Associate Professor Lukas Parker
Details
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College: School of Media & Communication
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Department: School - Media & Communication
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Campus: City Campus Australia
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lukas.parker@rmit.edu.au
Open to
- Media enquiries
- Masters Research or PhD student supervision
About
Associate Professor Lukas Parker is a leading social marketing and advertising scholar whose research sits at the nexus of behaviour change, communicating health and digital advertising. Leading teams of researchers, his research addresses pressing social problems related to health and sustainability. He has over fifty peer-reviewed publications including influential co-authored books Social Marketing and Advertising in the Age of Social Media (2020) and Social Marketing and Behaviour Change: Models, theory and applications (2014) which guide social marketing practitioners and scholars.
Associate Professor Parker leads 3C (Communication and Change Co-lab) that undertakes projects that create change through communication - whether that be social, behavioural, or cultural. He also co-leads Co-Lab.
Associate Professor Parker’s highly applied research has informed and assessed social and behaviour change communication campaigns and government policy. His recent government and industry partners include Australian Red Cross Lifeblood, Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, VicHealth, Football Victoria, Sustainability Victoria, Woolworths and the Australian Securities and Investments Commission (ASIC).
Associate Professor Parker is a highly accomplished educator with extensive international experience over two decades, in Australia, South Korea and Vietnam. He currently teaches into the Master of Advertising and Bachelor of Communication (Advertising) degree programs. His teaching intersects with his research and is focused on social change and engaging with industry, government and community. An example of this is his popular course, Wicked Problems: Innovative Solutions challenges multidisciplinary teams of undergraduate and masters students in an intensive series of workshops tackling complex wicked problems that do not have clearly identifiable solutions. It employs a design thinking process where students consider problems through engaging in co-creation with those most connected to the problem (target audience, experts in the field, stakeholders, organisations) to challenge assumptions and to create positive, participant focused solutions.
Associate Professor Parker is on the management committee of the Australian Association of Social Marketing (AASM) and a member of the Australia-New Zealand Marketing Academy (ANZMAC) and the International Social Marketing Association (ISMA).
Awards:
Food Waste Action Research Award Finalist (End Food Waste Australia, 2024)
Dean’s Award for Integrated Scholarship/Praxis (2021 and 2022)
Dean’s Award for Indigenous Engagement (2019 and 2020)
Dean’s Award: Ed Montano Award for Industry Engagement (2018)
Emerald Literati Network Award for Excellence (2016)
Research fields
- 470199 Communication and media studies not elsewhere classified
- 350612 Social marketing
UN sustainable development goals
- 12 Responsible Consumption and Production
- 3 Good Health and Well Being
- 5 Gender Equality
Supervisor projects
- Regenerative Packaging: Modifying consumer behaviour towards food waste awareness and reduction.
- 1 Aug 2023
- The Influence of Advertising on Consumers' Purchasing Behaviours Towards Ugly Food for Food Waste Reduction
- 7 Feb 2023
- Fit to Play: How Can Online Games Be Used to Influence the Dietary Behaviour of Emerging Adults?
- 1 Jul 2020
- Navigating the Social and the Commercial: Marketing Fashion-Based Social Enterprise
- 11 Jun 2020
- Promoting health in young adults by harnessing the power of health and wellbeing influencers.
- 21 Apr 2020
- The Influence of Mindfulness on Sustainable Consumption: The Context of Household Food Waste
- 13 Mar 2019
- Community-led Independent Publishing with Marginalised Communities
- 17 Jan 2019
- The Emergence of a Hybrid Market for Social Enterprises
- 1 Jun 2018
- Augmented Reality Adoption in Marketing Communications: Agency Practitioner and Client Perspectives
- 13 Feb 2018
- Exploring consumer purchase intention for packaged food products with regard to environmental packaging: A Vietnam case study
- 30 Aug 2016
- Framing the Environment: A Critical Analysis of News Media in Vietnam
- 10 May 2016
- Communication Strategies to Enhance Health Behaviour of Women in Saudi Arabia
- 4 Mar 2016
- Taking Student-Centred Learning Outside its Comfort Zone: Student and Staff Experiences of International Higher Education in Vietnam
- 5 Jan 2012
Teaching interests
Supervisor interest areas:
Associate Professor Parker co-leads the Communication Collaboratory. He supervises PhD projects focused on:
Communicating Health
Social Communication including Advertising
Sustainability and the Environment
Social media (advocacy, healthy lifestyles, marketing)
Games and gamification in health
Industry partnered research
He supervises PhD projects involving qualitative and quantitative techniques, in Traditional Thesis, PhD with publication and PhD by Project modes.
Programs (https://www.rmit.edu.au/study-with-us/communication/advertising):
- MC249 - Master of Advertising
- BP219 - Bachelor of Communication (Advertising)
Research interests
Associate Professor Lukas Parker’s research interests are social and government marketing and especially the influence of marketing communication and advertising on behaviour. His research is published extensively in peer reviewed journals and books in the fields of advertising, social marketing and behaviour change. His current research is focused on communicating health and pro-environmental behaviours. His communication research addresses pressing social problems including promoting healthy masculinities, healthy eating, road safety and waste reduction. He has collaborated with AIP Foundation (Vietnam), Institute of Public Health (Vietnam) and the Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (USA). His research teams undertake research for Australian Red Cross Lifeblood. Department of Families, Fairness and Housing, VicHealth, Pacific Environments, Australian Conservation Foundation, Australian Securities and Investments Commission, the Victorian Independent Broad-based Anticorruption Commission and the University of the Third Age (U3A).
Research keywords:
Social Marketing, Health Communication, Behaviour Change, Social Media, Social Advertising, Sustainability, Sustainable Behaviour, Consumer Behaviour, Gamification
