Roselyn Kumar is a Research Fellow in the School of Law and Society. Roselyn has had the opportunity to work in the Pacific for more than two decades in environmental change, palaeoreconstructions, and traditional and local knowledge of diverse groups of Pacific peoples. She has a long-standing interest in the responses and coping strategies of diverse communities across the Pacific, particularly their culturally-grounded traditional and local knowledge for coping with climate and environmental change in order to maintain livelihood security. Roselyn believes that solutions to place-based community vulnerability arising from climate change will emerge when communities lead adaptation initiatives that incorporate inputs from others.
Roselyn's interests range from Lapita-era archaeology and ceramic mineralogy to tropical palaeoclimatology and palaeoenvironmental reconstructions from giant clam sclerochronology, the topic of her PhD, currently submitted. She has worked on several research projects at UniSC and elsewhere, including ones funded by the Australian Research Council, British Museum, and DFAT.
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Research Grants
|
Grant/project name |
Investigators |
Funding body and AUD$ value |
Year(s) |
Focus of research grant |
|
“Traditions of Artificial-Island Construction in the Western Pacific Islands”
|
Professor Patrick Nunn (UniSC), Roselyn Kumar (UniSC) and Dr Tricia King (UniSC) |
British Museum (EMKP); $187,000.
|
2025 - 2027 |
Documenting and preserving traditional ways of constructing artificial islands in Federated States of Micronesia and Fiji |
|
“Water security for locally relocated coastal communities in the western Pacific region” |
Professor Tim Smith (Lincoln University, New Zealand and Emeritus, UniSC), Professor Patrick Nunn (UniSC), Roselyn Kumar (UniSC), Dr Carmen Elrick-Barr (UniSC), Tony Falkland, Dr Mark Glover (CSIRO), Mr Morris Harrison (USP), Dr Isoa Korovulavula (USP), Dr Krishna Kotra (USP), Dr Ben Macdonald (CSIRO), Dr Arishma Ram (USP), Dr Dana Thomsen (New Zealand), Professor Ian White (Australian National University). |
Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research; $2.25m |
01 June 2024 – December 2027 |
Equitable support for coastal rural communities on high islands of Fiji and Vanuatu to meet their water security needs |
Research areas
- climate change
- climate proxies
- environmental reconstructions
- vulnerability
- adaptation
- resilience
- community autonomy
- traditional and local knowledge
- livelihood sustainability
- Pacific Islands