1 Introduction.- 2 Regional contexts and regional research.- PART 1 PLACE AND CHANGE.- 3 Yenama Budjari Gumada, walk with good spirit as method – co-creating local environmental stewards on/with/as Darug Ngurra.- 4 Redefining landscape art.- 5 Kristin Linklater, finding the natural voice, in Orkney.- 6 Local values driven change management and leadership from the regions: Ballarat and UNESCO’s HUL approach.- 7 The role of festival networks in community building.- 8 Leadership: Untapping the secret to regional wellbeing, belongingness and resilience.- PART 2 TRANSITION AND RESILIENCE.- 9 Mental Health and Mining: Research Challenges and Influences.- 10 A coalition of hope! A regional governance approach to Indigenous Australian cultural wellbeing.- 11 Real and virtual communities of practice: a case study from the Outer Hebrides.- 12 The dynamics of place-based virtual communities: Social media in regions.- 13 The significance of collaborative approaches and ‘collective hope’ in Gippsland during a time of regional transition.- 14 Constructing the ‘Green Metropolis Ruhr’ – Post-industrial greening narratives between regional transition and social distinction.- PART 3 CHALLENGES FOR THE FUTURE.- 15 Watery Places: stories of environmental and community renewal.- 16 Tidal Cultures in North Australia.- 17 Researching opportunities and disadvantage in regions.- 18 Energy, households and regions: feminist methodologies for transdisciplinary research.- 19 Out in the Regions: Queer Film Festivals, Community-Building and the Cultivation of Creative Talent in Regional Victoria.- 20 The Dialectics of Community and Government.

This book examines the diversity of practice in regional research and its contribution to local, national and global issues. Three themes are advanced here: Place and change, Transition and resilience, and Challenges for the future. Contributors embrace frameworks of co-design and transdisciplinary practice to build communities of practice in response to lived experience in regional contexts. Their work highlights the strategic importance of a regional focus at a time when global connectivity and mobility is increasing and the complexity of ‘wicked’ problems demands more than one approach or solution. Such complex problems require nuanced, and at times ‘bespoke’ methodological approaches to better understand and support not just regional adaptation, resilience and transformation, but to manage all these things at a time when change is everywhere.

Fills a gap in the literature concerning the complexities of regions in transition and their importance in the 21st century as indicators of broader potential social and economic disruption and renewal Incorporates interdisciplinary knowledge and perspectives to provide important and timely contributions as to what regions are understood to be, and their wider significance Offers diverse perspectives by researchers and their lived experience in regional communities and environments across disciplines spanning social sciences, environmental science, critical indigenous studies, art practice and pedagogy, tourism, health and cultural geography Identifies an emerging ‘landscape of practice’ in regional research, and translates ‘knowledgeability’ from local to global contexts Draws attention to the ethical role of the researcher within regional communities and environments, not as a separate observer, but as an embedded and active agent across a range of human and non-human elements