Rate My Professor Maria Cotter

Dr. Maria Cotter serves as Lecturer in Contextual Studies in the School of Education at the University of New England, within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts, Social Sciences and Education. She earned a Bachelor of Arts from the University of New England and a PhD from Southern Cross University. Her teaching portfolio encompasses Education for Sustainability, Indigenous Education, social contexts of education, and learning in social movements. Cotter is a member of the Department of Globalisation, Leadership and Policy, as well as the Rural, Regional and Remote Education research group.

Prior to her current role, Cotter contributed to the Oorala Aboriginal Centre at UNE, where she supported Indigenous students in attaining university success. Earlier in her career, she worked as an Aboriginal cultural heritage management specialist, including a position in the Hunter Valley coal mining region assisting Native Title claimants in recording cultural landscape values on lands facing development. Her research specializations include environmental humanities, transdisciplinary education and scholarship, Indigenous higher education, and equity in higher education. Cotter is a transdisciplinary scholar also engaged in geoarchaeology, Indigenous heritage, and legal geography. She holds memberships in the Institute of Australian Geographers and the Association for the Study of Literature, Environment and Culture, Australia-New Zealand. Key publications feature 'Rigidity and a changing order . . . disorder, degeneracy and daemonic repetition: fluidity of cultural values and cultural heritage management' (2005), 'Particle Settling Times for Gravity Sedimentation and Centrifugation: A Practical Guide for Palynologists' (2003), 'The probable industrial origin of archaeological daub at an Iron Age site in Northeast Thailand' (2003), and 'The Late Quaternary Stratigraphy of Northern Deception Bay, southeast Queensland: Towards a Sedimentary and Geochronological Framework for Catchment Management' (2000). Her work is documented in 21 research items on ResearchGate, garnering 73 citations.