University of Queensland

This course examines wicked, or complex, problems in health, including human health impacts from climate change and addressing it through perspectives from medicine and epidemiology, law and governance, and health and natural resource economics.

This course examines the social function of popular culture in Australia with particular emphasis on the period from the 1960s to the present. It explores how popular culture is produced and consumed and asks how specific forms and practices (such as cinema, music, sport, and food) contribute to concepts of individual and national identity. The course does not attempt to define a uniquely Australian form of popular culture. Rather, students examine the distinctive ways in which cultural activity and practice, whether originating in Australia or overseas, have been produced and consumed in Australia.

This course examines aquatic environments from glacial ecosystems to deep-sea ecosystems including where the water that makes up these systems came from, and the broad-scale atmospheric and hydrologic cycles that govern its distribution and movement. It also covers the physical, chemical, hydrological and ecological characteristics and processes of glacial, freshwater, coastal, and marine ecosystems.

This course examines natural resource problems related to energy use, renewable and non-renewable resources, and agriculture and food; integration of ecological, economic, and institutional dimensions; application to management and policy issues at regional, national and global levels.

This course examines how the basic abiotic factors of the Australian environment, such as climate and geology, have resulted in the distinct Australian biota. Students examine how the same factors have influenced indigenous and non-indigenous human cultures, and contrast the effects the two have had in turn on the biota. A field trip to Stradbroke Island introduces the typical Australian vegetation adapted to poor soils in a drought and fire-ridden environment. A trip to Lamington National Park introduces Australian rainforest - the vegetation which typically develops at the opposite extreme of all those variables. Australia is very instructive in an international sense regarding how rainforest is defined. Unlike most parts of the world, we recognize dry rainforest or vine thickets which are highly distinct from nearby non-rainforest vegetation. They grow in very low rainfalls, but in the absence of fire. A trip to Kroombit Tops shows the students rare examples of the driest extremes of rainforest in an ecologically fascinating mosaic, and gives them a remote outback experience in a functioning cattle station.

This course studies temperate and tropical marine systems and their associated organisms. The marine habitats include coral reefs, mangrove forests, and seagrass beds. The first marine biology field program takes place on North Stradbroke Island at the Moreton Bay Research Station and includes the exploration of the major marine environments that occur on the island. The second major field program is conducted at Heron Island Research Station on the Great Barrier Reef. Class-based activities are undertaken at the research station that introduce the geomorphology, terrestrial ecology, management, marine biology and ecology of coral reefs. Following this, students conduct group research projects and present results. Research reports are prepared to international journal manuscript standards.