Dr Tim Kurz

Tim is Senior Lecturer in the School of Psychological Science at the University of Western Australia. He is a social and environmental psychologist whose research focusses on processes of social change regarding human relationships with their environments. His research has utilized a variety of both quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the social psychological processes that contribute to how people think about, talk about and behave in relation to a range of domains that are consequential to environmental sustainability and/or public health. These domains have included public understandings of and engagement with climatic change, waste management, transport, dietary practices, ecological restoration, covid-19 mitigation and, of most relevance to this project, human co-existence with animals in urban environments.

As part of the ROH-Indies project, Tim will head up research investigating (both quantitatively and qualitatively) the understandings that human inhabitants of urban and rural landscapes have of the place of street dogs in their locales. It will also chart the individual, social and structural dimensions that shape these understandings, and their implications for how humans interact with the street dogs in their local area. Findings from this work will also inform the co-production of methods of potential intervention to improve human-street dog interactions and co-existence in communities ways that are conducive to optimal outcomes in terms of both (human) public health and both non-human and human welfare.