Research
Monika is a writer and researcher of communities that have been segregated or marginalised, particularly looking at sewerage ghost towns and their past communities. She has worked across Australia and Europe to explore how these communities flourish in their abject margins into self-sustaining and socially cohesive communities while documenting their social heritage.
Monika is a strategic and critical thinker, and an advocate to help give voice to those communities that struggle to be heard. She presents regularly on community participatory practices that empower people and communities to interpret industrial heritage with community ownership and pride, as well as on her research of industrial communities.
State Research Farm
Monika is undertaking research of the once critical public asset, the State Research Farm in Werribee, Australia. She is working with a team to uncover the history, personalities and science of the community of workers once living on the State Research Farm through a collection of memoirs in the book, Out on the Farm, and the film of the same name, Out on the Farm.
The State Research Farm boosted agricultural and livestock research, experimentation and implementation Australia-wide. The site is of state heritage significance for scientific research and advancement, and illustrates a change from European agricultural practices to those specific to Australia's climate and conditions.
The jewel falls from the crown
Monika is progressing research on the community once living on the Metropolitan Sewerage Farm. She is exploring the turbulent period when the Melbourne and Metropolitan Board of Works became Melbourne Water and has begun writing the sequel book to The faraway land of the house and two cows.
A new understanding of abject communities through sewerage ghost towns
Monika uncovered new understandings of sewerage ghost towns and how past communities of these now abandoned towns in the industry of sewage treatment flourished in their segregated margins.
Monika explored communities once living on and beside sewerage works around the world and published her scholarly findings and articles you can read here.
She also wrote the book, The faraway land of the house and two cows, which became a finalist in the ABLE Golden Book Awards for Best Nonfiction Book. This is the untold and unique story of the community once living on Melbourne’s Metropolitan Sewerage Farm for around 100 years, alongside sewage lagoons and land filtration and grass filtration paddocks being watered 24 hours a day with Melbourne’s sewage. The faraway land of the house and two cows is a story like no other, told by ghosts through their timeless reality.
More information can be found on the Metropolitan Sewerage Farm Facebook page.
Research consultancy
Monika has developed methodologies and delivered a range of social research and social impact assessments in projects related to waterways, the heritage listed Main Outfall Sewer, landfills, waste, community disadvantage and of entrenched perceptions around senior secondary schooling in Victoria. She has created and implemented a range of change programs to shift perceptions.