Anyone who knows Matthew Parnell knows how hard he works. On top of his sustainability consulting work Matthew has persevered with his PhD all this time. On the 20th September 2012 Matthew was in Perth with his family for graduation day with Murdoch University. In addition to the ceremony, Matthew gave a talk to the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute about his PhD. The Perth trip was capped off by a short holiday.
Matthew is now back at work and as busy as ever!
Congratulations Matthew.
To give a bit more background on Matthew’s PhD here is an extract from Matthew’s thesis abstract
Institute for Sustainability and Technology Policy, Murdoch University
PhD in Sustainable Development 2001 – 2012
Title: The Emergence of Sustainability Culture and The Sustainability Practitioner
Supervisors: Professor Peter Newman (now at Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute) and
Dr Brad Pettit (Murdoch University)
In this thesis, I propose that the way sustainability is practiced, both personally and professionally, has significant potential for fostering the emergence of sustainability culture. A holistic approach to practice requires a different type of practitioner: more generalist than specialist, drawing on their “inner sustainability culture” when faced with complex sustainability problems, capable of working across scales, open to discovery of new patterns, and mindful of the degree of complexity in any practice setting. I propose a model of sustainability culture that accommodates the complexity’s emergence phenomenon and new ways of emergence-based sustainability practice.”
