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Dr Saleena Ham

Dr Saleena Ham
Name Saleena Ham
Position Adjunct Research Fellow
Section Rural Economies Centre of Excellence (Research)
Email
Qualifications MIS Qld , PhD USQ

Biography

Saleena Ham works as a leader, mediator and co-design facilitator, helping people understand, manage and be ready for change, building the spaces needed to work together on difficult and complex issues. She works with messy real-world problems and people, resolving situations where often there is an untidy history. Saleena facilitates, coaches, teaches and learns with those invested in the situation, to build trust, work through problems, learn skills, reframe and generate new stories of what is possible. She was brought up on a property in far western NSW and has had a career working with rural industry and regional communities. With a degree in Agricultural Science she worked as an advocate for primary producer interests in natural resource and environment policy development and implementation with rural representative organisations including the Queensland Farmers Federation . In 1997, she was employed as a Director in the Queensland Department of Natural Resource Management. She ran her own consultancy from 2001 working as strategist and facilitator on contested issues with community, corporate, not for profit and public sector organisations across Queensland and Northern NSW. Saleena took an opportunity to work as Shire Services Manager living and working in the Utopia Indigenous Homelands Community, Northern Territory (2013-2015). She has since studied and researched with the University of Southern Queensland, and continued as a contracted specialist serving private business and non-government interests in regional communities. She has a Doctorate in Rural Sociology, a Masters in International Studies, (Peace and Conflict Resolution), a Diploma in Professional Coaching and has been a nationally accredited mediator. She is a highly experienced facilitator, especially involving contested community issues.

Research Career


  • Sustainable Agricultural Development ( 300210 )
  • Agriculture ( 300299 )
  • Agriculture ( 300200 )
  • Rural Sociology ( 441003 )
  • Sociology ( 441000 )
  • Sociology Of Culture ( 441008 )
  • Social Change ( 441004 )
  • Applied Sociology ( 441001 )

I am interested in research about people living in remote, rural and regional places, their businesses, behaviours, beliefs and what makes a difference for better community and life. I am motivated towards fostering positive change and inclusion.


  • Institute for Resilient Regions (IRR)
  • Rural Economies Centre of Excellence (RECE)