Timothy Heffernan is a Postdoctoral Fellow at UNSW School of Built Environment and a Visiting Researcher at the ANU Research School of Psychology and Medicine (2022-24). Tim holds a PhD in Social Science from UNSW Sydney.
Tim's research interests include the 'lived experience' of event-based hardship and recovery. Tim's PhD in anthropology examined the impact of the Global Financial Crisis (GFC) on European society and culture, particularly Iceland, and the emergence of concerned citizens' movements in response to the GFC.
Current research at UNSW and ANU seeks to identify how best to support individuals and communities in Australia to be resilient to, and recover from, human-induced climate change, especially bushfires and floods. This extends to the characteristics of building resilient towns and citizens.
Tim has previously worked at the Native Title Research Unit (NTRU) at the Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies.
Experience
2020–present
Research assistant, Australian National University
2021–present
Postdoctoral fellow, UNSW Australia
2015–2021
Sessional Academic, UNSW Australia
2015–2016
Research assistant, Australian Institute of Aboriginal & Torres Strait Islander Studies
Education
2022
UNSW Australia, Ph.D. Social Science
2014
UNSW Australia, Bachelor of Arts & Social Science (Hons, Class 1)
2013
UNSW Australia, Bachelor of Arts
Publications
2023
Social group connections support mental health following wildfire, Social Psychiatry and Psychiatric Epidemiology, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00127-023-02519-8
2023
Predictors of individual mental health and psychological resilience after Australia’s 2019/2020 bushfires, Australian & New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry, https://doi.org/10.1177/00048674231175618
2022
Economic Anthropology in View of the Global Financial Crisis, The Palgrave Handbook of the History of Human Sciences
2022
Mental health, wellbeing and resilience after the 2019-20 bushfires: The Australian national bushfire health and wellbeing survey—A preliminary report, ANU Research School of Psychology. https://dx.doi.org/10.25911/AG7D-7574
2020
“Where Is the New Constitution?” Public Protest and Community-Building in Post–Economic Collapse Iceland, Conflict and Society, vol. 6, no. 1, pp. 236–254. https://doi.org/10.3167/arcs.2020.060114
2020
Crisis futures: The affects and temporalities of economic collapse in Iceland, History and Anthropology, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 314-330. https://doi.org/10.1080/02757206.2020.1762589
2020
Crisis and Belonging: Protest Voices and Empathic Solidarity in Post-Economic Collapse Iceland, Religions, vol. 11, no. 1, pp. 22. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel11010022
2016
Livelihood values in Indigenous cultural fishing: Report of a meeting with Indigenous cultural fishers on the south coast of NSW, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra ISBN 9781922102430
2015
Implementing native title: Indigenous leadership in land and water livelihoods, Australian Institute of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies, Canberra ISBN 9781922102409
Professional Memberships
Australian Anthropology Society
European Association of Social Anthropologists (EASA)