Peter Walters

I am an urban sociologist and an expert in urban community in all its forms. My research encompasses the outer suburbs in Australia, the gentrifying inner city and informal communities in cities in the Global South. My work focuses on how different urban places and spatial logic in the city impact our opportunities to form attachments to neighbourhoods and each other. Internationally, I have written extensively on urban poverty in Bangladesh, India and Indonesia and I am currently involved in work on climate change and its effects on the urban poor in collaboration with colleagues in Indonesia, Brazil and Solomon Islands. My latest research concerns the impact of climate change and natural disasters on the urban poor. More than 1 billion people live in informal urban settlements or slums. These people are among the most vulnerable to the impact of climate change. However, adaptation and mitigation policies are being formulated at multiple scales, often without considering the voices of the poor. I am the Bachelor of Arts Sociology program convenor and an award-winning teacher. I teach courses at all levels in our undergraduate sociology program, including Introduction to Sociology (SOCY1050), An Urban World (SOCY2340) and Advanced Studies in Social Thought: Getting the Big Picture (SOCY3345). I am also an award-winning photographer (you can see some of my work on my Flickr page. I am open to proposals from potential Honours and PhD students who share my passion for understanding the social life of cities. Whether you're from Australia, the Global South, or anywhere else in the world, I look forward to the possibility of working together. Inner city change; Suburban life; Sociology of mega-cities

[2026] The Babatana Rainforest in Solomon Islands: a practice-based field trip for unlearning the world [2025] The exclusion of poor people in microfinance [2024] The master planned community: time for a drastic re-think [2024] Engaging with informality and the subaltern in overlooked cities: towards an agenda for climate change research in the Global South [2024] The logic of informality in shaping urban collective action in the Global South [2023] Babatana rainforest conservation project: a lightning rod for others [2023] Nusantara: capital gain? [2023] Locating agency at the urban grassroots: resistance and reworking in the everyday politics of informal settlements [2023] Indigenous peoples’ demand rights-led responses to the climate crisis [2023] As vozes ausentes dos pobres urbanos na