Mr Aaron Magner

Mr Aaron Magner

Casual Academic
  • Masters of Environmental Management, University of New South Wales
  • Masters of Law (Corporate and Commercial Law), University of New South Wales
  • Bachelor of Law (Hons) 1st Class, University of Technology Sydney (UTS)
  • Bachelor of Economics, Macquarie University.
Business School
School of Management and Governance

PhD Candidate and lecturer in the Faculty of Arts Design & Architecture | Environment and Society Group, at the University of New South Wales, Sydney.

Lecturer and course coordinator for IEST7200: Demystifying Environmental Law: From Regulation to Rights of Nature, and IEST5021: Corporations, Capitalism and Transforming Environments, in UNSW’s Masters of Environmental Management program.

My PhD research is at the intersections of law, public policy and regenerative economics, with an emphasis on governance of urban commons and sharing economy.

My focus is on understanding how human governance and our legal regimes can more effectively create ecologically sustainable, economically-just, and socially inclusive urban environments for the human and more-than-human world.

Ecological thinker with experience in a range of roles in the private, public, community and higher education sectors.

Location
Morven Brown Building

Researching the urban commons and solidarity economy. Learning from the experiences of founders, directors and volunteers of urban commons institutions, including existing, previous, and potential volunteers, with a particular focus on the legal and governance aspects.

 

The term “the commons” generally refers to a set of shared resources, which can be physical or virtual, that are maintained, produced, or managed by communities of people, and governed and regulated through norms and rules created by the community.

 

The “urban commons” refer to commons that exist in an urban environment, for example community gardens, tool libraries, shared housing, energy, open-source protocols, designs, infrastructures, and the like. So called “urban commons institutions” include organisations like tool libraries, community gardens, and non-profit forms of the sharing economy.

 

I am investigating the experiences of founders in getting these institutions established, and the role and experiences of volunteer members. I am particularly focused on understanding how the law and governance operate within urban commons institutions, and how different laws and governance approaches might be used to establish more urban commons institutions, in Sydney and beyond.


This research will be useful for people interested in starting and sustaining an urban commons institution and could also be useful for developing better laws and governance models for community sharing of resources, goods, and services in effective, socially beneficial and resource efficient ways.

My Teaching

In UNSW’s Masters of Environmental Management program, Lecturer and Coordinator:

  • IEST7200: Demystifying Environmental Law: From Regulation to Rights of Nature
  • IEST5021: Corporations, Capitalism and Transforming Environments

 

In the UNSW Business School's, School of Management and Governance, Tutor:

  • MGMT 3701: Regulating Work and Employment.