Media release – UTAS, 30 August, 2022
Top honour for world leader in bushfire research
Professor David Bowman, one of the world’s leading bushfire scientists, has received a prestigious Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship.
Professor Bowman is a Professor of Pyrogeography and Fire Science at the University of Tasmania. He is one of 16 2022 Australian Laureate Fellows and the third University of Tasmania academic in history to receive this honour.
The award follows a recent international review of fire management research that identified Professor Bowman as the most cited author globally in the field of fire management.
He will receive research funding of $3,360,986 over five years to conduct pioneering work to help tackle urgent questions: in a warming world, how do we coexist with fire? In landscapes more likely to burn, how do we build safer, more resilient communities?
Professor Bowman’s Fellowship will focus on the challenge of making sustainable bushfire management a reality by bringing together social, economic and biophysical lines of research.
He will collaborate with government at all levels, Aboriginal fire managers, and leading fire scientists nationally and internationally.
“We face a climate emergency and better management of bushfires is vital to how we adapt in the Australia of the future.
“This research will be multidisciplinary and deeply consultative with the aim of achieving public education and fire-management programs that will positively transform the relationship Australians have with bushfire prone landscapes,” Professor Bowman said.
Professor Bowman’s Fellowship project responds to the Bushfire Royal Commission into the disastrous Black Summer Bushfires of 2019–20. The Royal Commission uncovered a constellation of complex social, administrative, and environmental factors that contributed to their impact.
The Vice-Chancellor of the University of Tasmania, Professor Rufus Black, congratulated Professor Bowman.
“We warmly congratulate Professor Bowman and celebrate the contribution his work at the University of Tasmania is making to tackling the great sustainability challenges of our time.
“The climate emergency we are living in sees world bushfires pose ever greater threats to nature and humanity. Drawing our sources from indigenous knowledge about fire management to cutting edge fire analysis, David is helping us to better meet those threats, which in a place like Tasmania affect us all.”
The Australian Laureate Fellowships scheme supports world-class researchers to conduct research in Australia, forge strong links across the local and international research communities, and train and mentor early-career researchers.
