EARTH Network, Newcastle, Australia - Nick Higginbotham - Biography
Home
Who
We Are
Research
Publications
Theory
Solastalgia
Teaching
Links
Conjoint Associate Professor
Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics,
School of Medicine & Public Health,
Faculty of Health, The University of Newcastle,
Level 4 David Maddison Clinical Sciences Building,
Royal Newcastle Hospital, Newcastle, 2300, Australia
(61 2) 49138180 tel
(61 2) 49138148 fax
Nick.Higginbotham@newcastle.edu.au
Nick Higginbotham is currently Conjoint Associate Professor of Health Social Science at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology & Biostatistics, School of Medicine & Public Health, University of Newcastle, Australia. Nick’s current research explores the relationship between environmental distress (residents’ responses to environmental transformation) and health status. (See full Curriculum Vitae).
Nick Higginbotham was born in California, and received his PhD in clinical-community psychology from the University of Hawai‘i in 1979. His psychology doctorate critically analysed the role of western-oriented psychiatric institutions in the context of Southeast Asian cultural values and healing practices (Third World Challenge to Psychiatry (1984)).He directed New Zealand’s first community psychology graduate program at Waikato University and has held appointments at the East-West Center and University of Hawai‘i-Hilo. Nick was Associate Professor and directed graduate studies at the Centre for Clinical Epidemiology and Biostatistics, the University of Newcastle, Australia.
Internationally, Nick
helped establish the International Clinical Epidemiology Network (INCLEN)
social science initiative along with the International Forum for Social
Sciences in Health (IFFSH) and its Asia Pacific regional association (APNET).
Nick has delivered numerous keynote lectures.
These include the Asia Pacific Social Science and Medicine
Conference, Kunming, China,2002 and the Asia Pacific Social
Science Medicine Conference, Yogyakarta, Indonesia, 1998.
Key consulting activities include senior health social
scientist with the F-111 aircraft maintenance health outcomes study,
Department of Defence and Department of Veterans Affairs (2001-2004);
African Universities Inter-Faculty Program for Health and Human Behaviour;
Carnegie Corporation of New York (1998).
In the 1990s, Nick designed a community development strategy aimed at reducing the epidemic of heart disease in the Upper Hunter (Newcastle) coalfields. Cross-disciplinary perspectives were combined to form a comprehensive understanding of health problems in a dynamic bio-social ecosystem. With colleagues Albrecht and Freeman, he constructed the first transdisciplinary analysis of heart disease, informed by complexity theory, which became a central case study in his pioneering 2001 research text, Health Social Science (Oxford Uni) and a companion volume, Applying Health Social Science (Zed Books)
Nick wrote the libretto for his first rock opera, The Shining Isle, and commissioned Gareth Hudson of Newcastle band, The Good, to write the music. The opera had its world premiere in Newcastle, Australia in 2006. For music and reviews go to http://www.myspace.com/theshiningislerockopera . Nick and Gareth Hudson are completing a second musical theatre work, based on the life and death of Captain James Cook.