Rate My Professor Richie Howitt

Richie Howitt is an Emeritus Professor in the School of Communication, Society and Culture at Macquarie University, having retired in August 2018 after a distinguished career that began there in 1992 as a Lecturer B. He progressed through various roles, including Head of the Department of Geography and Planning from 2005 to 2010, Director of the Macquarie Ryde Futures Partnership from 2012 to 2013, and elected academic staff member of the University Council from 2014 to 2015. Prior to Macquarie, he worked at the University of Sydney, the Commonwealth Aboriginal Education Service, and as a primary school teacher with the NSW Department of Education. His academic qualifications include a BA (Hons) and Dip Ed from the University of Newcastle in 1978, PhD from the University of New South Wales in 1986, and Postgraduate Certificate in Educational Leadership from Macquarie University in 1992. Externally, he serves as Director of Richard Howitt, holds adjunct and visiting professorships at Kyoto University and the University of Kansas, and is a Justice of the Peace in NSW.

Howitt specializes in human geography, with research focusing on Indigenous rights and the interfaces between Indigenous communities, natural resource development, governments, and corporations across project, community, landscape, and national scales. He developed participatory social impact assessment methodologies, first outlined in a widely cited 1993 paper, to empower Indigenous peoples in negotiations and challenge marginalization of their systems. His theoretical contributions include a relational view of geographical scale influencing legal pluralism in planning. Key projects encompass native title negotiations in South Australia and an Australian Research Council Discovery project on social change in rural NSW Aboriginal communities from 1965 to 2015. Selected publications include "Enhancing meaningful Indigenous leadership and collaboration in international environmental governance forums" (2024, Environmental Science & Policy), "Reconnecting to the social: ontological foundations for a repurposed and rescaled SIA" (2024, Current Sociology), "Taiwan inside-out: rescaling colonial constructions of Taiwan through a Tayal-focused lens" (2024, Geographical Research), and "Challenging the colonial legacy of/at Macquarie" (2022, Geographical Research). Awards include the Distinguished Fellowship (2005), Macdonald Holmes Medal (2011), Vice-Chancellor's Award for Higher Degree Research Supervision (2013), Member of the Order of Australia for services to education and Indigenous affairs, and the Institute of Australian Geographers' Australia-International Medal. He serves on the editorial boards of Geographical Research (since 2014) and Journal of Geography in Higher Education (since 2005), and on the US Transportation Review Board's Committee on Environmental Justice in Transportation (since 2005). His work has advanced ethical practices in resource management and Indigenous governance.