I am an environmental social scientist, and my research integrates geography, sociology and psychology to examine environmental governance, in particular, governance of conservation and sustainability initiatives in marine and coastal systems. The interdisciplinary approach I take to research often includes collaborations with biological scientists, and extends to a transdisciplinary approach, involving knowledge co-production with practitioners and policymakers from the environmental and development sectors. Most of my research has focused on coral reef systems in the Asia-Pacific region (particularly in Australia, Indonesia, and Fiji). Some of my recent transdisciplinary research on coral reef conservation was profiled by Nature in an article on research related to the UN Sustainable Development Goal 14 Life Below Water.

I am currently a Senior Research Fellow at the College of Arts, Education & Social Sciences, within the Division of Tropical Enviornments & Societies. Between 2016-2020, I held an Environmental Social Science Fellowship at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University. In 2019, I was awarded a Fulbright Fellowship supporting institutional visit at the University of Michigan and Harvard University. I commenced my Discovery Early Career Research (DECRA) Fellowship, awarded by the Australia Research Council, in 2021. This Fellowship focuses on fairness in conservation and sustainability initiatives, and aims to advance understanding of what is considered fair by local stakeholders and rightsholders, and the factors that shape those perceptions. I am currently co-leading a NCEAS Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) Working Group. Awarded in 2019, this grant supports our working group's research on the co-benefits and trade-offs amongst the multiple social and ecological outcomes arising from different area-based conservation and management tools. The project is being implemented through a transdisciplinary research process, involving ~30 academics, practitioners and policymakers working in conservation, sustainability and development.

In 2018, I was elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Conservation Biology’s (SCB) Social Science Working Group. I currently co-lead the JEDI Committee at the ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, which I co-founded in 2020. I serve as an Associate Editor for Sustainability Science and People and Nature.

Research Program

Google Scholar profile

My current research program has three broad themes:

(1) The sociocultural and institutional drivers of collaborative governance of conservation and sustainability initiatives.

To deliver benefits to nature and people, conservation and sustainability initiatives tend to require collaborative governance approaches that involve and are led by stakeholders and rightsholders. However, key gaps remain in our understanding of the why people cooperate and form groups to engage in collective action for conservation and sustainability; this is especially true in the context of accelerating global environmental and social change. To help address this research need my collaborators and I examine the drivers affecting individual decisions to cooperate and the emergence of group collective action. Specifically, we elucidate sociocultural and institutional drivers operating at multiple levels, including the individual (e.g. attitudes, beliefs), group (e.g. group heterogeneity), and broader institutional (e.g. global conservation policy, institutional history) and social-ecological contextual (e.g. market access) levels. A key focus of this research theme is understanding the role of place attachment and identity in collaborative governance, including how place identity is related to participation in conservation. In a recent paper we drew on place attachment theory to re-examine the concept of ‘community’ in environmental policy in the context of addressing contemporary sustainability challenges, which increasing require transnational collaborative governance given globalisation (see related conference talk).

(2) The social and ecological outcomes of conservation and sustainability initiatives.

Conservation and sustainability initiatives are social-ecological systems, with their outcomes and the drivers of those outcomes being both social and ecological. However, past research has tended to take a disciplinary approach, often focused on the ecological outcomes of area-based management and their biophysical drivers. To contribute to better understanding the outcomes of area-based conservation and resource management initiatives, my collaborators and I examine how area-based management (e.g. marine protected areas, including community-managed) affects people (e.g. with respect to multi-dimensional human wellbeing and poverty) and how ecological outcomes (e.g. coral assemblages, reef fish biomass and diversity) are related to multi-scale sociocultural and institutional drivers (e.g. markets, management rules).

An ongoing core component of my work in this theme is my transdisciplinary research on trade-offs and co-benefits among the multiple social and ecological outcomes of coral reef co-management. Drawing on theoretical and empirical literature on social-ecological systems, knowledge co-production, and common property, a key focus of this research has been developing a social-ecological systems monitoring framework for coral reef co-management through a transdisciplinary collaboration with the Wildlife Conservation Society. The framework was developed to be used by conservation and sustainability practitioners (see the social-ecological systems monitoring framework practitioners' manual) and has been applied in seven countries. We are currently using these data to explore the co-benefits and trade-offs amongst the multiple social and ecological outcomes arising from different area-based conservation and resource management tools through our NCEAS Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP) Coastal Outcomes Working Group Grant.

(3) Justice in conservation and sustainability science, policy and practice.

Justice in conservation and sustainability research, policy, and practice is not only an ethical imperative, but also instrumental to addressing the social, economic and environmental dimensions of global sustainability challenges. However, understanding of what constitutes fair decision-making and outcomes in sustainability and conservation, and how they can be promoted remains nascent. Cross-cutting the previous two research themes, this expanding area of my work involves research on the procedural, distributional and recognitional dimensions of justice, with a particular focus on fairness perceptions. My collaborators and I examine how these three key dimensions can be fostered in conservation and sustainability policy and practice, including through emerging global conservation policy on Other Effective Conservation Measures (OECMs), and attention to the dynamics and plurality of fairness perceptions. Our work on distributional equity has focused on conservation outcome equality and how it trade-offs of with biodiversity and fisheries objectives, and perceived fairness of alternative outcome distributions and how perceptions relate to conservation support. Recently, we developed a framework for advancing procedural justice in conservation and sustainability practice.

To advance justice in conservation and sustainability science, my work involves research and advocacy related to how science is undertaken and by whom. For example, my collaborators and I have examined gender and geographic trends in authorship of coral reef science. I have been involved in several initiatives to promote Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion (JEDI) in research, including the JEDI Committee associated with the Society of Conservation Biology’s Social Science Working Group, as well as the ARC Centre for Coral Reef Studies JEDI Committee, which I co-founded and co-lead.

Supervision

Current postdoctoral fellow, students and mentees

• Patrick Smallhorn-West, JCU/Wildlife Conservation Society/WorldFish Postdoctoral Fellow
• Cristina Ruano Chamorro, JCU PhD Student
• Melissa Hampton-Smith, JCU PhD Student
• Edith Shum, UTAS PhD Student
• Ando Rabeariosa, mentee doing her PhD at University of California Santa Cruz, USA
• Madu Galappaththi, mentee doing her PhD at the University of Waterloo, Canada

Past postdoctoral fellow, students and mentees

• Kim Zoeller, JCU PhD 2022 Graduate
• Whitney Friedman, UC Santa Barbara/NCEAS SNAPP Postdoctoral Fellow
• Marie Lapointe, JCU PhD 2021 Graduate
• Patrick Smallhorn-West, JCU PhD 2020 Graduate
• Jacqueline Lau, JCU PhD 2019 Graduate
• Tracy MacKeracher, JCU Masters 2017 Graduate
• Jeremy Horowitz, JCU Masters 2016 Graduate
• Anushka Sandanam, JCU Masters 2015 Graduate

Selected Publications

For complete publication list see my Google Scholar profile

Ruano-Chamorro, C., G. Gurney, J. Cinner. 2022. Advancing procedural justice in conservation. Conservation Letters.

Gurney, G., Darling, E.S., Ahmadia, G., Agostini, V., Ban, N., Blythe, J., Claudet, J., Epstein, G., Estradivari, Himes-Cornell, A., Jonas, H., Armitage, D., Campbell, S., Cox, C., Friedman, W., Gill, D., Lestari, P., Mangubhai, S., McLeod, E., Muthiga, N., Naggea, J., Ranaivoson, R., Wenger, A., Yulianto, I., Jupiter, S. 2021. Biodviersity needs every tool in the  box: use OECMs. Nature 595: 646-649.

Grorud-Colvert, K.… G. Gurney… J. Lubchenco. 2021. The MPA Guide: A framework to achieve global goals for the ocean. Science 373 (6560): eabf0861.

Gurney, G., Mangubhai, S., Fox, M., Kaitkoski Kim, M., Agrawal, A. 2021. Equity in environmental governance: perceived fairness of distributional justice principles in marine co-management. Environmental Science & Policy 124(23-32).

Ahmadia, G....G. Gurney et al. 2021. Limited progress in improving gender and geographic representation in coral reef science. Frontiers in Marine Science 8: 1334.

Epstein, G., G. Gurney et al. 2021. Drivers of compliance monitoring in forest commons. Nature Sustainability 4:450-456.

Lau, J., G. Gurney, J. Cinner. 2021. Environmental justice in coastal systems: perspectives from communities confronting change. Global Environmental Change 66:02208.

Chaigneau, T., L. Camfield, S.Coulthard, T. Daw, C. Hicks, L. Jones, N. Matthews, C. Mcquistan, L. Szaboova, T. Chapin, D. Gasper, G. Gurney, M. Ibrahim, T. James, B. Reyers, S. White, K. Brown. 2021. Reconciling wellbeing and resilience in sustainable development. Nature Sustainability 1-7.

Gurney, G., Marshall, N., Curnock, M., Pert, P., Thiault, L. 2021. Coral reef collapse and sense of place in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. In Raymond, C., Manzo, L., Williams, D., Di Masso, A., von Wirth, T. (Eds.), Changing Senses of Place: Navigating Global Challenges (pp. 21-31). Cambridge University Press.

Cinner, J., J. Zamborain-Mason, G. Gurney, et al. 2020. Meeting fisheries, ecosystem function, and biodiversity goals in a human-dominated world. Science 368(6488): 307-311.

Gurney, G., E. Darling, S. Jupiter, S. Mangubhai, T. McClanahan, P. Lestari, S. Pardede, S. Campbell, M. Fox, W. Naisilisili, N. Muthiga, S. D’agata, K. Holmes, N. Rossi. 2019. Implementing a social-ecological systems framework for conservation monitoring: lessons from a multi-country coral reef program. Biological Conservation 240:108298.

• Gurney, G. and Darling, E. 2017. A Global Social-Ecological Systems Framework for Coral Reef Fisheries: A Practical Monitoring Handbook, Wildlife Conservation Society, New York, USA. (Translated into three languages and adopted in seven countries).

Ban, N.C., G. Gurney et. al. 2019. Well-being outcomes of marine protected areas. Nature Sustainability 2(6): 524-532.

Marshall, N., W. Adger, C., Benham, K. Brown, M. Curnock, G. Gurney, P. Marshall, P.L. Pert, L. Thiault, 2019. Reef Grief: Investigating the relationship between place meanings and place change on the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. Sustainability Science 14(3): 579-587.

Gurney, G., J. Blythe, H. Adams, W. Adger, M. Curnock, L. Faulkner, T. James, N.A. Marshall, 2017. Redefining community based on place attachment in a connected world. PNAS 114(38):10077-10082.

Gurney, G., J. Cinner, J. Sartin, R. Pressey, N. Ban, N. Marshall, D. Prabuning, 2016. Participation in devolved commons management: Multiscale socioeconomic factors related to individuals’ participation in community-based management of marine protected areas in Indonesia. Environmental Science & Policy 61:212-220.

Gurney, G., R. Pressey, J. Cinner, R. Pollnac, S. Campbell, 2015. Integrated conservation and development: Evaluating a community-based marine protected area project for equality of socioeconomic impacts. Phil Trans Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 370(1681): 20140277.

Gurney, G., J. Cinner, N. Ban, R. Pressey, R. Pollnac, S. Campbell, S. Tasidjawa, F. Setiawan, 2014. Poverty and protected areas: An evaluation of a marine integrated conservation and development project in Indonesia. Global Environmental Change 26: 98-107.

Experience

• 2021 to present - ARC DECRA Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
• 2020 to present - Senior Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University
• 2019 - Fulbright Future Fellow, University of Michigan/Harvard University
• 2016 to 2019 - Research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies, James Cook University

Research Disciplines

• Environmental management (4104)
• Sociology (4410)
• Development studies (4404)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Environmental policy, legislation and standards (1902)
• Marine systems and management (1805)

Awards

• 2022 - International Coral Reef Society Early Career Researcher Award
• 2022 - APEC ASPIRE Prize - Australia's nominee
• 2019 to 2022 - NCEAS Science for Nature and People Partnership (SNAPP ) Working Group Grant (co-CI) https://snappartnership.net/teams/coastal-outcomes/
• 2020 - Eureka Prize for Excellence in Interdisciplinary Scientific Research - Social-Ecological Research Frontiers Team
• 2018 - Wildlife Conservation Society Impact Fellow
• 2018 - Australian Academy of Sciences and Engineering Young Science Ambassador Award
• 2018 - Australian Institute of Science and Policy Queensland Tall Poppy Award
• 2016 - James Cook University Dean’s Award for PhD Excellence
• 2015 - Virginia Chadwick Outstanding Publication Award
• 2012 - Australian Federation of Graduate Women Award

Fellowships

• 2021 to 2024 - Australia Research Council Discovery Early Career Research (DECRA) Fellowship
• 2019 - Fulbright Future Research Fellowship
• 2012 to 2016 - CSIRO Flagship Collaboration Fund Fellowship

Other

• 2018 to 2021 - Elected to the Board of Directors of the Society of Conservation Biology’s (SCB) Social Science Working Group

These are the most recent publications associated with this author. To see a detailed profile of all publications stored at JCU, visit ResearchOnline@JCU. Hover over Altmetrics badges to see social impact.

Journal Articles

• Cinner J, Caldwell I, Thiault L, Ben J, Blanchard J, Coll M, Diedrich A, Eddy T, Everett J, Folberth C, Gascuel D, Guiet J, Gurney G, Heneghan R, Jagermeyr J, Jiddawi N, Lahari R, Kuange J, Wenfeng L, Maury O, Muller C, Novaglio C, Palacios-Abrantes J, Petrik C, Rabearisoa A, Tittensor D, Wamukota A and Pollnac R (2022) The potential impacts of climate change on agriculture and fisheries production in 72 tropical coastal communities. Nature Communications, 13.
• Plummer R, Blythe J, Gurney G, Witkowski S and Armitage D (2022) Transdisciplinary partnerships for sustainability: an evaluation guide. Sustainability Science, 17. pp. 955-967
• Ruano-Chamorro C, Gurney G and Cinner J (in press) Advancing procedural justice in conservation. Conservation Letters,
• Zoeller K, Gurney G and Cumming G (2022) The influence of landscape context on the production of cultural ecosystem services. Landscape Ecology, 37. pp. 883-894
• Ahmadia G, Cheng S, Andradi-Brown D, Baez S, Barnes M, Bennett N, Campbell S, Darling E, Estradivari E, Gill D, Gress E, Gurney G, Horigue V, Jakub R, Kennedy E, Mahajan S, Mangubhai S, Matsuda S, Muthiga N, Navarro M, Santodomingo N, Vallès H, Veverka L, Villagomez A, Wenger A and Wosu A (2021) Limited progress in improving gender and geographic representation in coral reef science. Frontiers in Marine Science, 8.
• Cinner J, Barnes M, Gurney G, Lockie S and Rojas C (2021) Markets and the crowding out of conservation-relevant behavior. Conservation Biology, 35 (3). pp. 816-823
• Cox M, Gurney G, Anderies J, Coleman E, Darling E, Epstein G, Frey U, Nenadovic M, Schlager E and Villamayor-Tomas S (2021) Lessons learned from synthetic research projects based on the ostrom workshop frameworks. Ecology and Society, 26 (1).
• Engen S, Hausner V, Gurney G, Broderstad E, Keller R, Lundberg A, Murguzur F, Salminen E, Raymond C, Falk-Andersson J and Fauchald P (2021) Blue justice: a survey for eliciting perceptions of environmental justice among coastal planners' and small-scale fishers in Northern-Norway. PLoS ONE, 16 (5).
• Epstein G, Gurney G, Chawla S, Anderies J, Baggio J, Unnikrishnan H, Villamayor Tomas S and Cumming G (2021) Drivers of compliance monitoring in forest commons. Nature Sustainability, 4. pp. 450-456
• Grorud-Colvert K, Sullivan-Stack J, Roberts C, Constant V, Horta E Costa B, Pike E, Kingston N, Laffoley D, Sala E, Claudet J, Friedlander A, Gill D, Lester S, Day J, Gonçalves E, Ahmadia G, Rand M, Villagomez A, Ban N, Gurney G, Spalding A, Bennett N, Briggs J, Morgan L, Moffitt R, Deguignet M, Pikitch E, Darling E, Jessen S, Hameed S, Di Carlo G, Guidetti P, Harris J, Torre J, Kizilkaya Z, Agardy T, Cury P, Shah N, Sack K, Cao L, Fernandez M and Lubchenco J (2021) The MPA guide: a framework to achieve global goals for the ocean. Science, 373 (6560).
• Gurney G, Darling E, Ahmadia G, Agostini V, Ban N, Blythe J, Claudet J, Epstein G, Estradivari E, Himes-Cornell A, Jonas H, Armitage D, Campbell S, Cox C, Friedman W, Gill D, Lestari P, Mangubhai S, McLeod E, Muthiga N, Naggea J, Ranaivoson R, Wenger A, Yulianto I and Jupiter S (2021) Biodiversity needs every tool in the box: use OECMs. Nature, 595 (7869). pp. 646-649

Book Chapters

• Gurney G, Marshall N, Curnock M, Pert P and Thiault L (2021) Coral reef collapse and sense of place in the Great Barrier Reef, Australia. In: Changing Senses of Place: navigating global challenges. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK, pp. 21-31

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 69+ research outputs authored by Dr Georgina Gurney from 2010 onwards.

Current and recent Research Funding to JCU is shown by funding source and project.

Advisory Accreditation: I can be on your Advisory Panel as a Primary or Secondary Advisor.

These Higher Degree Research projects are either current or by students who have completed their studies within the past 5 years at JCU. Linked titles show theses available within ResearchOnline@JCU.

Current

• Just Fisheries: Equity perceptions and their role in environmental management and conservation (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Human-derived drivers of change for coral reef ecosystems: comparing ecological outcomes using temporal and spatial data analyses (PhD , Secondary Advisor)

Completed

• Assessing the impact of coral reef community management in the Kingdom of Tonga (2020, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Urbanization and human-nature relationships: a comparison of urban and rural dwellers' perceptions of ecosystem services in the Solomon Islands (2021, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• 'The reef is our garden' expanding analysis of ecosystem services in coastal communities (2019, PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Understanding the production of cultural ecosystem services and benefits (2022, PhD , Secondary Advisor)

These are the most recent metadata records associated with this researcher. To see a detailed description of all dataset records, visit Research Data Australia.

• Lapointe, M. (2020) Household surveys on ecosystem service preferences and urbanization in the Solomon Islands. James Cook University
• Gurney, G. (2016) Socioeconomic data on community-based management from Indonesia. James Cook University

The map shows research collaborations by institution from the past 7 years.
Note: Map points are indicative of the countries or states that institutions are associated with.