Paul Peace

Headshot of man at a beach
PhD Researcher

Content navigation

About

Paul Peace began his PhD journey with the Australian National Centre for the Public Awareness of Science, CPAS, at The Australian National University in Feb 2023. 

He is studying the scientific communication of the contribution of dietary overconsumption to planetary destabilisation. 

That is, when we eat and drink more than our calorific and nutritional needs, it increases the need for agriculture. This in turn increases local and global environmental impacts. Routine overconsumption affects human health. 

He feels both honoured and humbled to be studying at the university and to have been awarded an Australian Government Research Training Program (AGRTP) Stipend Scholarship. 

Paul has a PhD in the social construction of gender (feminist analysis), a BSc (Hons) Psychology and a PgCert Social Science Research Methods. 

Affiliations

Research interests

His interests are transdisciplinary: 

  • Science communication 
  • Environmental communication 
  • Food systems, food environment, food labelling 
  • Ecology 
  • Soils 
  • Conservation 
  • Agriculture 
  • Environment 
  • Climate change 
  • Biodiversity loss and extinction 
  • Fertiliser pollution of land and water, nutrient flows 
  • Land use change, e.g., deforestation 
  • Novel entities in the environment (human-made, e.g., microplastics) 
  • Health e.g., cardiovascular disease, type 2 diabetes, stroke, etc 
  • Indigenous knowledge and culture 
  • Social structures, culture, power, equity 
  • Psychology 
  • Individual pro-environmental behaviour change and policy 
  • Animal welfare and ethics
  • Sustainability, degrowth, Doughnut Economics 

It’s a challenging nexus, and sustainable food futures are a fascinating wicked problem to research and to communicate. 

Curious dispositions 

  • Eats a low-fat whole food vegan diet.
  • Grows food, including Australian bushtucker. 
  • Planted his garden with over 600 local native plants 
  • Loves wildlife. Wants a pademelon. Knows he can’t have one. 
  • Diagnosed autism. 
  • Wrote an as-yet unpublished evidence-informed book called How to be Autistic (for people who are missing out!) 
  • Songwriter and previous band life as a guitarist and reluctant singer 
  • Penned over 2,000 unpublished one-liner jokes, e.g. (don’t laugh): I went to a reflexologist after stepping in wet concrete. She said, “If you ever set foot in here again...”

Location

Due to autistic sensitivities and in the interests of productivity, Paul is usually found working from home in Gubbi Gubbi Country / Sunshine Coast, Queensland. He migrated from England, uninvited by First Nations people. He lives near Murdering Creek, named after local colonial atrocities in 1862. He works towards treading ever more lightly. He pays his respects to elders past and present, as well as the Ngunnawal and Ngambri people of the Canberra region in which the university stands.

Publications

Peace, P. (2003) 'Balancing power: the discursive maintenance of gender inequality by wo/men at university', Feminism and Psychology. 13(2): 159-180. Sage. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/0959353503013002003  

Peace, P. (2000) 'Women's discursive construction of masculinities', paper presented at the First International Gender and Language Association Conference, Stanford University, California, USA 

Gough, B. and Peace, P. (2000) 'Reconstructing gender at university: men as victims', Gender and Education. 12(3): 385–398. https://doi.org/10.1080/09540250050122267

Social media