Rate My Professor David Bowman

Professor David Bowman is an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow and Director of the transdisciplinary Fire Centre at the University of Tasmania. He holds a research chair in Pyrogeography and Fire Science in the School of Natural Sciences. He earned a PhD in forest ecology and management from the University of Tasmania in 1984 and a Doctor of Science from the same institution in 2001. Bowman previously served as a wildlife biologist with the Northern Territory Parks and Wildlife Commission, Director of the ARC Key Centre for Tropical Wildlife Management, and has held research fellowships at institutions including Harvard University, the University of Oxford, Kyoto University, the University of Arizona, the University of Leeds, and the University of British Columbia. He is also an Honorary Professor in Archaeology and Natural History at the Australian National University.

Bowman established the field of pyrogeography, which integrates human, physical, and biological dimensions of fire across scales from local to global and from the geological past to the future. His field-oriented research spans Australia and involves collaboration with a global network of scientists, employing techniques from molecular ecology and landscape ecology to social analysis and epidemiology. He focuses on improving the scientific basis of fire management. In 2022, Bowman received an Australian Research Council Laureate Fellowship for research on practical and sustainable pathways to community coexistence with bushfires, involving collaboration with government, Aboriginal fire managers, and international scientists. His work has advanced understanding of fire regimes, environmental change biology, and bushfire management in Australia.