Rate My Professor Lynda Cheshire

Professor Lynda Cheshire is the Head of School in the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland, within the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. She obtained her Bachelor's degree in sociology from the University of Wales and her PhD in sociology from Central Queensland University. After moving to Australia, she took up a position at the University of Queensland, where she held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship from 2011 to 2015. Cheshire teaches SOCY2019 Introduction to Social Research and welcomes inquiries from prospective Honours and Higher Degree Research students interested in topics related to community, neighbourhoods, housing, or allied areas.

Her research examines community, neighbourhoods, and housing, focusing on how people live and interact in contemporary local communities; how structural and policy processes affect those communities and the relationships within them; and the consequences of these dynamics for well-being, attachment to home and place, conflict, social exclusion, and cohesion. Studies have covered rural areas, remote fly-in fly-out mining communities, outer-suburban master planned estates, inner-city gentrifying suburbs, low-income neighbourhoods, and new housing developments for older public housing tenants and people with severe and persistent mental health challenges. She currently leads an ARC Discovery grant-funded program on ‘un-neighbourliness,’ exploring the nature, causes, outcomes, and broader effects of neighbour problems, particularly under urban changes such as consolidation and gentrification. Cheshire is also an international partner on the ESRC’s Connected Communities consortium and the Wales Institute of Social and Economic Research, Data and Methods (WISERDII). Key publications include the book Neighbours around the World: An International Look at the People Next Door (2022), co-editing the Routledge International Handbook of Rural Studies (2016), and authoring Governing Rural Development: Discourses and Practices of Self-Help in Australian Rural Policy (2006). Highly cited works are “Contemporary Strategies for Rural Community Development in Australia: A Governmentality Perspective” (2000) and “A Corporate Responsibility? The Constitution of Fly-in, Fly-out Mining Companies as Governance Partners in Remote, Mine-affected Localities” (2010). She has secured numerous ARC grants, including Discovery and Linkage Projects, contributing to advancements in sociology, rural studies, housing, and urban policy.