About us

Living Lab Northern Rivers is a space where research and community come together to create the solutions that will allow our region to thrive in uncertainty. 

A collaboration between two universities and the NSW government, our strength comes from the diversity of groups we bring to the table.

Here, everyone gets the chance to contribute, from farmers to academics, tradies to engineers, Indigenous elders to teenagers, environmental scientists to baristas, architects to musicians, plus any Northern Rivers locals who stroll into our Lismore shopfront.     

Recent events across our region have shown the old systems are outdated. We need fresh knowledge to create new ways of doing things to help rebuild better now and pump-up resilience for the future.

It's a mammoth task, but one we believe can be achieved by combining lived experience with rigorous research across a wide range of disciplines.  

Our values

While flooding has always been part of the Northern Rivers environment, long before the arrival of Europeans, the scale of disasters in 2022 exposed the growing impact of colonial land use, natural resource management, and the changing climate. 

The level of destruction wrought on our towns and villages, from the Clarence to Kyogle and the Tweed, showed we're now living with unacceptable levels of risk. It's clear we need reassess the way we live – from the structures we build, to the locations we develop, to the knowledge we consider relevant. Everything requires fresh eyes.

To achieve these goals, Living Lab Northern Rivers aims to build dialogue around the systems we have to redesign and adapt between a diverse range of stakeholders and knowledge keepers.

We're committed to helping envision and design new strategies for how we develop, care for, and enjoy the land on which we live.

We acknowledge

The traditional custodians of these lands and waters and look to Indigenous land management values and practices to inform and drive our work.

The collective and individual trauma impacting our communities.

The diversity of lived experiences and value systems that have informed and will continue to inform the decisions we make collectively and the systems we design to make those decisions.

The urgent need to fundamentally reassess the physical, governance, and economic structures that have shaped our lived experiences

What we do

Support authentic community engagement in complex planning work. Create and maintain opportunities for learning about the technical details of our region’s challenges such as flood mitigation, infrastructure design, and housing.

Focus on spatial planning and design, acknowledging that to do this work we must seek to understand and work with all cultural, economic, health, and environmental systems.

Utilise academic research networks to develop an evidence base that informs decision making and supports the growth of community literacy around critical technical issues.

Create and maintain a space where local, community-based knowledge connects with technical expertise to co-design strategies for adaptation and systems change.

Provide an agile and rigorous testing ground for solutions to the complex issues of climate resilient development in the Northern Rivers.

Our executive leadership team

  • Elizabeth Mossop

    ACADEMIC DIRECTOR
    EXECUTIVE TEAM MEMBER

    Elizabeth is Professor of Landscape Architecture and Academic Director of Living Lab Northern Rivers. She is a Strategic Lead Creative Industries, Faculty of Design Architecture and Building at University of Technology Sydney. Recently, she has been appointed Adjunct Professor, Southern Cross University.

    She has held leadership positions at Harvard Graduate School of Design, the Robert Reich School of Landscape Architecture at Louisiana State University and the University of NSW. She is a founding principal of Spackman Mossop Michaels landscape architects, based in Sydney, New Orleans and Detroit. Her research and practice is concerned with landscape’s role in urban revitalization and resilient communities and cities in the face of climate change.

    Elizabeth was extensively involved in the recovery and rebuilding of New Orleans post Hurricane Katrina. She was instrumental in the creation of the Coastal Sustainability Studio at LSU, a multi-disciplinary research laboratory that has been profoundly influential in the direction of Louisiana’s efforts in resilience planning and design, as well as education.

  • Ben Roche

    EXECUTIVE TEAM

    As Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research & Education Impact), Ben leads the University’s strategic impact agenda in research and education.

    As a human geographer, Ben is passionate about participatory approaches to sustainable development and the role that education and engagement can play in creating resilience, capacity and well-being in communities. He has taught, researched and practised in the areas of community-based learning, participatory planning, sustainable development and community engagement. Ben also provides advice to various organisations and governments on strategic approaches to education, engagement and development.

    Ben's contribution to community engagement in higher education, specifically service learning in built environment disciplines, has been recognised through a national Carrick Citation. For this work, he also received the Edith Cowan Authentic Learning Award from the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia. In 2019, Ben received the Australian Financial Review Higher Education Award for Best Industry Engagement and the Business Higher Education Roundtable Award for Excellence in Community Engagement for the national pilot program, Farming Together. Ben is the Immediate Past President of Engagement Australia.

  • Mary Spongberg

    EXECUTIVE TEAM

    Professor Mary Spongberg is the Senior Deputy Vice-Chancellor (Research and Academic Capability) and has the strategic responsibility for all research functions, including government and industry partnerships and research training.

    She is directly responsible for the Office of Research, the Graduate School, Research Institutes and the Environmental Analysis Laboratory (a commercial research enterprise). She has recently overseen a transformation in the SCU research landscape, with the establishment of four new Research Impact Clusters [Catchments, Coasts and Communities; From Harvest to Health; Reefs and Oceans; Zero Waste] relevant to the work of the Living Lab.

    Prior to coming to SCU, she held the position of Dean of Arts and Science at the University of Technology Sydney, where she developed the HASS/STEM research strategy and established the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges, the Centre for Climate Justice and the History Lab.

Our core staff

  • Dan Etheridge

    ENGAGEMENT DIRECTOR

    Dan Etheridge brings over 18 years of experience in the public interest design field to his role as Director of Living Lab Northern Rivers. After graduating from Southern Cross University’s Applied Science in Coastal Management program in 2002, Dan returned to New Orleans, Louisiana where he had studied for a semester as part of an SCU exchange program.

    In Louisiana, Dan worked for Tulane University helping to establish applied research coastal restoration programs and ultimately working with the Tulane School of Architecture to open a community design center. The Tulane City Center was founded to support resident driven recovery and rebuilding programs after Hurricane Katrina. Dan helped direct the TCC for 10 years, establishing it as a critical component of the recovery and resilience infrastructure in the New Orleans area and one of the leading university-based community design centers in the country. Dan went on to co-found and direct the Public Interest Design Student Leadership Forum based out of University of Texas, Austin, a program that built a network of design and planning schools across America and developed an intensive short format curriculum focused on skills development for applying design and planning in the public interest.

    In a consulting capacity Dan has also worked with a range of clients - including the United Houma Nation and ANU College of Engineering and Computer Science - on projects relating to community driven design and planning, disaster recovery, and developing partnership models and collaborative design processes for universities and non-profit organisations.

  • Megan Louis

    DESIGN AND DELIVERY LEAD

    Meg has an extensive background in design, communications and production management, and brings over 20 years of experience to her role at Living Lab Northern Rivers. She values design thinking and considered engagement, understanding that these are essential for finding purpose-led and people-centred solutions.

    Her past roles in the arts and cultural sector, academic and commercial publishing, as well as running her own design studio, have required her to understand diverse client and stakeholder needs and aspirations. Meg’s ability to be both creative and practical enables her to apply her imagination to designing communication and engagement strategies, and then pragmatically leading a project team to their successful delivery.

  • Zerina Millard

    COMMUNITY ENGAGEMENT LEAD

    Zerina is a versatile professional with extensive experience in business administration, community arts engagement, creative arts therapy, and yoga. She is the founding director of Flo Gardens, a freshwater ecosystem and land regeneration company, and Bollywood Sisters, a dance company advocating for inclusivity and social change.

    Zerina has collaborated with various groups, including youth, individuals with disabilities, and older adults. Following the 2022 floods, she engaged in creative recovery projects in the Northern Rivers region, emphasizing trauma-informed practices in disaster recovery. Passionate about promoting inclusion, access, and equality, Zerina operates within the community engagement framework.

  • Suzie Fawcett

    TEAM SUPPORT

    Suzie has had a diverse career, with roles in broadcast journalism and the New South Wales Parliament, complemented by extensive travel as a private chef on large sailing yachts. In 2018, she returned to study and completed a Bachelor of Arts (majoring in Indigenous Knowledge) at Southern Cross University (SCU).

    Suzie values the teachings of the SCU staff, especially the GNIBI School of Indigenous Knowledge. While at SCU, she actively participated in peer support programs and became the inaugural host of the podcast series, SCU Buzz. Post-studies, she continued as Peer Program Coordinator in the Learning Zone.

    Suzie brings a diverse skill set —including communication, critical thinking, and administrative (and nurturing) abilities—to her role at Living Lab Northern Rivers.

  • Belinda Evans

    MARKETING AND COMMUNICATIONS COORDINATOR

    Belinda is an accomplished communications and community engagement professional. She brings an extensive background in sustainability communications and behaviour change to her role, with over 15 years of experience working collaboratively with communities in the local government and not-for-profit sectors.

    She is passionate about connecting people with the natural world through storytelling and building resilience into local food systems.