Rate My Professor Richard Baker

Richard Baker is an Emeritus Professor in the Fenner School of Environment & Society at the Australian National University. He earned a Bachelor of Arts with Honours from ANU and a PhD from the University of Adelaide, specializing in geography and archaeology. Before his long tenure at ANU, he held positions at the Northern Territory Museum and the National Museum of Australia. Throughout his career at ANU, he advanced from Associate Professor to Professor within the Fenner School, served as Deputy Dean of the Colleges of Science, and acted as Pro Vice-Chancellor (University Experience) from April 2013 to February 2019. In these roles, he led strategic initiatives promoting student and staff equity, enhanced university experience, and fostered research-led teaching practices.

Professor Baker's academic interests include social and cultural geography, higher education, sociology of education, recreation, leisure and tourism geography, Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander environmental knowledge, natural resource management, human geography, curriculum and pedagogy. His research emphasizes cross-cultural communication in environmental management, Indigenous land practices, and integrating research with teaching in geography. He edited the seminal volume Working on Country: Contemporary Indigenous Management of Australia's Lands and Coastal Regions (Oxford University Press, 2001, with J. Davies and E. Young), contributing chapters such as 'Managing Country: An Overview of the Prime Issues,' 'Introduction to Part II: Approaches to Managing Country,' 'Introduction to Part III: Sharing Knowledge,' 'Introduction to Part IV: Negotiating Management,' and 'Working on Country: Listening, Sharing, and Providing Practical Support.' Other notable publications encompass 'Yanyuwa classical burning regimes, Indigenous science and cross-cultural communication' (2003), 'Combining People, Place and Learning' (2005, with T. Measham), 'Co-Learning: Re-linking Research and Teaching in Geography' (2006, with R. Le Heron and L. McEwen), 'Geography' in Understanding the Environment (2005), 'Encouraging critical thinking in a combined Arts and Science course' (2003, with A. Lupton), 'Journeys through an Australian Sacred Landscape' (2003, with C. Robinson and L. Liddle), 'Tourist behaviour, local values, and interpretation at Uluru' (2009, with H. Hueneke), 'Managing forest country: Aboriginal Australians and the forest sector' (2010, with S. Feary et al.), and 'Embedding Research-Based Learning Early in the Undergraduate Geography Curriculum' (2011, with H. Walkington et al.). His scholarship has advanced understandings of Indigenous environmental stewardship and pedagogical innovations in environmental studies.