By Derek Schlennstedt
A PHD student at Monash University with a passion for Sustainable Development is one of 17 leading students Australia-wide named as a Westpac Future Leaders Scholar.
Kallista local, Jarrod Grainger-Brown was awarded a Future Leaders scholarship in December from the Westpac Scholars Trust, to help his research into urbanisation and sustainable planning.
His PhD integrates the Sustainable Development Goals in urban and city planning, to ensure that the prosperity offered by cities does not threaten Australia’s future sustainability.
Speaking to the Mail Jarrod (23) said the scholarship will further help his studies, and that he was humbled to have been one of 17 in the country to receive a scholarship.
“It’s an amazing opportunity and as a student from Kallista it is incredibly humbling,” he said.
“Really my PHD comes back to this idea of trying to ensure the prosperity that cities or areas offer without threatening Australia’s future sustainability.
“Trying to balance sustainability and prosperity as the population in Australia keeps on expanding.
“To balance this sustainability and prosperity reality we need to think about quite a few issues at once … so what I’m trying to do is make a reasonably simple framework that still consider lots of different factors and tries to balance these two.”
Each scholarship recipient receives up to $120,000 to cover their postgraduate studies, a nine-month bespoke leadership development program and the opportunity to study abroad.
With this scholarship, Jarrod said he will be able to travel to, and incorporate knowledge from distant countries and foreign contexts into his research.
“I think it will improve my studies in many ways,” he said.
“Urbanisation and city research is occurring worldwide and all the cities around the world are facing this problem and there’s a lot of researchers looking at it.
“The ability to travel overseas and research for a reasonably long periods of time with an international university gives a better outlook and context to what my work will be.
“Planning on doing an comparison between the planning approaches in Asia and then another city in Europe so I can actually travel to these places and understand what they do rather than just reading it in a book.”
