Thirty years of time travelling – 10th November

This seminar is part of the CIB Presidential webinar series, “Women researchers in the built environment”

Seminar title: Thirty years of time travelling through a construction management career in academia

Date: 10th November

Speaker: Suzanne Wilkinson – Professor of Construction Management in the School for Built Environment, Massey University

In this talk I will be sharing over 30 years of time travel through a construction management career in academia. Starting in the UK with an interest in engineering to New Zealand and a role as Professor and Associate Dean (Research) at Massey University. I will share the highs and lows and the excitement and regrets of such a career. What would I do differently if I were a newly starting graduating PhD student? How might I manage my career now? What research do I see as important and why? and What is it like still being one of the few women Professors in a male dominated environment? These are some of the questions I will try to answer.

Biography

Suzanne Wilkinson is a Professor of Construction Management in the School for Built Environment, Massey University and Associate Dean (Research), College of Sciences, Massey University. She has a PhD in Construction Management, and a BEng (Hons) in Civil Engineering, both from Oxford Brookes University, and a Graduate Diploma in Business Studies (Dispute Resolution) from Massey University. Suzanne’s
research focuses on resilience, disaster management, construction innovation and smart cities. She is interested in how cities, communities and organisations plan for disasters and manage hazard events and has a particular interest in how cities, communities and organisations rebuild and recover. Suzanne has been advisor to organisations on resilience building and disaster recovery, most recently including
Auckland Council, Government Agencies in New Zealand and Hunter Water in Australia.

Suzanne has been Principal Investigator and Research Leader on many projects, including a recent 5 year, $10 million NZD project, where she is programme lead, on building capacity and capability for the construction sector and a recently completed $4 million NZD Principal Investigator for the Urban theme in the National Science Challenge: Resilience to Nature’s Challenges. She has published over 300 research papers and co-written 3 books, the most recent co-authored book being Resilient Post Disaster Recovery Through Building Back Better (Routledge in 2019), with colleagues Sandeeka Mannakkara and Regan Potangaroa. Suzanne is a keen PhD supervisor and has now supervised to completion 40 PhD students.