Cross-cultural Research Projects

Gavin has demonstrated his skill in designing innovative, participatory, cross-cultural research projects that bring producers, research scientists and their organisations, NGOs and universities together. The process enabled participants who had not worked together before to come together, understand each other, and build collaborative research activities to change practice. 

— Dr Ata Ur-Rehman Project Leader

Course Design and Presentation

I have really enjoyed working with Julie who developed excellent quality undergraduate courses and also presented them in a professional way.

Her design is excellent and she ensures material is correct and complete, something that is enhanced by her ensuring her knowledge is up to date. 

We consulted on various issues and she listens to suggestions and engages with those suggestions to improve the quality of her work. 

Julie sets goals and then performs to expectation completing tasks on time. 

She is easy to work with and is an enthusiastic colleague.

— Professor Ann Carstens

On-line Course – Practice Change: Concepts and Applications

I participated in the course with 10 other development workers. We all had different starting points, so by the end of the course we all learnt different things, but we all experienced a shift in our understanding of the processes of change and improvement, of the importance to question ‘who’ is the change meant for, and the pertinence of expanding our understanding of any situation by engaging with others, listening to their perspectives, sharing ours and finding ways to integrate multiple perspectives. Please see Blog for more information.

— Dr Arundhita Bhanjdeo – Development Executive

Facilitation and Practice Change

Gavin has demonstrated great skill in bringing together stakeholders from across the Australian agricultural spectrum to build approaches to practice change. His approach has been systemic enabling all participants to be heard as active valued participants. 

— Professor Chris Blanchard

 Facilitation incorporating multiple perspectives 

Gavin has demonstrated high level facilitation skills. He demonstrated his well-developed emotional intelligence in bringing together a group of over 200 participants to produce the Virtual Hub for Rural Transformation at a workshop held in Delhi.

In doing so he demonstrated his ability to bring groups of people with differing views together and enabling them to work.

On a personal level he enabled me to understand how we can work together, without agreeing, by accepting and learning from the views of other participants.

— Dr Nivedita Narain CEO CAF India