Associate ProfessorFiona Andrews

I am currently co-Leader (with Professor Richard Tucker from the School of Architecture) of the HOME Research Hub (a Strategic Research and Innovation Centre) at Deakin. The team I lead offers a rare disciplinary combination in housing research in Australia – diverse expertise located at the nexus of theory and practice in health, built environment, social enquiry, economics, and law. For a “wicked” problem like Australia’s housing crisis, it’s vital to able to integrate differing perspectives, frameworks, epistemologies, methods, and theories into a holistic understanding. Successful responses to problems such as rapidly growing urban populations and ageing populations, shifting job markets, and shifting patterns of migrancy and inequality lie far beyond the scope of any one discipline. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about the work taking place at HOME to make use of the link provided in the sidebar.

Within HOME, I am particularly interested in research projects at the interface of health and the built environment. A key example is research I led commissioned by the Victorian Planning Department on family-friendly apartment design to guide 1) the Victorian Future Homes Demonstration Project design competition 2) recommendations on changes to Victorian Planning Policy. This project resulted in three Q1 peer-reviewed publications, two reports and an invited public presentation. The findings from our reports have had a direct impact in guiding the family-friendly design aspect of the Victorian Government Future Homes project: https://www.vic.gov.au/future-homes. You can read more about my research under the My Research and My Research Outputs tabs on this page.

My teaching practice is informed by my own life-long learning journey through academia. My passion lays with postgraduate teaching and particularly the opportunity to impart my knowledge as a scholar with careers in two different health fields (biomedicine and public health), as well with working across disciplines. I currently chair and teach postgraduate course work thesis units undertaken by students from six different Masters courses at Deakin (public health, health promotion, disability and incision, health and human services management, health economics, play therapy). I am always interested in partnering with government, NGOs and the community sector to provide our students with authentic research projects. I encourage anyone interested in learning more about these opportunities to contact me my via my email provide in the sidebar.


Research Groups
Co-Director of the HOME Strategic Research and Innovation Centre:
https://deakinhomeresearchhub.com/