About us

Conserving, protecting and transforming our regions.

Established in 2021, the Future Regions Research Centre (FRRC) brings together expert research and local knowledge to tackle challenges ranging from the transition towards new energy to helping regional communities recover from bushfire and drought.

This expertise is embodied by our multidisciplinary teams who are working to develop new knowledge and innovative solutions to the grand challenges facing our environments.

These challenges include:

  • managing land and water and its associated infrastructure and integration within the agricultural sector
  • supporting and restoring ecosystems affected by primary industries and other activities (particularly mining)
  • understanding the role of people at a time of significant societal and environmental change
  • understanding the requirements to adapt to climate change and to more actively involve our first peoples in the nation’s future

Understanding and managing the world we live in, from the constructed to the natural, is an emerging area of critical global concern. This will require a high level of continual research to facilitate solutions that balance the needs of society with the protection of the environment. To address these concerns, the multidisciplinary FRRC collaborates with Indigenous communities, government, industry partners and international collaborators.

FRRC’s objectives

The principal objectives of FRRC are to:

  • Support local and regional communities and stakeholders through research to ensure value add and benefit through sustainable land resource management of anthropogenic and natural environments.
  • Guide a beneficial future use of degraded, mined and otherwise disturbed landscapes by rebuilding stable and sustainable landforms.
  • Explore the application of circular economy in the region as an economic integrator and wealth accelerator for local industries and products.
  • Promote heritage priorities and longitudinal research strategies for sustaining regional communities. This will be done from a humanities and social sciences (HASS) perspective working in tandem with sustainable science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) research priorities of the Centre and driven at the directorial level.
  • Collaborate with local communities and stakeholders affected by bushfire and drought to elevate their pathway to recovery.

FRRC will build on Federation University’s proven success to seek new knowledge and innovative solutions to the grand challenges of climate change, current and past mining activities, management practices that have affected agricultural and native land reserves, and potable water catchments.

FRRC’s research streams

FRRC’s objectives are aligned with its five research streams:

Brochure

Download the Future Regions Research Centre brochure (PDF, 1.15mb).

Contact

For queries about FRRC’s research, or to discuss collaborating or researching with us, get in touch with the Centre Directors via the Contact page.