Emmanuel Sargon Khanano is a PhD candidate at the Sustainable Minerals Institute. His research, Transforming Queensland's coal legacy: A visual amenity framework for sustainable renewable energy post-mining land use, looks at how the visual and landscape qualities of ex-mining land can be considered when it is repurposed for renewable energy. The aim is for a framework for planners and communities to use alongside the technical and economic assessments that usually drive these decisions.
Emmanuel is a landscape architect and GIS technician and completed his Master of Landscape Architecture degree at Anhalt University of Applied Sciences, Germany in 2023. In 2025 he was lead author on a paper in the Journal of Digital Landscape Architecture. Before commencing his PhD, Emmanuel worked across landscape design, spatial analysis, document control and operations coordination, a mix that taught him how to turn spatial data into decisions that other people can act on.
Emmanuel chose SMI because the question of what happens to mining land after closure sits where his design and spatial background meets real environmental and community needs. Studying it here in Queensland, where the coal legacy is part of the landscape researched, makes the work feel grounded.