Melbourne School of Land and Environment Department of Resource Management & Geography

Ruth Fincher

BA Hons. (Melbourne)
MA (McMaster) PhD (Clark)

Professor

Office 2.27, 221 Bouverie Street
Tel. (+61 3) or (03) 8344 0623
Fax (+61 3) or (03) 9349 4218
E-mail r.fincher@unimelb.edu.au

 

Ruth Fincher is Professor of Geography at the University of Melbourne.  Previously she was Professor of Urban Planning and Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning, also at the University of Melbourne.  Her research interests are at the interface of urban social geography and urban social planning, and her research projects and writing are informed by the critical theoretical perspectives in human geographies of the western city, especially those from political economy and feminism.
These themes are evident in her recent book, co-authored with Kurt Iveson, entitled Planning and Diversity in the City: Redistribution, Recognition and Encounter (Palgrave Macmillan, Basingstoke UK, 2008). A recent big interdisciplinary project saw her team with architects and public space designers to enquire into the ways that temporary immigrants to Melbourne, in this case international students, experience the public and private spaces of the inner city. 
Ruth has spent the past year establishing a new interdisciplinary research institute at the University of Melbourne, the Melbourne Sustainable Society Research Institute, as its Interim Director. She is Deputy Vice President of the Academic Board at the University of Melbourne, and an elected Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia.

Supervision:

Recent PhD graduates for whom Ruth was the principal supervisor -

K Shaw, 2005, Room to move: the politics of protecting the place of alternative culture
L Winayanti, 2005, Community struggles for land in Jakarta, Indonesia
E Porter 2004, Planning’s colonial culture; an investigation of the contested spaces of planning’s (post)colonial relations in contemporary Victoria
J Dodson, 2001, The order of things: public housing policy discourse in New Zealand and Australia, 1983-1999
S Moloney, 2002, The retreat from public planning in Melbourne, 1972-1999
J Walsh, 2002, Organising the low-wage service sector: labour, community and urban politics in the United States
M Permezel, 2002  The practice of citizenship: place, identity and the politics of participation in neighbourhood houses
K Kerkin, 2002, Planning on difference in public space

Teaching:

Inside the City of Diversity
Urban Environments 

Recent Publications:

Books -

FINCHER, R., IVESON, K.  Planning and Diversity in the City: Redistribution, Recognition, Encounter. Palgrave Macmillan, Houndmills, Basingstoke, UK and New York (2008)

FINCHER, R., SAUNDERS, P. (eds)  Creating Unequal Futures?  Rethinking Inequality, Poverty and Disadvantage, Allen & Unwin, Sydney (2001)

FINCHER, R., NIEUWENHUYSEN, J. (eds) Australian Poverty Then and Now, Melbourne University Press, Melbourne  (1998)

FINCHER, R., JACOBS, J. (eds)  Cities of Difference, Guilford Press, New York  (1998)

FINCHER, R., FOSTER, L., WILMOT, R. - Gender Equity and Australian Immigration Policy, Australian Government Publishing Service, Canberra (1994)

Journal articles

FINCHER, R, SHAW, K – The unintended segregation of transnational students in central Melbourne. Environment and Planning A 40 (2008) in press

FINCHER, R., GOODER, H. – At home with diversity in medium density housing. Housing, Theory and Society  24(3), 166-182 (2007)

FINCHER, R. – Space, gender and institutions in processes creating difference. The Jan Monk Distinguished Lecture 2006. Gender, Place and Culture 14(1), 5-27 (2007)

FINCHER, R. – Is high-rise housing innovative? Developers’ contradictory narratives of high-rise housing in Melbourne. Urban Studies 44(3), 1-19 (2007)

FINCHER, R., COSTELLO, L. – Narratives of high-rise housing: placing the ethnicised newcomer in inner Melbourne. Social and Cultural Geography  6(2), 201-217 (2005)

FINCHER, R. – Gender and life course in the narratives of Melbourne’s high-rise housing developers. Australian Geographical Studies 42(3), 326-339 (2004)

FINCHER, R. – Planning for cities of diversity, difference and encounter. Australian Planner 40(1), 55-8 (2003)

FINCHER, R., PANELLI, R. – Making space: women’s urban and rural activism and the Australian state. Gender, Place and Culture 8(2): 129-148 (2001)

FINCHER, R. – Immigration research in the politics of an anxious nation. Environment and Planning D: Society and Space 19(1): 25-42 (2001)

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