testing, and environmental education initiatives in Australia, India and Bangladesh.

In academia, Paul was first appointed to UNSW in 1994 as lecturer in Environmental Policy in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He developed and taught across a wide range of courses, and played a co-ordinating role in the Environmental Studies Program for the Faculty until 2007, when he was appointed foundational Head of the School of History and Philosophy (later school of Humanities and now School of Humanities and Languages). He held this senior management and leadership position for five years 2007-12, responsible for over fifty academic staff and eight professional staff. Throughout his UNSW career, Paul has taken key roles in curriculum development, and helped lead developments in on-line teaching, both in his own courses and across the School of Humanities while Head of School. He has substantial teaching experience within the Masters of Environmental Management (MEM), and has been a key contributor to interdisciplinary activities through the Institute of Environmental Studies at UNSW. Paul now holds a position in the School of Humanities and Languages, and is consultant for a current Scientia Education Investment Fund development project at UNSW, with focus on on-line teaching development for the Masters of Environmental Management. Since 2017, he has taught four courses within the MEM, and was the convenor of that program in 2018.

As a creative writer and producer, mostly of plays and films, Paul is the author of Aftershocks, verbatim theatre about the Newcastle earthquake. He co-founded Urban Theatre Projects in 1980, and wrote major community theatre works for Murray River Performing Group, Theatreworks, and Urban Theatre Projects. Paul is the author of the documentary film Sixty Thousand Barrels, and of the verbatim play Half a Life, which documents the experience of veterans who served at the British Nuclear Testing ground at Maralinga. In 2014-18 he was the Creative Producer for the Nuclear Futures creative partnerships initiative, linking artists with atomic survivor communities to make creative works across 22 community-based multi-arts projects. Highlights include the production and gifting of Australia's sculpture in the Nagasaki Peace Park, and the digital projections 10 Minutes to Midnight, and Ngurini (Searching) two multi-media installations.