Dr Kirsty Wissing

Trained as an anthropologist, Kirsty’s research considers the values, perspectives, relationships and resource responsibilities that various communities - including Indigenous and customary communities - have with and for tangible and intangible environments in Australia, Ghana and, to a lesser extent, Germany. Her work sits at the intersection of cross-cultural approaches to socioenvironemntal issues to energy transitions, flooding, invasive species incursions and loss of biodiversity.

Kirsty is currently undertaking a research fellowship at the ANU Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science (CPAS), joining an international team to consider plural values on the life-cycle of copper supply chains, with her research particuarly focussed on forecasted closures of copper mines/smelters in the Australian context.

Kirsty has previously worked as a research fellowship at the ANU and CSIRO considering Indigenous Australians' water cultural values and perspectives on flood resilience in the Richmond River catchment of the Northern Rivers region, Australia. Prior to this, she undertook a postdoctoral research fellowship at the CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. Here she conducted a qualitative application of Indigenous biocultural knowledge and values in synthetic biology with colleagues and community members in the Torres Strait, Australia.  

Kirsty's PhD research considered customary socio-religious attitudes to and uses of water and other fluids in relation to ideas of cleanliness/purity, resource control and morality. Based on 14 months of ethnographic field research in Ghana, Kirsty's thesis sought to bring local Akwamu values into dialogue with larger national issues of environmental resource responsibility, energy production and socio-political power.

Kirsty also has has applied research experience with Australian Indigenous communities under Native Title and Aboriginal Land Rights legislation in the Northern Territory and Western Australia, having worked for the Central Land Council (CLC) and Yamatji Marlpa Aboriginal Corporation (YMAC) respectively. She has also conducted research into and managed programs about the petroleum, mining and energy industries in Ghana for a not-for-profit policy think tank titled the Africa Centre for Energy Policy (ACEP). As a consultant within an inter-disciplinary team, Kirsty has compared customary law, cultural heritage protection and mining in Ghana and Western Australia for the University of Western Australia and the International Mining for Development Centre.