ProfessorNancy Marshall

Nancy’s research priorities fall under the specific categories of city design and place-making through planning strategies and social policy. This includes the interplay of governance, planning trends and how that manifests in and influences the contested concept of place. Green/open, grey/urban and smart social space becomes place when infused with sociocultural, economic and environmental value and meaning. People create and construct place intellectually, intuitively and experientially. Her research documents the process of place identity, 'imageability' and articulates one’s ‘sense of belonging’ and 'connectedness' to place, especially urban parklands and smart city spaces.

Her place-making research challenges how city-makers traditionally document ‘sense of place.’ Discourse analysis of creative representations of place—through for example painting, photography, artistic installation, sculpture, story-telling, multimultimedia and soundscapes—provides a way of understanding relationships between seemingly disparate ways of knowing a place and allows an exploration of understanding place. The final aspect of Nancy’s place-making research explores how people experience a place and recollect memory and how the imagination of history or the future can add to their quality of life.

Nancy’s Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research underpins her approach as both a teacher and as an educational leader and manager. Current research includes studying higher education contexts for students and universities. This includes the education of professional theories of knowledge, authority, education and practices working in today’s neocorporate ideology based on corporate structure and third sector co-governance.