Dr Tania Leimbach

Tania Leimbach has a passion for the living systems that support life. She completed her PhD thesis at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) within the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF), a research institute with a dynamic HDR program and project-based research for government, industry and academia. ISF honed her understanding of sustainability challenges, innovation and the application of systems thinking in the renewable energy sector, regenerative agriculture, food security, circular economy, public transport and clean industries. Her research orientation is informed by the field of sustainability, in itself a transdisciplinary approach to problem solving, and something that ISF is world-renowned for.

Tania’s PhD thesis, Sustainability and the Material Imagination in Australian Cultural Organisations reveals how cultural organisations engage with the political and material complexities of the Anthropocene and global environmental change. The thesis draws on various accounts of materiality from material culture studies, and notions of social and material agency; the rise of new museology, and recent discourse in the environmental humanities focusing on the Anthropocene and sustainability.

She has an emerging research profile contributing to ecocultural scholarship and aligning with the research strengths of Environmental Humanities. In particular: environment, technology and the politics of knowledge; theorisations of affect; social and cultural change; material cultures; inter- and transdisciplinary theory and pedagogy; ecologically-oriented creative practice, and rethinking the humanities through the environment.

Since completing her doctoral studies, Tania has held research and teaching roles in tertiary contexts and professional settings. She has contributed to several academic and industry-commissioned projects, and has worked in a research capacity for local government, regenerative agriculture NGO Soils for Life, and Indigenous-led social enterprise Old Ways, New. An experienced social researcher, she utilises a range of qualitative research methods, including ethnography, case studies and focus groups, program monitoring and evaluation, and social impact assessment.

As a member of the Environment & Society Group, Tania convenes several courses in the Master of Environmental Management, a program focused on nourishing tomorrow's change-makers in restoratively rethinking and reshaping the world. Tania actively supports youth-led climate solutions and the empowerment of young people, while building skills and knowledge for educators in how to effectively address climate change in diverse formal and informal settings. She has an an emerging profile in climate change pedagogy, and has developed public-facing resources for climate change education now being used in higher education, secondary schools and local councils.