Simon West is an environmental social scientist with the Resources, Environment & Development (READ) Department at the ANU Crawford School of Public Policy.

Simon researches the social and political dimensions of environmental management and policy. His research focuses on the effects of different framings, lived experiences, types of evidence, and knowledge systems on management and policy processes.

He adopts collaborative and community-centred approaches to research and has worked on monitoring and evaluation in Indigenous Land and Sea Management in northern Australia; adaptive management in Australian national parks; participation and learning in UNESCO Biosphere Reserves in South Africa and Australia; contested knowledges in small-scale fisheries in the Philippines; and everyday climate adaptation in Alaska, USA.

He has particular interests in relational philosophies, transformations to sustainability, and transdisciplinary research and knowledge co-production, and his work is situated at the intersections of Sustainability Science, Conservation Social Science, Human Geography, Science and Technology Studies, Indigenous Studies, and Interpretive and Poststructural Policy Analysis.

Simon is currently co-lead investigator on a 2022-2025 Swedish Research Council Formas-funded project exploring the effects of gender on conservation practices in Australia and South Africa, and lead investigator on a 2024-2027 Formas-funded project focusing on contested knowledges relating to the Xylella plant pathogen in southern Europe.

At the Crawford School of Public Policy, Simon convenes EMDV8018 Australian Environmental Policy: Problems, Practices, Politics and EMDV8013 Impact Assessment and Evaluation in Environmental and Development Projects, and teaches into EMDV8101 Transformative Approaches to Sustainability. Simon is on the Editorial Board of the journal PLOS Sustainability and Transformation and was a contributing author to the Transformative Change Assessment of the Intergovernmental Panel on Biodiversity and Ecosystem Services (IPBES).

Qualifications

Graduate Diploma Indigenous Policy Development (Chancellor's Medal), Charles Darwin University, 2025

Graduate Certificate Yolngu Studies, Charles Darwin University, 2020

PhD Sustainability Science, Stockholm Resilience Centre, Stockholm University, 2017

MA Environmental Law & Sustainable Development (First Class Honours), School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS), University of London, 2011

BA American and English Literature (First Class Honours), University of East Anglia, 2009