Profile

I am a Research Fellow at the College of Arts, Education & Social Sciences. I do interdisciplinary research on issues of environmental justice and change in coastal communities. In late 2023 I will commence an ARC DECRA Fellowship to investigate how morality shapes adaptation to climate change in coastal communities.

For tropical coastal communities climate change has become an ever-shifting backdrop against which people chart their livelihoods. People describe changed seasons, huge king tides, hotter days, and unpredictable winds. Yet for many people, climate change is not the only—or even the main—concern of the day. Climate solutions and climate adaptation have to fit into a messy jumble of day-to-day complexities about getting food on the table, children’s futures, identities and heritages of fishing lives, changing ways of governing resources, and the myriad other reasons people do what they do in different places.

My research seeks to understand this tangle and develop ideas to navigate just and sustainable futures. My ARC DECRA project will  investigate the morals and moral framings at play in decisions about climate change. It asks how morality shapes opportunities and barriers for coastal people, communities and societies as climate change unfolds through case studies along the Great Barrier Reef.   

Between 2019-2022 I held a joint Research Fellow position with the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies and WorldFish. Previously, I studied sociology at the Australian National University (2012), an MPhil in Environment, Society and Development at the University of Cambridge (2014), and a PhD in environmental social science at James Cook University (2019). My PhD project investigated the multiple values of coral reef ecosystem services and perceptions of environmental justice in Papua New Guinea.

Select Media 

• The Conversation
• WorldFish Blogs
• Nature Behavioural & Social Sciences: 'Behind the Paper'
• RAID Network blog

Select Publications 

*See Googlescholar for full list

Mason, J., Eurich, J., Lau, J., et al., 2022. Operationalizing resilience to climate change in fisheries. Fish and Fisheries. 23(3): 522-544

Lau, J., Kleiber, D., Lawless, S. & Cohen, P. 2021. Gender equality in climate policy and practice hindered by assumptions. Nature Climate Change. 11:186-192

Lau, J., Song, A., Morrison, T., Fabinyi, M., Brown, K., Blythe, J., Allison, E. & Adger, N. 2021. Morals and climate change decision-making: Insights from behavioural and social sciences. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability. 52:27-35

Lau, J., Gurney, G. & Cinner, J. 2021. Environmental justice in coastal systems: perspectives from communities confronting change. Global Environmental Change.66:102208

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Interests

Professional

• Reviewer for Environment International; Ecology and Society; Global Environmental Change; Geoforum; Humanities and Social Sciences Communications; Marine Policy; People and Nature; Climatic Change; Maritime Studies

Research

• How morality shapes adaptation to climate change in the Great Barrier Reef region.
• Equity and justice in coastal governance and the socially-stratified ways that people value, access and coproduce coastal ecosystem services
• Social dimensions of human-wildlife conflict (shark depredation)
• Intersection between identity (incl. gender) and natural resource use and governance

Teaching

• Social dimensions of conservation and environmental management (e.g., gender and development, ecosystem services, environmental justice)
• Supervision of topics related to the social dimensions of environmental change, development, fisheries and coastal communities.

Experience

• 2023 to present - Research Fellow, CASE, JCU (Townsville)
• 2019 to 2022 - Postdoctoral research Fellow, ARC Centre of Excellence in Coral Reef Studies (Townsville)
• 2017 - Casual Officer, CSIRO, Dept. of Land and Water (Townsville)

Research Disciplines

• Human geography (4406)
• Development studies (4404)
• Environmental management (4104)

Socio-Economic Objectives

• Expanding knowledge (2801)

Awards

• 2021 - ECR Green Open Access Award, JCU Library
• 2020 - Glenn Almany Memorial Prize for research beyond traditional academic boundaries, ARC COE in Coral Reef Studies
• 2020 - Dean’s Award for High Degree by Research Excellence, James Cook University
• 2019 - A MARE best student paper award
• 2018 - International Marine Conservation Congress (IMCC) best student talk award
• 2018 - Crawford Award
• 2012 - Vice Chancellor's letter of commendation, The Australian National University
• 2011 - Vice Chancellor's letter of commendation, The Australian National University

Fellowships

• 2023 to 2026 - ARC DECRA Fellowship
• 2022 to 2023 - AXA Postdoctoral research fellowship (rescinded)

Memberships

• 2022 - PECs working group: Ocean Equity
• 2021 - Australian Coastal Society
• 2018 - The Institute of Australian Geographers
• 2018 - Society for Conservation Biology
• 2021 to 2024 - CESAB working group: Blue Justice
• 2021 to 2022 - ARC CoE Justice, Equity, Diversity, and Inclusion commitee
• 2020 to 2022 - SNAPP working group: Operationalizing Resilience in Fisheries

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

• Blythe J, Gill D, Claudet J, Bennett N, Gurney G, Baggio J, Ban N, Bernard M, Brun V, Darling E, Di Franco A, Epstein G, Franks P, Horan R, Jupiter S, Lau J, Lazzari N, Mahajan S, Mangubhai S, Naggea J, Turner R and Zafra-Calvo N (2023) Blue justice: a review of emerging scholarship and resistance movements. Cambridge Prisms: Coastal Futures, 1.
• Barnes M, Jasny L, Bauman A, Ben J, Berardo R, Bodin Ö, Cinner J, Feary D, Guerrero A, Januchowski-Hartley F, Kuange J, Lau J, Wang P and Zamborain-Mason J (2022) ‘Bunkering down’: How one community is tightening social-ecological network structures in the face of global change. People and Nature, 4 (4). pp. 1032-1048
• Diedrich A, Duce S, Eriksson H, Govan H, Harohau D, Koczberski G, Lau J, Mills D, Minter T, Steenbergen D and Troell M (2022) An applied research agenda for navigating diverse livelihood challenges in rural coastal communities in the tropics. One Earth, 5 (11). pp. 1205-1215
• Grantham R, Lau J, Mills D and Cumming G (2022) Social and temporal dynamics mediate the distribution of ecosystem service benefits from a small-scale fishery. Ecosystems and People, 18 (1). pp. 15-30
• Hoel K, Chin A and Lau J (2022) Clashing conservation values: The social complexities of shark depredation. Biological Conservation, 272.
• Mason J, Eurich J, Lau J, Battista W, Free C, Mills K, Tokunaga K, Zhao L, Dickey-Collas M, Valle M, Pecl G, Cinner J, McClanahan T, Allison E, Friedman W, Silva C, Yanez E, Barbieri M and Kleisner K (2022) Attributes of climate resilience in fisheries: from theory to practice. Fish and Fisheries, 23 (3). pp. 522-544
• Bassett H, Lau J, Giordano C, Suri S, Advani S and Sharan S (2021) Preliminary lessons from COVID-19 disruptions of small-scale fishery supply chains. World Development, 143.
• Lau J, Sutcliffe S, Barnes M, Mbaru E, Muly I, Muthiga N, Wanyonyi S and Cinner J (2021) COVID-19 impacts on coastal communities in Kenya. Marine Policy, 134.
• Lau J, Song A, Morrison T, Fabinyi M, Brown K, Blythe J, Allison E and Adger W (2021) Morals and climate decision-making: insights from social and behavioural sciences. Current Opinion in Environmental Sustainability, 52. pp. 27-35
• Lau J, Kleiber D, Lawless S and Cohen P (2021) Gender equality in climate policy and practice hindered by assumptions. Nature Climate Change, 11. pp. 186-192
• Lau J, Gurney G and Cinner J (2021) Environmental justice in coastal systems: perspectives from communities confronting change. Global Environmental Change, 66.
• Rojas C, Cinner J, Lau J, Ruano-Chamorro C, Contreras-Drey F and Gelcich S (2021) An experimental look at trust, bargaining, and public goods in fishing communities. Scientific Reports, 11.

More

ResearchOnline@JCU stores 21+ research outputs authored by Dr Jacqueline Lau from 2018 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

• Macro and Micro Level Determinants of the Contribution of Fish to Nutritional Security (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Building Social Resilience to rapid change in Coastal Communities (PhD , Secondary Advisor)
• Political economy of youth-led food system transformations (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.

• Lau, J. (2020) Surveys on the importance of coastal ecosystem services in developing coastal communities, Papua New Guinea. 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.