Dr Steve Brown is a Senior Research Fellow at the University of Canberra's Centre for Creative & Cultural Research. He is a researcher with the ARC linkage project Everyday Heritage (2022-2025). The project is concerned with the things and places that ordinary people value and how these can be better acknowledged. The project will develop tools for communities and heritage managers to give value to underrepresented groups and their stories. Steve is also an Special Adviser at GML Heritage, the Partner Organisation on the Everyday Heritage project.

Steve is known internationally for his research on cultural landscapes, heritage studies, and place-attachment and his work in the fields of World Heritage and Australian Indigenous archaeology. He undertakes work with the UNESCO World Heritage Advisory Bodies ICOMOS, IUCN, and ICCROM. He is a past President of the ICOMOS-IFLA International Scientific Committee on Cultural Landscapes (2014-2017) and is the Lead Adviser on ICOMOS-IUCN Connecting Practice Phase IV (2021-2022). Steve teaches into international heritage capacity building courses with ICCROM (2020-2022); has taught, convened, and developed courses in heritage studies at the University of Canberra (2018-2021); and taught into the University of Sydney's Master of Museum and Heritage Studies (2015-2018). In 2018, Steve was Guest Scholar at Nankai University, China. 

Steve's research interests include: community, social, and cultural values-assessment of heritage places and collections; applied approaches to cultural landscapes, with particular reference to protected areas; integrating nature-cultures in heritage theory and practice; the recognition and safeguarding of World Heritage properties, with a focus on Australia and China; heritage of landscapes with the imprint of Indigenous and colonial invader intra-action; conceptualising and operationalising place-attachment in the field of heritage studies; and the archaeology of the domestic gardens.