Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry Advisory Board

Ally Paolino is a Director of Strategic Engagement in the Australian Public Service located in WA.

Ally has worked for the Australian Public Service for over 19 years in both Canberra and Perth, and brings a range of experience from corporate roles in HR and Security to more recent roles with a stakeholder engagement focus.

Ally currently leads the WA Community Engagement team prioritising building trusted relationships with community on behalf of the Australian government. This includes providing information on government priorities and ensuring whole of government messaging is delivered and allows a channel for community to provide feedback and recommendations to inform future policy and programs.

Ally values curiosity over all, and loves being able to engage with communities to understand the threats they face to social cohesion. Working with community on strategies and supports that build resilience and create connections is a great demonstration of the value of public service and the dedication of community to making our corner of the world a better place to live.

Christina Chau is a lecturer, arts writer, TV presenter, and is currently the Director Engagement, Impact, Indigenous in MCASI. Christina has published in national and international press on contemporary art in Australia, is also the editorial assistant of Deleuze and Guattari Studies (2013- present). Her areas of research expertise include interactive and participatory art, robots, contemporary art, kinetic sculpture, time-based art, continental philosophy, and contemporary visual culture online.

In 2017 Christina published her first book titled Movement, Time Technology and Art, and was also a TV presenter on ABC titled ‘Shock Art’ which looks at art that has been controversial for Australian audiences.

Christina currently teaches in Internet Studies for the Bachelor of Communications and has previously worked at the University of Western Australia in Media Communication Studies, and also History of Art.

Jane Fraser joined Fremantle Press in 2008 as a non-fiction publisher and has been its chief executive since 2010, with a portfolio that includes sales and custom publishing. She began her career in educational publishing in Sydney over 25 years ago before moving into editorial trade publishing.

Jane spent five years in San Francisco heading up the editorial office of an international book packaging and co-editions publishing company. During this time she further developed her interest and expertise in the production of large-format photographic books, including landscape photography, art, history, cooking, gardening and natural history titles.

For a decade prior to joining Fremantle Press, Jane worked in the corporate communications sector, expanding her business skills working with large international companies.

Professor Umberto Ansaldo is Head of School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University, reporting to the Provost. He was previously the Head of the School of Literature, Art and Media at the University of Sydney and the Head of the School of Humanities at the University of Hong Kong.

Professor Ansaldo’s disciplinary roots are in linguistics, most specifically in the study of language contact, linguistic typology, and language documentation. He is the author of four books to date (with CUP, OUP, Routledge and Stockholm University Press), has edited or co-edited a further 11 volumes and journal special collections, and has authored multiple journal articles and book chapters. His most recent output is the co-editorship of The Routledge Handbook of Pidgin and Creole Languages (2021).

Professor Ansaldo has throughout his career secured competitive research grants and leveraged industry funding for the advancement of the humanities and social sciences. One of his proudest achievements was his role in securing financial support to develop and host an exhibition on language and brain, the Talking Brains exhibition that launched successfully at the Cosmo Caixa (Barcelona Science Museum) in 2017. This type of engagement and championing of the Humanities is what Umberto is most passionate about.

Umberto has lived and worked in Sweden, The Netherlands, Singapore, and Hong Kong, before moving to Australia. He speaks seven languages including Mandarin; he is well-acquainted with Asia and has conducted fieldwork in Muslim communities of the Indian Ocean; and he has strong international networks in Southeast Asia, Japan, and Europe. One of the factors that attracted him to Curtin is the University’s Global Vision, which he believes is the future path of higher education and research.

Ian has over 20 years’ experience in the Australian film and television industry. Ian was CEO of Screenwest, the Western Australian film financing body for over a decade, financing hundreds of screen projects, including Mystery Road, Breath, Red Dog, Satellite Boy, Paper Planes, Bran Nue Dae, Cloudstreet, SAS: The Search for Warriors, Outback Truckers, Lockie Leonard and many more.

Originally a lawyer, Ian also worked at the ABC, and has served on the Boards of national screen agency Ausfilm, Awesome Arts and the FTI. Ian is currently a Board Member of the Australian Children’s Television Foundation.

Mitchell Mackay has worked with the WA Department of Education for 38 years and has been the Principal of John Curtin College of the Arts for the past 15 years. In 2007 Mitchell helped transform John Curtin College of the arts into the only fully selective arts college in Western Australia.

In 2012 he won an Australian Council for Educational Leaders Certificate of Excellence in educational leadership. He was recognised and nominated for the Principal of the Year in 2011 and 2021.

In 2016 Mitchell was selected to travel to Harvard University, USA to complete the Principal’s Fellowship Program in Educational Leadership. During this time, he has acted as Assistant Regional Executive Director (2015) and Director of the School Improvement and Support Unit (2017).

Previous to this he was Principal of Rossmoyne Senior High School and Leeming Senior High School, Manager of Operations of the Fremantle-Peel District Office, and has been a Deputy Principal, Head of Learning Area Mathematics, Year Coordinator and teacher of Mathematics. Mitchell has a Masters of Education in Educational Management and Administration and a Bachelor of Education in Mathematics and Science.

Kathryn brings a range of experience as an arts leader, creative producer and artist to her role as Executive Director of The Blue Room Theatre. She has been a part of the WA independent arts scene since the beginning of her career in 2008. Kathryn’s contributions to WA have been recognised through receiving the 2016 WA Young Achiever of the Year (Arts) and an Edith Cowan University Chapter’s Golden Key Honorary Membership (Leadership). In her previous roles, Kathryn was a co-founding artistic member of The Last Great Hunt and its inaugural General Manager, a 2018 Resident Artist (Director) with Black Swan State Theatre Company and Artistic Director of Mandurah’s Riptide Youth Performance Company from 2015-2020.

Kathryn is passionate about advocacy for WA independent artists and fostering a rich ecology to create and share exceptional new work and diverse stories. She is particularly interested in forging collaborations between arts organisations and supporting opportunities for emerging artists. Kathryn continues to maintain her professional performing arts practice as a director and performance maker.

In April 2020, Jeremy returned to Boorloo/Perth after four years at the Australia Council for the Arts as Director – Community, Emerging and Experimental Arts.

He worked closely with artists, organisations and communities in all corners of the country promoting artistic bravery, self-determination and brokering opportunities. In addition to his extensive portfolio, Jeremy championed Regional and Remote Australia under the Australia Council’s Cultural Engagement Framework and helped to develop and deliver key arts and disability initiatives.

As the General Manager of the Perth Institute of Contemporary Arts (PICA), Jeremy loved working within a contemporary arts organisation supporting the development, presentation and commissioning of work by leading interdisciplinary artists.

He is a board member of both the Chamber of Arts and Culture WA and pvi collective.

He has previously held a range of senior positions in the corporate, not for profit and government sectors in Western Australia, including with DADAA, the AWESOME Festival and ArtsWA / Department of Culture and the Arts. He is a graduate of WAAPA, and worked as a freelance lighting designer, production manager and creative producer in the early stages of his career.
As a disabled man, Jeremy is a fierce advocate of celebrating difference and transforming attitudes which ‘other’ people in our community. He also promotes actions to ensure these values are central to our arts, cultural and creative industries.

Jeremy loves his ‘anti-bio’ and strongly encourages you to take time to read it here.

Pauna handles customer enquiries, account management and basic carbon footprint consulting at Carbon Neutral. She joined the company in February 2020 and wants to assist all businesses and organisations in their journey to become “carbon neutral”.

She is also completing her PhD research at Murdoch University, focusing on Environmental Education and the potential impact on Social Capacity Building for Youth.

Her main passion is travelling. She spent 3 years living abroad in Japan and travelled extensively through North America, Europe and Asia. The experiences and interactions with locals and other travellers sparked her interest in sustainability and carbon footprint reduction practices.

In her previous lives, Pauna taught English in Japan, worked in banking and B2B sales and marketing for FMCG. Transitioning to the environmental sector has provided Pauna with a steep, yet enjoyable learning curve.

Pauna has a B.A. in Communication Studies, a B.Comm (Hons) in Marketing and a Graduate Diploma in Environmental Science.

Athina is a second-year student studying Journalism and PR/Marketing. She believes that a university excels when students engage with the campus. University academics need to engage with students whenever they can, she says, so that students can have a say in how their education future plays out. She is incredibly passionate about ensuring that all students, especially within the Faculty of Humanities, feel a sense of belonging on campus regardless of where they come from.

As a newly elected Guild Councillor, Athina understands that university is an expensive investment for many. She understands that students feel pressure from assignments and exams. She also knows how difficult it is sometimes to maintain a work/study life balance. To give back to her fellow students, Athina has been a New To Curtin mentor for the past two years, where she mentors and introduces new Curtin students to campus life. Athina is also a Connect Belong mentor for the Faculty of Humanities, where she participates in orientation and workshops for incoming Humanities students.

Athina is also the student consultive committee leader for the Faculty of Humanities, where she regularly meets with students during the semesters to see if there are any issues they are facing in their units. Athina’s proudest accomplishment at Curtin has been co-hosting and co-producing Turning Point, a Curtin backed podcast dedicated to shining a spotlight on all things Humanities. All of these experiences have been voluntary, as she is dedicated to helping many students pursue their passion for the arts.

Crystal is a digital anthropologist and ethnographer of vernacular internet cultures. She researches influencer cultures, online visibility, and social media pop cultures especially in the Asia Pacific region, and has published over 60 articles and chapters on various aspects of internet celebrity and vernacular internet cultures. Her books include ‘Internet Celebrity: Understanding Fame Online’ (2018), ‘Microcelebrity Around the Globe: Approaches to Cultures of Internet Fame’ (co-editor Brown, 2018), ‘Instagram: Visual Social Media Cultures’ (co-authors Leaver & Highfield, 2020), ‘Mediated Interfaces: The Body on Social Media’ (co-editors Warfield & Cambre, 2020), and ‘tumblr: Curation, Creativity and Community’ (co-authors Tiidenberg & Hendry, forthcoming).

Crystal is Associate Professor, Principal Research Fellow, & ARC DECRA Fellow in Internet Studies, Programme Lead of Social Media Pop Cultures at the Centre for Culture and Technology (CCAT) at Curtin University. She is also Affiliate Researcher with the Media Management and Transformation Centre at Jönköping University. She was listed on Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia and Pacific Standard 30 Top Thinkers Under 30, and recently received the International Communication Association Popular Communication Early Career Scholar Prize and ABC TOP 5 Humanities Fellowship. Reach her at wishcrys.com.

Dr Vannessa Hearman is a historian of Southeast Asia and senior lecturer in History in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry. Her research deals with the 1965-66 anti-communist violence in Indonesia and its aftermath, the politics of memory and human rights, and transnational activism related to Indonesia and East Timor (Timor-Leste).

Dr Hearman teaches in history and international relations at Curtin University. As well as in these fields, previously, she has also taught in the areas of political science, Indonesian Studies and Asian Studies at Charles Darwin University, the University of Sydney and the University of Melbourne.

Dr Hearman supervises Higher Degrees by Research and Honours students in the fields of history and Asian Studies. She is a native speaker of Indonesian and a NAATI certified interpreter (Indonesian-English) and translator (into English).

Dr Hearman has held several administrative roles, including as Associate Dean (Research and Innovation) and member of the College executive team at Charles Darwin University, and acting department chair and coordinator of academic programs at the University of Sydney.

Dr Rachel Robertson teaches and supervises in Professional Writing and Publishing and Creative Writing. She has previously taken on roles such as Head of Department and Deputy Head of School.

Rachel’s creative work has been published in journals and anthologies such as Griffith Review, Island, Best Australian Essays, Meanjin and Westerly. Her memoir, Reaching One Thousand: A Story of Love, Motherhood and Autism, was published by Black Inc. in 2012 and re-issued in 2018. Rachel is co-editor of Purple Prose (Fremantle Press 2015), Dangerous Ideas about Mothers (UWA Publishing, 2018) and two Routledge books on critical disability studies (2019, 2020). Rachel’s research interests include the literary essay, Australian literature, writing about visual arts, disability studies, and life writing. She was judge of the WA Premier’s Book Awards in 2018, 2019 and 2020.

Dr Sender Dovchin is Senior Research Fellow, and Australian Research Council, Discovery Early Career Research Fellow, at the School of Education, where she is Discipline Lead of the Applied Linguistics and Languages Group.

Her ARC project focuses on empowering vulnerable youth in Australia by combatting linguistic racism. The project aims to investigate how culturally and linguistically diverse young Australian’s experience discrimination in their daily lives because of how they speak. Previously, she was an Associate Professor at the Centre for Language Research, The University of Aizu, Japan.

Dr Dovchin has extensively published in the area of critical applied linguistics and bi/multilingualism.

Professor Angus Buchanan has 35 years of experience working in human services and academia with a recognised track record of translation of research to practice and learning environments.

Angus commenced working at Curtin University in 2008, and is currently Head of School, Curtin School of Allied Health. Prior to this Angus held the role of Head of School, Occupational Therapy, Social Work and Speech Pathology (2015 – 2021). Before commencing at Curtin, Angus held senior management and leadership roles at the Disability Services Commission of Western Australia, implementing significant service developments and reforms in therapy and community coordination for people with disabilities.

Professor Otto joined Curtin University in 2017. As the Director of the Curtin University Oil and Gas Innovation Centre (CUOGIC), Claus serves as the link between academia and industry. The Centre provides multi-disciplinary research and development expertise to the energy industry’s technology challenges towards Net Zero enhancing existing industry collaborations. One of its industry-driven themes is on Carbon Management, Energy Markets, Late-Life-Planning and Decommissioning.

Prior to joining Curtin he was for 9 years the Technology Manager at Shell in the Netherlands and Australia leading innovative upstream technology developments for its global operations. He has an extensive knowledge of industry operations and processes. He worked 15 years for CSIRO leading various research teams and programs on hydrodynamics, fluid flow in reservoirs, exploration and production as well as climate change mitigation technologies. He has a MSc in Geology and a PhD in Hydrogeology.

Andrew commenced at Curtin University in 1993 and has since held various positions at the university in student administration, project management (Prince 2 Practitioner), strategic planning, research administration, learning and teaching, governance and area management. In October 2014 he joined from within Curtin the then School of Media, Culture and Creative Arts (MCCA) as School Business Manager (now School of Media, Creative Arts & Social Inquiry). He is committed to excellence in tertiary education management as an Associate Fellow of the Australasian Association for Tertiary Education Management (ATEM).

He was until recently a member of Curtin University Council having been elected by the professional/general staff for a three year term from June 2016-June 2019.
He is both a passionate education activist and disability advocate for his son and others with a disability. Together with his family he has successfully advocated for policy change and has on occasion met with Prime Ministers, Premiers, Ministers and Senior Public Sector Managers.

Andrew was previously Chair of the IPS School Boards at both Canning Vale Education Support Centre and Canning Vale Primary School. He was previously also a member of the Canning Vale College IPS School Board.

He holds both a Bachelor of Arts with Honours (History and Politics) and a Graduate Certificate in Public Administration from Curtin University.
In 2017 he graduated from the Australian Institute of Company Directors (AICD) Company Directors Program.

Andrew has a keen interest in history, politics, public policy, literature, film, dogs and the music of The Beatles.

Donna teaches and supervises in Anthropology and Sociology and is Deputy Head of the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. She has a background in applied and sociolinguistics and has researched and published in the areas of language learning and migration, and teachers’ professional development.

Donna joined the academic staff at Curtin University in 2012 as a policy advisor on English language proficiency development for enrolled students before moving into her current role as Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology in 2015.

Prior to working at Curtin she taught for a number of years in the federally funded settlement English language program for new migrants.

Tim has a background in Middle East politics, political violence, political extremism and International Relations. He is the author of Securitising Identity: The Case of the Saudi State with Melbourne University press. His work has focused on state legitimation inside Saudi Arabia, the evolution of Saudi foreign policy, foreign fighters and the Syrian civil war, Chechnya and various other aspects of insurgency, terrorism and CVE.

Tim is the co-director of the Curtin Extremism Research Network (CERN) and his recent work has focused on the growth of extremist ideas around male identity online.

Mike Kent is the discipline lead for the Curtin iSchool, the discipline area in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry that encompasses the fields of Communications; Digital and Social Media; Journalism; Libraries, Archives, Record Management and Information Studies; as well as the Curtin Open Knowledge Initiative. Mike is also a Professor in the Centre for Culture and Technology where his research and writing focuses on the overlapping areas of Social Media, Disability and eLearning.

Cherie is an Administrative Officer for the School of MCASI with over ten years of experience working alongside the executive teams at Curtin University. Cherie is responsible for educating other employees new to the School on using systems and applications and uses her positive can do attitude to encourage others to work hard and succeed. Although her whole career has been in administration Cherie believes you should never hold the job to yourself and sharing roles/responsibility is for the greater good.

Cherie is inspired daily by her partner and her two young adult children and as such encourages a strong and better life-work balance.

Prof. Tschakert is trained as a human-environment geographer and applied anthropologist and conducts research at the intersection of political ecology, climate change adaptation, climate and mobility justice, multispecies justice, energy humanities, transformative sustainability education, and livelihood security.

She is a passionate educator with a strong commitment to overcoming structural inequities and co-creating just and transformative futures, through inclusive and solution-focused research and practice to address the most pressing challenges of our time – climate/environmental change and inequalities. She combines critical social science insights with grounded methodologies for collective learning and social transformation.

Her motivation is to enhance resilience and agency among populations experiencing disadvantage, learn how to live with loss, grief, and hope in our rapidly changing lives, and practice responsible co-existence between people and non-humans in a world in which all of us are vulnerable.

Farida Fozdar (aka Tilbury) is a sociologist and Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at Curtin University, with a research focus on migration, race and ethnicity, refugee settlement, racism, nationalism, global citizenship and cosmopolitanism. She has published widely with over a hundred and thirty journal articles, chapters, books, and reports.

She has supervised over 20 PhD students. She joined Curtin in 2022 as part of the Global Futures initiative. Prior to this, Farida worked at Murdoch University, and then UWA as an ARC Future Fellow, and teaching and research academic.

She was also Deputy Head of Social Sciences (Research) (2016-2019), and acting Head of School in 2018, and chaired the UWA Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Working Group, Grand Challenges ‘Champion’ for ‘A just and equitable world’, and academic champion for globalised education. She is co-convenor of the annual Migration Update, and coordinates the Migration, Mobilities and Belonging group. In 2021 she initiated the Sociology Out West network.