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Dr Amy McLennan

Senior Fellow, School of Cybernetics
Research Affiliate, University of Oxford
John Monash Scholar
Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, UniSA Creative
DPhil MPhil BSc(Hons) BMedSc DipLang(Fr)
Birch Building (35)

» read more about Dr Amy McLennan

I’m a researcher, facilitator, educator and synthesiser. I work at the intersections of human wellbeing, society, technology and ecology. 
 
As an ethnographic researcher, I work on topics that sit between fields and sectors, including non-communicable disease, food, chronic inflammation, cybernetics, health technology.
 
As a policy analyst, I worked on projects that spanned multiple agencies, such as women's safety, innovation, capacity building, technology procurement.
 
As an educator, I'm most at home teaching students how to make sense of complex topics and wrangle multiple perspectives with rigour, creativity, and a bit of a sense of humour.
 
As a facilitator, I work best with cross- disciplinary, cross-sectoral or cross-generational groups who seek ways to collaborate to make something new.
 
As a colleague, I am open, honest and committed to a team. I have a deep sense of community, having grown up in the Aussie countryside, and I like to infuse complexity, creativity and curiosity into my work.

(2021) Bell G, Gould M, Martin B, McLennan AK, O’Brien E. Do more data equal more truth? Toward a cybernetic approach to data. Australian Journal of Social Issues. DOI 10.1002/ajs4.168

(2021) Louka Parry interview with Amy McLennan and the Educational Experiences team on ‘The Learning Future Podcast,’ 13 August.

(2021) Lynch E, Smith J & McLennan AK. Comparison of interpersonal skill competency for Australian Graduate and Experienced engineer frameworks. Presented at the ‘Research in Engineering Education Symposium and Australasian Association for Engineering Education Conference,’ Perth, 5-8 December.

(2020) McLennan AK & Mylius B. This fairy tale will change the way you think about cyber-physical systems. Presented in the ‘Cyber Security Seminar Series,’ Department of Computer Science, University of Oxford, 4 December.

(2020) McLennan AK. Unexpected items in bagging area: How tech is changing our food system. Presented at the ‘Food, activity, and mental health in the year of coronavirus’ workshop, School of Anthropology, University of Oxford, 4 November.

(2020) Bell G & McLennan AK. The new cybernetics: Lessons from the last Great Redesign. In: Schrader M & Martens V (eds) The Great Redesign: Frameworks for the future. Hamburg: Next Factory Ottensen.

(2020) McLennan AK, Ulijaszek SJ & Kleberg Hansen AK. Correspondence: Health and medicine cannot solve COVID-19. Lancet 396: 599-600.

(2020) McLennan AK. The rise of nutritionism and the decline of nutritional health in Nauru. Food, Culture and Society 23(2): 249-266.

(2020) Williams ET, Nabavi E, Bell G, Bentley CM, Daniell KA, Derwort N, Hatfield-Dodds Z, Leins K & McLennan AK (2020) Begin with the human: Designing for safety and trustworthiness in cyber-physical systems. In: Lawless W, Mittu R & Sofge D (eds) Human-Machine Shared Contexts. New York: Elsevier. 

(2019) Wilson M & McLennan AK. A comparative ethnography of nutrition interventions: Structural violence and the industrialisation of agrifood systems in the Caribbean and the Pacific. Social Science & Medicine 228: 172-180.

(2019) Schneider T, Eli K, McLennan AK, Dolan C, Lezaun J & Ulijaszek SJ. Governance by campaign: The co-constitution of food issues, publics and expertise through new information and communication technologies. Information, Communication and Society 22(2):172-192.

(2018) McLennan AK & Ulijaszek SJ. Correspondence: Beware the medicalisation of loneliness. Lancet 391: 1480.

(2018) McLennan AK, Schimonovich M, Ulijaszek SJ, Wilson M. The problem with relying on historical dietary surveys: sociocultural correctives to theories of dietary change in the Pacific islands. Annals of Human Biology 45(3): 272-284.

(2018) Hardin J, McLennan AK & Brewis AS. Body size, body norms and some unintended consequences of obesity intervention in the Pacific islands. Annals of Human Biology 45(3): 285-294.

(2017) McLennan AK, Ulijaszek SJ & Beguerisse-Díaz M. Diabetes on Twitter: influence, activism, and what we can learn from all the food jokes. In: Schneider T, Eli K, Dolan C & Ulijaszek SJ (eds) Digital Food Activism. London: Routledge.

(2017) McLennan AK. Local food, imported food, and the failures of community gardening initiatives in Nauru. In: Wilson M (ed.) Postcolonialism, Indigeneity and Struggles for Food Sovereignty: Alternative Food Networks in Postcolonial Spaces. London: Routledge.

(2017) Schneider T, Eli K, McLennan AK, Dolan C, Lezaun J & Ulijaszek SJ. Governance by campaign: The co-constitution of food issues, publics and expertise through new information and communication technologies. Information, Communication and Society. doi.org/10.1080/1369118X.2017.1363264

(2017) Beguerisse-Díaz M, McLennan AK, Garduño-Hernández G, Barahona M & Ulijaszek SJ. The ‘who’ and ‘what’ of #diabetes on Twitter. Digital Health 3: 1-29.

(2016) Ulijaszek SJ, McLennan AK, Graff HM. Conceptualizing ecobiosocial interactions: lessons from obesity. In: Singer M (ed) A Companion to the Anthropology of Environmental Health. New York: Wiley Blackwell.

(2016) Ulijaszek SJ & McLennan AK. Framing obesity in UK policy from the Blair years, 1997-2015: the persistence of individualistic approaches despite overwhelming evidence of societal and economic factors, and the need for collective responsibility. Obesity Reviews 17(5): 397-411.

(2016) Shaw V & McLennan AK. Was acupuncture developed by Han Dynasty Chinese anatomists? Anatomical Record 299(5): 643-659.

(2015) McLennan AK. Bringing everyday life into the study of ‘lifestyle diseases’. Lessons from an ethnographic investigation of obesity emergence in Nauru. Journal of the Anthropological Society of Oxford 7(3): 286-301.

(2014) McLennan AK & Ulijaszek SJ. Obesity emergence in the Pacific islands: why understanding colonial history and social change is important. Public Health Nutrition 18(8): 1499–1505.

(2012) Locket NA, Norris RM & McLennan AK (eds). Locket’s 3D Anatomy Cutouts. Sydney: McGraw Hill.

Updated:  10 August 2021/Responsible Officer:  Dean, CECS/Page Contact:  CECS Marketing