Celebrating 25 years of Rural Innovation Research
In celebrating 25 years of the Rural Innovation Research Group at the University of Melbourne, we believe it is important to take moments to reflect on the journey with our partners, collaborators, and colleagues. To help us reflect, we commissioned the artist Sue Pillans to represent our journey from codeveloping research questions to our impact over this time.
The journey represented in the artwork is only a symbol of wider efforts in social sciences in agriculture and the environment at the University of Melbourne for much longer than 25 years. We acknowledge the work in this place since the 1960’s, including Stuart Hawkins, Roger Wilkinson, John Carey, Kath Williams, Ruth Beilin and others, bringing expertise in applied sociology, psychology and systems theories and thinking. We acknowledge the Heads of School over many years for their support of the social sciences. Universities are truly the anchor for long-running disciplinary and interdisciplinary progress. We recognise our broad community of social scientists and agricultural and environmental scientists with whom we have worked. We thank our industry and community partners over the years for your support.
In celebration of this important milestone, RIRG organised a series of events in the latter months of 2025 to showcase the group’s research, contributions, and collaborations over the years.
Webinar - 25 years of social science for agricultural innovation
The webinar celebrating 25 years of the Rural Innovation Research Group (RIRG) covered 4 areas:
- The changing role of extension
- How extension capability is built
- Advisory services and the digital revolution
- Formal extension education at the University of Melbourne.
The webinar included former RIRG member Dr Callum Eastwood, now with Dairy NZ about his work in advisory services and technologies, and international guest, Professor Laurens Klerks to provide his insights about the global context for agricultural extension and innovation.
We hope you enjoy hearing about the recent work of the group.
We request any use of the content of the webinar is attributed
See the webinar recording below. Navigate directly to the following sections:
- Jess Bell and Nicole Reichelt Supporting farmers and communities in natural disasters at 6.41 minutes. Download slides here
- Olive Hood and Elizabeth Koech Following the advisors: insights into processes of extension capacity and capability building in the vegetable sector at 21.37 minutes. Download slides here
- Callum Eastwood Advisory capability and business models in a digital and AI enabled future at 34.48 minutes. Download slides here
- Ruth Nettle, Michael Santhanam Martin, Wycliffe Oyunga The importance of formal agricultural extension in education at 51.04 minutes. Download slides here
- Laurens Klerkx Global insights into agricultural innovation systems at 1.18.34 minutes. Download slides here