Professor Chris Cocklin
Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research & Innovation
DipBusStud, BSocSci, MA, PhD
Professor Cocklin was appointed to the position of Deputy Vice-Chancellor, Research and Innovation in August 2008. He was previously Pro-Vice-Chancellor of the Faculty of Science, Engineering and IT at JCU (from February 2007). Prior to that he was employed for 10 years at Monash University, where he served as Head of the School of Geography and Environmental Science and as the inaugural Director of the Monash Environment Institute.
His research and teaching interests are in resources and environmental policy, agriculture and rural communities, global environmental change, sustainable development, and corporate environmental management. Professor Cocklin currently holds an ARC Discovery grant for the project ‘Regulation and Governance of Agricultural Biotechnology: GMOs in Australia and the United Kingdom’ (with Prof D. Gibbs, Hull). Other recent ARC grants were awarded for the projects ‘Sustainable Urban Water Governance: Institutional Development and Organisational Change’ (with Dr R. Brown, Monash) and ‘From Productivism to Multifunctionality: Agri-environmental Governance in Australia and the United Kingdom’ (with Prof G Wilson, Plymouth)
Professor Cocklin is a member of the Queensland Premier’s Advisory Council on Climate Change. He is a Board Member of the Australian Tropical Herbarium, the Tropical Landscapes Joint Venture, the Reef and Rainforest Research Centre, the AIMS@JCU Joint Venture, and of the Consortium for Integrated Resource Management. He is a member of the Oceans Policy Scientific Advisory Group, the Management Committee of the National Climate Change Adaptation Research Facility (NCCARF), the Water Quality and Great Barrier Reef Steering Committee of the Marine and Tropical Science Research Facility (MTSRF) and of the North Queensland Roundtable for Greening Australia. In 2004 he was appointed by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) as a Lead Author of the Fourth Assessment Report. He was also an invited participant in the Prime Minister’s Australia 2020 summit, held in 2008.
Professor Cocklin previously served as a member of the Board of Greening Australia (Vic), the Victorian Catchment Management Council, and the Australian Academy of Science National Sustainability Committee. Other appointments have included the Scientific Steering Committee, Global Environmental Change and Human Security (GECHS) Project of the International Human Dimensions of Global Change Programme (IHDP) and Chair of the Australian Eco-share Fund/Sustainability Fund Advisory Committee (on behalf of Westpac Investment Management and Monash University) and as a member of the Board of the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute (AHURI).
Over the course of his career, Professor Cocklin has published approximately 190 articles, books, research monographs, technical reports and reviews. For a list of recent publications, click here. He has delivered approximately 120 papers to professional conferences and meetings, including more than 30 invited/keynote addresses. In addition to his current position at JCU, he holds the position of Honorary Professor in Geography and Environmental Science at Monash University.