Design at heart, science in mind: meet Jo Condon
Meet Jo, our new Director of Strategic Engagement at AuScope. Image: Supplied / Mark A. Wilson
This year, our resident geologist, designer and research communicator Jo Condon takes on a new strategic engagement role at AuScope, working collaboratively across academia, government, industry and community to enhance organisation-wide research translation. Get to know Jo and her new NCRIS enabled portfolio.
Hi, Jo! Can you tell us a bit about your journey to AuScope?
Thanks, Min! Sure. I grew up on a farm on Gunditjmara Country, near the Budj Bim Cultural Landscape. I spent most of my childhood climbing trees, watching critters in swamps and pondering the landscape around me to the background hum of the ocean. This experience has inspired my beautifully non-linear career pathway in so many ways, and my passion for taking an interdisciplinary approach to work today.
I went on to study engineering, geology and graphic design. I found work in the minerals, design and consulting industries before finding a unique home for my unusual skill set and passion for research innovation at AuScope in 2017. There have been lots of horizon-expanding adventures along the way:
I have walked with camels through Adnyamathanha Country to collect rock chip samples, ridden chair lifts into the South African earth to view precious mineral seams, and climbed volcanoes in Iceland to wonder at multi-scale Earth processes.
Jo accompanied camels on Adnyamathanha Country in the northern Flinders Ranges as part of a rock chip sampling expedition alongside two geologists and a cameleer, inspiring a career in geology. Image: supplied
Can you tell us a bit about your new AuScope portfolio?
I am looking after AuScope’s strategic engagement portfolio, which includes identifying, scoping, initiating, supporting and evaluating projects that help AuScope achieve milestones towards its Culture, Community, Indigenous Engagement, Industry Engagement and International Engagement goals.
For example, I am leading the participatory design of AuScope’s first research translation strategy and helping shape a new NCRIS research innovation engagement platform and GICE community initiatives.
How can readers get involved with your work?
Everything I do (and we do) at AuScope, as Australia’s provider of research infrastructure for Earth and geospatial science, can be enriched by perspectives of current and future AuScope community.
Whether you are an AuScope participant, supporter or user from academia, government, industry or community — or see yourself as such in the near future — please share your ideas with us (AuScope).
Right now, I would love to hear your thoughts on how AuScope can enhance its research translation capability today (with our current capability and capacity) and tomorrow (with an injection of new funding and an expanded capability and capacity). Research translation is about bridging the innovation gap between research and users in government, industry and community. By building a richly coloured picture with your input, we stand to be a little more impactful today, and far more impactful tomorrow.
Painting a picture of the ways research translation occurs at AuScope. These can also be considered research impact pathways. Image: AuScope / Design By Bird / The Noun Project (Adrien Coquet, MUHAMMAT SUKIRMAN, Azam Ishaq, Gan Khoon Lay, Chattapat) / The Geological Society of London
What will be your biggest challenge working in this space?
Taking on something entirely new and bringing the whole community along, too! Thankfully, we stand on the shoulders of giants and have access to sophisticated engagement and design frameworks to guide us.
What excites you about the future of geoscience in Australia?
I’m seeing a groundswell of Earth scientists working in academia, government and industry across Australia, who are thinking about the importance of diversity, equity and inclusion in science towards Australia’s (just and timely) net-zero and sustainable development goals. I am excited because there are infinite possibilities to enact change individually and collectively, and small, everyday action is underway.
One aspect of this movement that particularly inspires me is how our community is examining their own role in applying colonial geoscience across lands that have never been ceded, at a time of climate crisis.
The link between colonialism and climate change is becoming clear, and our community is starting to understand that decolonising geoscience requires more than equity and inclusion. Frameworks, case studies and recommendations for incorporating indigenous knowledge in Earth Science are available to help guide us in making changes in our workplaces. And we know, from listening to First Nations people, that relationships are foundational to building partnerships that deliver mutually beneficial outcomes.
How do you see AuScope enabling this future?
I see AuScope enabling this every day, in small ways, through our 10-Year Strategy 2020 - 2030. We have a goal for Community, another for Culture and another for Indigenous Engagement. From these goals come actions and cultural shifts through engagements such as these GICE workshops in 2021 and 2023 that aimed to enhance Indigenous participation in geoscience and the recent Integrated Earth 2023 event that made space for Indigenous perspectives and has resulted in AuScope seeking to implement CARE principles for Indigenous data governance together with our data NCRIS peers at the ARDC.
I’m keen to see AuScope continually push to make changes across our organisation and across NCRIS to make space for other ways of understanding the doing of science, that leaves no one behind.
Where do you draw creative inspiration for your work?
Far and wide, including from nature, philosophy, design, art, and caring people who think differently.
A film image taken by Jo on Trawlwoolway Country / Cataract Gorge. Image: supplied
In closing, is there anything more that you would like to share?
First, thanks for this opportunity, Min. I am passionate about my work and thrive on ideas, so please, any readers, get in touch, I’d love to hear your thoughts on research translation at AuScope, or ways to systemically and culturally enhance geoscience through equity, diversity, inclusion and decolonisation.
AUTHORS
A conversation between Philomena Manifold and Jo Condon from AuScope.
FURTHER READING
Research Translation at AuScope
Jo on The Conversation