Featured Researchers:
Dr Amanda Scott
Amanda Scott is a researcher and partnerships practitioner at Southern Cross University, specialising in collaborative networks, network resilience, and long-term impact.
For nearly two decades she has worked within collaborative networks spanning universities, government, industry, primary producers, and community, and for the past nine years has researched how these networks function, evolve, and endure.
Her work centres on a question that is rarely asked: how do we know whether a collaborative network is healthy and fit for purpose?
Example longitudinal mapping of information sharing from a small network
Working together is increasingly essential to addressing the complex challenges facing society—including drought resilience, decarbonisation and food security. While most collaborative networks are effective at measuring their outputs and outcomes, far fewer pay attention to the relationships and interaction patterns within the network itself, even though these fundamentally shape what the network is capable of achieving.
Amanda uses longitudinal social network analysis to make the invisible relational architecture of collaboration visible, tracking not just who is connected, but how those connections change, strengthen, or erode over time. Her recent work includes partnering with four of Australia's Drought Resilience Hubs to analyse how collaborative networks within each hub have evolved over several years, supporting evidence-informed decisions to strengthen network performance.
Amanda is particularly interested in connecting with researchers and practitioners who want to place relational architecture and network health at the centre of how collaborative systems are designed, governed, and evaluated.
Amanda's Linkedin : linkedin.com/in/amanda-scott-scu