ProfessorRichard Tucker

I am currently co-Leader of the HOME Strategic Research and Innovation Centre at Deakin. HOME 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.

My approach towards research has echoed my teaching focus on how best to design in teams, for it has always been guided by a firm belief, not only in the efficacy of collaboration, but also in the compelling need for transdisciplinary outcomes based on the interdisciplinary knowledge and methods of multidisciplinary research expertise. In this sense, my co-leadership of HOME is the culmination of a career that has been fired by my passion for interdisciplinary collaboration. Before my focus on housing, I formed research teams around assessment and teaching innovation with over 40 colleagues from seven academic institutions and a dozen industry partners, and led numerous cross-Faculty research projects on assessment practices with colleagues from the faculties of Health, Arts and Education, and Business and Law. My teaching and research coalesced in the leadership of a Category 1 funded multi-institutional project on teaching and assessing teamwork in the design disciplines. Effective assessment and learning in teamwork contexts are now the key aims of my teaching, informing an expertise increasingly relevant and valuable in a higher education environment where group learning is the almost ubiquitous result of ever-growing cohorts.

My research-led innovation over the last 15 years has spanned numerous roles in projects with institutionally and nationally influential outcomes and recognition, including:
• An Australian Learning and Teaching Centre (ALTC)-funded project Assessing Creativity: Strategies & Tools to support Teaching and Learning in Architecture & Design;
• An Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT)-funded Innovation & Development project Enhancing and assessing group and team learning in architecture and related design contexts. This project made recommendations for sector-wide changes to the assessment of teamwork in design learning.
• SGN Researcher of the Year Award, Living with Disability category (Design4Diversity team)
• National Award in Excellence, AILIA National Awards Category 10: RESEARCH, POLICY AND COMMUNICATIONS, for Re-casting Terra Nullius Blindness: Empowering Indigenous Protocols and Knowledge in Australian University Built Environment Education
• Planning Institute of Australia (national-level) ‘Cutting Edge in Teaching & Research’ Award of Excellence for 2020 for Re-casting Terra Nullius Blindness: Empowering Indigenous Protocols and Knowledge in Australian University Built Environment Education
• Finalists in the Engagement Australia 2022 Excellence Awards – Award for Outstanding Engagement for Research Impact – for the project: From Microvillage to Transitional Housing for Homeless Men