The Scoping Study is supported by a Management Team and approximately 20 international teams. Meet the Management Team:
Wesley Imms is Associate Professor in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, a Director of the University of Melbourne’s Learning Environments Applied Research Network (LEaRN), and Director of LEaRN@MGSE. In these roles he teaches into Masters and Doctoral programs on subjects that bridge curriculum and learning environments and conducts research projects working with individual schools through to whole education systems. He has authored approximately 80 scholarly papers, government and industry research reports and books on learning environments use and evaluation. He has secured over $13M in external funding for this research. He is currently principal supervisor to 10 PhD theses on learning environments, involving students from five countries and four Australian states. A/Prof Imms has been Lead Chief Investigator on Australian Research Council Linkage projects that are building an extensive evidence base on learning environment use, including the now completed Evaluating 21st century Learning Environments, and currently the significant Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC) project. He is also lead Chief Investigator on the significant Plans to Pedagogy project building teacher spatial competency skills in schools across Australia and New Zealand.
Julia Morris is a Senior Lecturer and Course Coordinator for Visual Arts Education (Secondary) in the School of Education at Edith Cowan University, Australia. She is an Honorary Fellow with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Her research focuses on the impact of teachers and learning environments on students’ engagement in learning. With an interest in using mixed methods designs in applied research, Dr Morris won the 2017 Western Australian Institute for Educational Research Early Career Award for Research and received a High Commendation for Best Paper in the Research Methodology in Education Special Interest Group at the British Educational Research Association Conference in 2019. She has secured over $550,000 in research funding since 2014, with her research being largely interdisciplinary and industry focused. Dr Morris currently supervises 11 higher degree by research students in the areas of tertiary student self-efficacy and engagement, teacher professional learning, and developing creative pedagogies.
Marian Mahat is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne. She has more than twenty years of professional and academic experience, spanning several universities, the Australian Federal and local governments, as well as the private sector. Her research focuses on learning environments, with an emphasis on co-designing curriculum and pedagogy, teacher-led inquiry, and professional development of teachers across different educational contexts. Drawing on innovative quantitative and qualitative methodologies and interdisciplinary collaboration, she has authored over 50 peer-reviewed journal articles, book chapters, and reports, and secured over $AUD1.3M in external research funding. She was the lead Research Fellow and Research Manager of the AUD$2M Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change project. She also leads a series of micro-credentials on Leading Change in Learning Environments. Marian is highly passionate about building capacity and capability of academic staff at universities. In addition to her research in learning environments, she is series editor of the Surviving and Thriving in Academia and book editor of Achieving Academic Promotion and Women Thriving in Academia published by Emerald.
Colin Campbell is a Concept Creator with Saint-Goblin SageGlass. He has worked for many years as a specialist in educational spaces design, indoor environmental qualities (IEQs) like air, thermal, daylighting and particularly acoustics. On a mission to motivate an holistic multi-disciplinary approach to learning spaces design which includes joined up thinking around the key IEQs. Learning more about the impact of IEQs and their connection to supporting innovative and sustainable learning spaces. Active in industry advocacy and stakeholder engagement, linking future research collaborative opportunities to better enable and support innovative and sustainable learning environments. He spent 12 years living in Sweden, leading the Global Concept Development for Educational Environments and matrix managing local Concept Developers in the education sector focusing on acoustic design for sustainable learning spaces across, Europe, India, South Africa and South America.
Colin is an Interior and Environmental Design graduate with a broad range of industry experience and was recently an Industry Investigator on behalf of Saint-Gobain Ecophon an Industry Partner in the Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC) ARC research project. He is also an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne.
Chris Bradbeer is an Associate Principal at Stonefields School in Auckland, New Zealand, an Honorary Fellow at the University of Melbourne, and a professional learning facilitator for the Stonefields Collaborative Trust. His work looks at developing connections between pedagogy and space, growing collaborative capacity and skills, and harnessing student voice to inform decision-making. His PhD research, completed in 2020 through the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, focuses on teacher collaboration in innovative learning environments. Chris was a part-time Research Fellow on the recent Innovative Learning Environments and Teacher Change (ILETC) project. He is the immediate Past Chair of Learning Environments Australasia.
Lauren Clark combines her design skills garnered during her time as a practicing Interior Architecture, with her deep interest in how our brains take in and interpret the world around us, together with a firm belief that her skills as a facilitator, workshop designer & builder of community (both FTF & online) all lead to more diverse, relevant and imaginative work despite geographical distance within teams. Lauren has explored both the changing world of learning & work through her varied design & applied research work over the last decade. She holds a deep fascination for non-visual aspects of design, & promotes their impact on achieving functional, beautiful spaces. Acknowledging that the design of space is only one element, her focus has widened to include human behaviour within space & teams.
Located in South Africa, but working across Africa, Middle East, Eastern Europe, Asia Pacific and Latin America, she brings together this expertise in her three current roles: ILE+SE management team member with a focus on designing and building the workshops to facilitate the research process; as an as International Concept Develop for Ecophon, Sweden, where she carries out training and applied research on the changing world of work & learning environments, with a focus on sound, psychoacoustics, user agency & user choice; and as a digital facilitator and coach within the change consultancy Better Work, embedding new ways of working within teams. She holds an BSc (Hons) in Interior Architecture from University of Pretoria, South Africa, is a licensed Sensory Intelligence practitioner (Sensory Intelligence) and is an altMBA alumni.