Best PhD Thesis awarded to CRC student

CRC associate student Dr Daniel May has won the Fire 2021 Best PhD Thesis Award for his research into the political and cultural influence of understanding Indigenous fire in settler societies.

As recipient of this award, Dr May will receive 800 Swiss Francs (approximately $1187 AUD), a certificate and a chance to publish a paper in Fire before the end of 2022.

Fire is an international, peer-reviewed, open access journal about the science, policy and technology of vegetation fires and how they interact with communities and the environment, broadly defined, published quarterly online by the Multidisciplinary Digital Publishing Institute.

CRC Research Director Dr John Bates congratulated Dr May on his award.

“The Fire Best PhD Thesis Award is a testament to the value of Daniel’s research and the effort he has put in over many years. Congratulations Daniel on this fantastic recognition,” Dr Bates said.

Dr May completed his PhD, Taking fire: the historical and contemporary politics of Indigenous burning in Australia and the western United States, with the Australian National University in February 2021. He is now working at the Parliamentary Library as a research associate in the Science, Technology, Environment and Resources section. His PhD investigated how non-Indigenous understandings of Indigenous fire have not been confined to the academy as anthropological curiosities, but have historically been political incendiaries that competing interest groups have attempted to draw upon, appropriate or deny.

In 2018, Dr May was awarded the Endeavour Research Fellowship through the Australian National University and visited the United States to work alongside leading geographer and expert on Native American and Aboriginal Australian fire management practices, Professor Don Hankins at California State University. As part of the trip, Dr May took part in prescribed burns, researching historical fire management, and gathering information on how the cultural burning movement in the US compares to Australia.

Dr May has authored the chapter ‘Shallow fire literacy hinders robust fire policy: Black Saturday and prescribed burning debates’ in the book Disasters in Australia and New Zealand: Historical Approaches to Understanding Catastrophe (Palgrave Macmillan, 2020). He has also written a feature article for Inside Story and Fire Australia.