Dr Marwan El Hassan

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Honorary Lecturer
Fenner School of Environment and Society

Marwan has a background in Agricultural and Animal Sciences, Agroforestry and Natural Resource Management. He did a PhD at the Fenner School of Environment and Society on sustainable management of the Australian rangeland goats. Marwan came to his PhD from a career in agriculture. After graduating with a M.Sc. in Animal science from the American University of Beirut, he worked in the poultry industry for two years before joining the Lebanese Ministry of Agriculture, where he worked as a forester for 3 years then as an extension officer in animal husbandry and nutrition. After coming to Australia in 2008, Marwan joined RSPCA Australia where he worked as Standards and Compliance manager of the Approved Farming Scheme before joining ANU for his PhD. Marwan investigated the rangeland goat industry as a social ecological system characterised by the conundrum around goats as a pest and resource. Marwan used evidence-based systems frameworks to propose solutions for future collaborative management of goats towards environmental sustainability and growth of Australia's goat meat industry. During his PhD, Marwan also taught in a number of courses and acted as HDR leader for a total of 3 years. Marwan is currently an honorary lecturer in Fenner School of Environment and Society.

Research interests

Marwan's research interests include applying systems thinking from the fields of human ecology and resilience to address challenges around sustainability and complex human environmental issues. Marwan is interested in developing systems-based conceptual frameworks and scenario models to explore the often-wicked problems that characterise social ecological systems and understand the dynamics and behaviour of these systems. Marwan is also interested in the idea of innovation platforms to establish partnerships and facilitate dialogue and collaboration towards a shared understanding and co-management of complex social ecological systems. He is keen to expand his understanding of the goat problem by applying other theories, particularly adaptive pathways and Theory of Change. Ultimately, Marwan would like the opportunity to scale the lessons learnt from studying the goat social ecological system to other similarly complex problems.

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