Professor Schirmer is Director of the Centre for Environmental Governance and lead of the WellRes Unit in the Health Research Institute. She founded the Regional Wellbeing Survey, an annual survey running since 2013 which examines the views of 15,000 rural, regional and urban Australians about the liveability and resilience of their community, and their own wellbeing and resilience. It covers topics ranging from understanding how to support carers living in the bush, to identifying the impacts of poor internet connectivity, and understanding how events such as droughts, floods and environmental policy change affect rural communities. Jacki's research focuses on understanding the social dimensions of natural resource management and resilience to extreme climatic events, particularly how people's access to and use of natural resources affects their health and wellbeing. Her work in recent years has focused on (i) understanding wellbeing, resilience and recovery amongst communities experiencing cumulative extreme weather events and disasters, (ii) examining how to achieve greater adoption of pro-environmental behaviours, particularly in agriculture; (iii) analysing the social impacts of changes in management of natural resources such as forests, fisheries and water on workers and rural communities, and (iv) understanding the factors that drive conflict over natural resource management and which affect social acceptability of environmental policy and practice. 

Member of Climate Change Adaptation Resilience and Recovery Network