HomeTASA 2024: Presenters

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TASA 2024 - Presenters

The program for TASA 2024 will feature more than 165 presenters who will deliver their latest thought-provoking research and insights through both in person and online engagement.

All presenters participating in TASA2024 are listed below alphabetically, by Surname. (Please click the corresponding letter to reveal more information about the presenters):

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Dr Sanna Aaltonen

Sanna Aaltonen (DSocSc) is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Eastern Finland and holds Titles of Docent (Adjunct Professor) at the University of Helsinki and Tampere University. She is a sociologist by discipline and her research interests include young people and marginality, youth transitions, inter-generational relations, gender and social class analysis, and qualitative methodologies. Currently she is one of the Associate Editors of the Journal of Youth Studies and one of the Vice Presidents of the Finnish Youth Research Society.

Dr Mujib Abid

Mujib is a scholar of modern Afghan history, peace studies and political theory. Mujib’s work foregrounds critical traditions that self-locate in the Global South, including postcolonial and decolonial approaches, as well as other subalternised traditional and Islamic knowledge perspectives. Mujib’s PhD thesis interrogated Afghan encounters with colonial modernity, examining the concomitance of modernist hegemony and local dissentic politics. The work is also an attempt at theorising embodied and representational agency against coloniality from the geohistorical location of Afghanistan. Mujib is currently developing a project that will study the social and cultural dimensions of post-2001 Australian involvement in the ‘war on terror’ and state building regimes in Afghanistan. He is also involved with community initiatives that emphasise Afghan dialogue facilitation, peace research, and advocacy. Mujib holds a Ph.D. from the University of Queensland, a Master's Degree in Peace and Conflict Studies from the University of Sydney and a B.A. from the American University of Afghanistan. He currently teaches as a sessional lecturer at two institutions, the Southern Cross University and Australian Catholic University.

Dr Ayah Abubasheer

Ayah Abubasheer is an Associate Lecturer of Sociology at Western Sydney University. Since 2018, Abubasheer has held research appointments in Australian universities, including Western Sydney University and the University of Technology Sydney, and taught sociology, politics, social work, policy and advocacy, and communication programs.

Saadia Ahmed

Saadia Ahmed (she/her) is a doctoral candidate and educator at Curtin University, Boorloo (Perth, Western Australia). Titled 'Exploring the gendered harassment of Pakistani women public figures in social media', Saadia's doctoral research employs an intersectional and post-colonial feminist approach towards the online misogyny experienced by Pakistani women public figures on social media (particularly Twitter). Having a range of scholarly interests, Saadia's research is focused on digital intimacies, post-colonial feminism, social justice, and the social model of disability. Her teaching practice delves into intercultural communications and the media representations of the Indigenous communities in Australia.

Dr Raisa Akifeva

Raisa Akifeva is Research Assistant at Edith Cowan University and Lecturer in Community Services at Acknowledge Education. She earned a PhD in Anthropology and Sociology from the UWA through the completion of the thesis Cultural continuity and discontinuity in a Russian-speaking migrant context: Cultural dilemmas, national habitus and unbelonging. Her research interests include international migration processes, child-rearing practices and Russian-speaking migrants.

Most. Suraiya Akter

Highly experienced in the government service and have around 30 years of experience in the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) under Ministry of Agriculture. After completing Master of Arts in Economics from Rajshahi University on 1981 (held on 1983) and joined Government service on 15-021988 qualifying the competitive examination conducted by the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) as a research Officer in the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) under Ministry of Agriculture. During the service time with warmth dedication and service to the nation, Govt. & NGOS and other stakeholder’s satisfaction inspired me to make confidence in the related service successfully with honesty. Service Statement: BCS Official (30 Years in Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM), Agricultural Ministry, Bangladesh).

Dr Carljohnson Anacin

Dr. Carl Anacin completed his PhD at Griffith University, Australia, researching the identity, musicality and trans locality of Filipino migrant musicians. Carl’s research interests include popular music, migration, social media and interdisciplinary studies. Carl is also a gigging musician and radio host (Radio 4EB, Brisbane). His recent publications include “Musical Aspirations and DIY/DIO Practices in Online Communities of Amateur Independent Filipino Songwriters" in Rethinking the Music Business: Music Contexts, Rights, Data, and COVID-19 (edited by Guy Morrow, Daniel Nordgard, & Peter Tschmuck, 2022) and Mimicking the Mimics: Problematizing Cover Performance of Filipino Local Music on Social Media (co-authored with David Baker and Andy Bennett) in Media, Culture & Society (2021).

Sylvia Ang

Sylvia Ang is Lecturer in Sociology at Monash University. Her research with migrants is interested in the production and experiences of inequalities, with a focus on ethnic relations, class, gender and postcolonialism. She has published in the Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies, Mobilities, and Ethnic and Racial Studies, among others. She is co-editor of ‘New racism and migration: Beyond colour and the ‘west’ with Elaine Ho and Brenda Yeoh (Ethnic and Racial Studies). She is the author of Contesting Chineseness: Nationality, Class, Gender and New Chinese migrants (Amsterdam University Press).

Senza Arsendy

I am a PhD candidate in sociology at the University of Melbourne. My research project examines the school-to-work experiences of Indonesian working-class youth. Previously, I worked in the development sector for almost 10 years as a public school teacher, ministerial team member, policy analyst, monitoring and evaluation officer, and research specialist. I am particularly interested in the intersection of education, sociology, and psychology, especially in the disadvantaged context.

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Alison Baker

Alison Baker is an associate professor in youth and community studies in the College of Arts and Education and a principal research fellow at the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities (ISILC) at Victoria University in Melbourne, on the land of the Wurundjeri of the Kulin nation. Her research focuses on the implications of structures that produce inequality in the lives of various disenfranchised groups as well as those in positions of privilege. She also investigates young people’s experiences of racialisation and other forms of oppression, particularly their subjectivities, identity and belonging across contexts. Her research draws on theory in critical community and liberation psychologies, in addition to feminist and critical race scholarship. Alison’s research mobilises creative and participatory research approaches and methodologies, specifically youth participatory action research (YPAR), visual and sound storytelling modalities.

Loretta Baldassar

Loretta Baldassar is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology, Vice Chancellor Professorial Research Fellow, and Director of the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab in the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University. Loretta is also leading the TRACS Migration Research Network at ECU to support an active program of national and international collaborations. Loretta has published extensively in the field of migration and transnational families. In 2021 and 2022 she was named Australian Research Field Leader in Migration Studies (Social Sciences) and in Ethnic and Cultural Studies (Humanities, Arts, and Literature).

Dr Glenda Ballantyne

Dr. Glenda Ballantyne is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology in the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences at Swinburne University, where she has researched and taught since 2015. She is also Co-Convenor of the Intercultural Cities Australian National Network, a network of Australian cities and researchers seeking to enrich multiculturalism through intercultural strategies. Glenda researches in the areas of racism, migration, multiculturalism and interculturalism, with a focus on lived experiences of diversity and intercultural policy in local governments. She is currently leading the Intercultural Cities in Australia project and the International Intercultural Cities Comparative Study, an international research project examining interculturalism in Australia, Canada and Spain. Since 2016, she has been working in collaboration with the Victorian Multicultural Commission to present the Multicultural Film Festival and to research contemporary experiences of racial and cultural diversity in Victoria. This work has examined perspectives on diversity among young second-generation Australians and experiences of racism among Asian Australians during the Covid-19 pandemic.

Dinusha Bandara

Dinusha Bandara is a PhD student seeks to provide a better understanding of digital childhoods and datafication of migrant families. Employing a mixed methods approach, she amplifies the voices of these families, shedding light on their everyday use of digital technologies and data practices. She will also explore how they understand and experience datafication across everyday settings. Dinusha hopes that diverse digital childhoods, in all their nuances and complexities, will enrich the present understanding of how children are datafied in everyday settings. Dinusha has a multidisciplinary background with expertise in statistics, data management and data linkage. In her previous wide-ranging leadership and technical roles, she has directed large-scale data linkage/integration operations, managed teams responsible for national longitudinal study data life cycles, advised government’s data networks and provided statistical consulting.

Ayushi Banerjee

Ayushi is a master's student of Sociology at the Delhi School of Economics. Her research interests include masculinity studies, violent epochs and nationalism, sexualities and consent in fanfiction.

Dr Vicki Banham

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Dr Daisy Barman

My research specialisation lies in Sociology of religion, inequality studies and caste and its interaction with religion. My M.Phil. dissertation and Doctoral thesis engage with the issue of sect within Hinduism, focusing particularly on the Vaishnava sect to delineate the relationship between authority structure, religious capital, caste and the wider power dynamics in India.

Dr Ash Barnes

Dr Ash Barnes is a Criminologist and Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Wicking Education and Research Centre at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Their work challenges the dimensions of social power, harm, pleasure, and violence in music cultures. They have a passion for research that is grounded in social justice, lived experience, and empowerment for victim-survivors of harm. Their work has secured funding for LGBTIQA+ community health services, sexual violence support services, and contributed to alcohol and other drug policy and Australian law reform.

Jye Batham

Jye Batham received his Bachelor of Arts from Swinburne University of Technology in 2020, with co-majors in Philosophy and Sociology. He is currently undertaking PhD research on the politics and discourses of hydraulic fracturing in Australia, developing a unique approach to the critical study of discourse that attempts to synthesise the ideas of Gramsci, Bourdieu and post-Marxian discourse theory. His research interests span the political economy of the climate crisis, discourse and power in environmental politics, and ecological Marxist theory. His forthcoming dissertation, “Fracking” Climate Politics, draws together these interests in order to contribute to a critical understanding of the role of discourse in the sedimentation of contingent society/nature relations as well as in resisting, or “fracking”, such sedimentation.

Dr Kiran Bedi

Upon completing my master's degree in Sociology and M.Ed. from Maharishi Dayanand University, I have advanced to the position of Research Fellow at the Sociology Department within the same institution. My research concentrates on the Transgender community in Haryana, utilizing a mixed method approach that integrates in-depth qualitative interviews with a quantitative Likert Scale questionnaire, rooted in an interpretivist paradigm. This approach has allowed me to examine the socio-economic, cultural, and organizational dynamics that impact the Transgender community. Through Reflexive Thematic Analysis, I have gained a profound understanding of the lived experiences of this community, revealing the intricate realities of their marginalization and resilience. My academic interests extend to the fields of Gender and sexuality studies, Intersectional inequalities, Sociological theories, Mixed method approach, and Interpretivism.

Dr Lorraine Bell

Dr. Lorraine Bell is a sociologist with an interest in researching the health of people, animals and the environment. As a Research Scientist at CSIRO, she is investigating social factors associated with antimicrobial resistance (AMR) using a One Health approach. Throughout her career she has applied social science methods to interrogate relationships between liveability and the built environment, food ethics, rural and remote health and cancer support for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people. Her passion is in applying qualitative, ethnographic, and visual methods for an in-depth understanding of lived experience and everyday interactions between human and nonhuman actors.

Dr Penelope Bergen

Dr. Penelope Bergen is an applied sociologist at the School of Business, UNSW, Canberra. She specializes in the interplay between human and organizational systems: workplace cultures and their impact on policy outcomes and community development. Her research includes the relationship between governance structures, personal values and outcomes for workers in remote Aboriginal communities in Central Australia, and substance use under new workplace health and safety regulations in classical music.

Dr Anu Besson

Anu Besson is Finnish-Australian urban studies scholar and specialises in environmental and everyday aesthetics. She is interested in people’s capabilities and capacities to interact meaningfully and creatively with their environments, and how in the contemporary urban world such capacities are often becoming hindered. Her previous research focused on gaps in environmental preference studies, i.e. what kinds of environments are usually liked and disliked. Currently she explores the concept of aesthetic practices relating to the home: how people, in particular migrants, create the sense of home and homeliness through everyday actions, habits and style.

Namita Poudel Bhurtel

Namita Poudel Bhurtel is a PhD student at Keio university, Japan. She has completed B.A, M.A and MPhil in sociology from Tribhuwan university Nepal and worked as lecturer for 7 years in Nepal.

Dr Tamara Borovica

Dr. Tamara Borovica is Vice-Chancellor's Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies at RMIT University. Her research focuses on psycho-social approaches to trauma, health and resilience and the intersection between creative practice, embodiment and individual and societal health. Her expertise is in embodied and arts-based methods for transformative research and human-centric design. She is co-convenor of HASH Arts and Creative Practice for Wellbeing thematic group and member of Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT. She has taught in undergraduate and postgraduate Sociology and Education programs at University of Novi Sad (Serbia) and The University of Melbourne (Australia).

Christie Bosworth

Christie Bosworth is a 3rd year PhD candidate of Sociology at the University of Wollongong. Her research broadly explores the sociocultural value of the arts, focussing specifically on politicising issues faced by artists in the music industry. Her research is empirical and utilises ethnographic methods to understand case study experiences of her local Illawarra music scene. Her other research interests include areas of critiques of the cultural industry, utopian theory, education and the future of work. Her honours project explored place-based experiences of authenticity and community within artistic scenes of Thirroul, NSW. Christie’s insider experience in the area includes playing music in the local ‘indie’ scene, which gives her personal insight into the challenges faced by artists in the industry.

Vanessa Bowden

Vanessa Bowden is a lecturer in sociology at the University of Newcastle. Her research explores the social constructions of environmental knowledge and politics of climate change, specifically in climate adaptation and energy transitions. She has published in journals including Global Environmental Change, Environmental Sociology, Environmental Politics and the British Journal of Sociology and is co-author of the recent book Organising Responses to Climate Change: The Politics of Mitigation, Adaptation and Suffering (with Daniel Nyberg and Christopher Wright).

Professor Alex Broom

Alex Broom is Professor of Sociology and Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, The University of Sydney.

Dr Josephine Browne

Josephine Browne researches in masculinities and critical animal studies, with a particular interest in cultural representations. Her most recent research includes examining literary representations of coercive control and of ocean animals. She has forthcoming work with Chantelle Bayes in critical animal studies, and on the New Man of the presuffragette period. She is co-convener of TASA's Sociology and Activism thematic group, and serves on the Executive of the Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association (AWGSA) and the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA).

Dr Neville Buch

Dr. Neville Buch is an expert on histories and historiography of big belief and doubt, researching on Personalism, Evangelicalism, Freethought, Rationalism, Humanism, Unitarian-Universalism, and Progressivism, during the 20th century. He has been a scholar in studies in religion and Australian-American intellectual history for 41 years, as well as a community participatory teacher. His work has internationalising with a collaboration of the Free Thinker Institute (New York City), in the production of a 1,000-page curriculum package manuscript into a commercially-viable guidebook for community education, based in Lebensphilosophie and Wissenschaft. He has been a Q ANZAC Fellow at the State Library of Queensland (2015-2016), and a speechwriter and higher education researcher, working with four Vice-Chancellors. He is well-published and recognised for his contribution in the histories of both Catholic secondary and state primary education in Queensland, as well as histories in the cultural and religious shaping of Protestant and Catholic organisations. Dr Buch is affiliated with the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry, University of Queensland as a former post-doctorate fellow and an associated researcher in Queensland history. He is a Convenor, Sociology of Education Thematic Group, The Australian Sociological Association (TASA).

Rachael Burgin

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Professor Edgar Burns

Edgar A Burns is Hawke's Bay Regional Council Chair of Integrated Catchment Management, Waikato University School of Social Sciences, developing social change insights about environment practices in the light of climate change. He publishes on expert knowledge and various aspects of tertiary education, health equity and regenerative agriculture.

Dr Rose Butler

Dr Rose Butler is a Senior Research Fellow in Sociology at The Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University.

Dr Donna Butorac

Donna Butorac is Senior Lecturer in Anthropology and Sociology at Curtin University. Her teaching and research interests include language learning and migration, the sociology of language, and methods in qualitative inquiry. One of six co-authors of Life in a New Language, she taught in the Adult Migrant English Program for a number of years prior to joining Curtin.

Dr Adrienne Byrt

Dr Adrienne Byrt is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at Swinburne University of Technology and she is currently working across multiple projects on gender-based financial abuse and family violence. Adrienne’s research spans the sociology of families, design methods and interdisciplinary methodologies, and feminist theory.

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Professor Richard Caladine

Richard Caladine is Founder and Principal of Creativity Games, is a practising artist and musician, and formerly Professor of Wollongong University where he researched and taught audio-visual technologies – including film and broadcasting – and managed audio-visual services across the institution. Richard's paintings and watercolours are exhibited in various galleries, and currently address issues of environmental pollution and climate change. His sessions of Creativity Games are enjoyed by various audiences in both the academic community and the broader community.

Septrin Calamba

Septrin Calamba is from Mindanao. He is currently a PhD Candidate at the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation, Deakin University. His research interests revolve around young people's everyday politics, everyday peace practices, and aspirations in Mindanao. His PhD project aims to explore how the experiences and exposures to conflicts among Mindanao youth have affected their understanding of themselves and their practices as political actors and as a generation. Prior to commencing his PhD, he conducted research on young people's participation in disaster and conflict settings and co-facilitated deliberative mini publics in the Philippines.

Dr Dave Camilleri

Dr. Dave Camilleri has been immersed in the BMX trail scene for decades both in Australia and Europe. Dave dropped out of high school but returned to study Philosophy and Linguistics as a mature age student. Upon leaving university Dave worked as a secondary school teacher before starting a PhD investigating creativity in disengaged adolescents within formal schooling. He is a lecturer and researcher at the University of Melbourne's Faculty of Education. His teaching and research interests are in youth studies, wellbeing, and creativity... and BMX!

Donella Caspersz

Donella Caspersz is Associate Professor, Management & Organisations and the Director, UN PRME at the UWA Business School. Donella teaches and regularly publishes in management and employment relations journals. Donella’s research focuses on family business and small business management, labour migration and prosocial behaviour. Donella is also the Deputy Editor for special issues at the Journal of Industrial Relations.

Sarah Castle

Sarah Castle is a PhD candidate at the University of Tasmania, Australia in Sociology, with interests in the sociology of health and wellbeing, feminist theory, neoliberalism, and rural issues.

Grace Cayley

Grace Cayley is a qualitative researcher who is passionate about human-centered research and contexts. She has a particular research interest in young people’s attitudes towards sexuality and gender, and their sexual and gendered identities. Grace has an Honours degree in Anthropology and Sociology from Curtin University in Western Australia, with her Honours research completed under the supervision of Professor Farida Fozdar. Grace works as a research assistant with The Raine Study at the University of Western Australia where she applies her human-centred research ethic by ensuring the Study’s lifelong participants are represented in all stages of the research, optimising their engagement in The Raine Study community.

Devpriya Chakravarty

PhD student, Griffith University, Gold Coast, Australia. Research Areas of Interest: Cultural Sociology and Popular Music Studies, Keywords from current abstract: EDM festivals, EDMC, India, Youth Culture, Vibe.

Dr Shiva Chandra

Dr Shiva Chandra is a Post-Doctoral Research Fellow at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies at the University of Sydney. His research interests include personal life, health, wellbeing, sexuality, gender, race, digital media, and youth. More specifically, Shiva’s work examines queer attachment, and belonging, including both offline and online experiences. Shiva specialises in the use of creative and innovative methods to investigate subjectivity and how individuals relate to their social worlds. His scholarship is underpinned by the belief that research carries social responsibility and should sit at the intersection of academia and community development, with the aim of improving people’s lives.

Dr Jennifer E. Cheng

Jennifer E. Cheng is a Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University. She has expertise in sport and leisure from anti-racist and feminist perspectives, especially in regards to Muslim women and Muslim mothers. She has collaborated with the Auburn Giants Women’s AFL team, AFL Auskick Auburn, Punchbowl United Football Club and the “Swim Sisters”, a swimming group designed to support Muslim women to swim. Her latest project, conducted in partnership with University of Education, Schwäbisch Gmünd in Germany, investigates parents’ attitudes toward children’s extracurricular activities in Australia and Germany across three groups, Muslim, Chinese and Anglo/German, with the aim of establishing where inaccessibility lies and how to overcome these as well as how to maintain long-term commitment to activities. She was recently a CI on a project on evaluating the ongoing social impact of ‘Festival 23 – Football for Good’, a youth festival held in Sydney for young leaders from around the world held in conjunction with the FIFA Women’s World Cup 2023. Jennifer has published widely on racism, anti-racism, particularly in relation to Islamophobic and anti-Islamophobic discourses, as well as on women and sport in the context of Muslim women in Australia.

Anna Chernoivanova

Anna Chernoivanova holds a master's degree in sociology with a background in social work. Her research addresses issues of social structure and risk societies, digital sociology, sociology of youth, welfare issues and human services.

Associate Professor Jenny Chesters

Jenny Chesters, Associate Professor Faculty of Education, at the University of Melbourne, Australia. She is a CI on the Life Patterns Research Project – a longitudinal mixed methods study tracking 3 cohorts of school leavers over time. Her research interests focus on transitions between education and employment throughout the life course and inequality in educational attainment. She is the editor of the Research Handbook on Transitions into Adulthood (2024).

Ioana Cerasella Chis

Ioana Cerasella Chis is a doctoral researcher in the Political Science and International Studies Department at the University of Birmingham. Ioana’s research project is titled ‘The Politics of Disablement and Precarious Work’, through which she seeks to intervene theoretically and empirically in Disability Studies, Marxist, and Political Economy debates regarding disablement, capitalism, and the institution of work. Ioana is a co-convenor of the British Sociological Association’s Theory Study Group and a steering group member of the Marxism and Disability Network.

Dr Eileen Clark

I hold Master’s degree in sociology and genealogy and in 2023 I completed my PhD, a multidisciplinary study of the former Beechworth asylum (Mayday Hills Psychiatric Hospital) in northeast Victoria. One aim of the study is to make our findings widely accessible as a means of countering the stigma of mental illness, and to this end we have held exhibitions, public talks and have created an interactive website www.maydayhills.org.au

Dr Laetitia Coles

Laetitia Coles is an applied mixed-methods sociologist at the Queensland Brain Institute, at The University of Queensland. Her research spans the fields of sociology, psychology, education, and health. She has expertise in research focusing on the care environments within which children learn and develop. Laetitia is interested in understanding the experiences of children with disability and their families and caregivers, in order to direct research focus to areas of most need. Laetitia has extensive experience managing large-scale research projects, working in multi-disciplinary research groups, and in research translation.

Professor Fran Collyer

Fran Collyer is an Honorary Professorial Fellow at Wollongong University, with honorary affiliations also to the Australian National University, Canberra, and the University of Sydney, Australia. She is currently President of RC08, the research committee of the History of Sociology at the International Sociological Association, and prior to this, Secretary of RC08 (for five years). Her main research interests fall within the history of sociology, the sociology of knowledge, and the sociology of health and medicine. She is in the process of writing the history of Australian sociology, drawing on an empirical project of almost 200 life history interviews with Australian sociologists; but also completing the editing of a Handbook of Research for the Sociology of Knowledge. Fran is currently interested in the way language and knowledge empowers or disempowers people, groups and communities. Recent books include Knowledge and Global Power (2019, with Connell, Maia and Morrell), Navigating Private and Public Healthcare (2020, with Karen Willis), and the Palgrave Handbook of Social Theory in Health, Illness and Medicine (2015). A co-authored monograph on Pierre Bourdieu's conceptual schema and its applicability for the study of inequality will be published in early 2025.

Dr Dino Concepcion

Dino completed his Doctor of Philosophy at La Trobe University in 2021. He finished his Master of Arts in Sociology in 2012, and Bachelor of Arts in Interdisciplinary Studies in 1997, at Ateneo de Manila University. His research interests include occupational health and safety, cultures of wellbeing, healthcare industries, migrant work, transnational service occupations, and qualitative data analysis. The paper that he intends to present draws from his dissertation and focuses on the interrelatedness of racism, precarious work, emotional labour and neoliberalism. He will share the published version of this working paper and other forthcoming articles on his online university profile, and on his accounts in ResearchGate.

Associate Professor James Connor

A/Prof James Connor is an expert on behaviour and change – especially in the context of organisational reform. He specialises in understanding the dark side of behaviour and therefore how it might be addressed through better systems and processes. His recently released book Warrior Soldier Brigand (with Prof Wadham) focused on abuse in the ADF and how the institution can reform.

Dr Peta S. Cook

Dr Peta S. Cook is a Senior Lecturer of Sociology at the University of Tasmania, Australia. Her research primarily focuses on ageing, disability, medical science, and chronic illness. Peta’s research is particularly motivated by advocating for social justice, equity, and inclusion. For her applied, community-based research, Peta has received awards including the 2020 Sociology in Action Award (from the Australian Sociological Association), 2018 Vice Chancellor’s Award for Outstanding Community Engagement (University of Tasmania) and a 2019 finalist in the Tasmania Community Achiever Awards.

Ollie Cook

Ollie Cook (they/them) is a third-year PhD candidate at Deakin University in the School of Social Sciences. They are a non-binary, trans person whose research interest is in gender, sexuality, queerness and trans studies with a background in sociology. Their thesis is entitled “Trans Enough: Exploring Transgender and Gender Diverse People’s Relationships to Transgender Identity in Australia”, which focuses on trans people in Australia, their understanding of their gender identity, how they understand the broader category of transgender and what this means for trans communities. When they aren’t working on their PhD you can find Ollie at gigs, binge-watching trashy TV or playing DnD.

Professor Kay Cook

Kay Cook is a Professor and the Associate Dean of Research in the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film and Education at Swinburne University of Technology. Her research explores developing interventions into financial abuse, and how new and developing social policies such as welfare-to-work, child support and childcare policies, transform relationships between individuals, families and the state.

Dr Julia Cook

Dr. Julia Cook is Senior Lecturer in Sociology at the University of Newcastle, Australia. Her research interests include the sociology of youth, time and housing, and the intersections of each of these topics and economic sociology. Her most recent research addresses the role of family financial assistance in young adults’ pathways into home ownership and young adults’ navigation of debt and financial assistance, with a particular focus on buy now pay later services. She is a current ARC DECRA Fellow (2022-2025), and a chief investigator on the current phase of the ARC-funded Life Patterns longitudinal research program (2021-2026). She is co-editor in chief of Journal of Applied Youth Studies, and is on the editorial boards of the journals Time & Society, Journal of Youth Studies and Irish Journal of Applied Social Studies. She was recently selected as a 2022 ABC Top 5 scholar and is a regular media commentator.

Michelle Camille Correa

Michelle Camille Correa is a PhD candidate at Curtin University. Her PhD project focuses on the intersection between migration, diaspora, and media through the case of the Korean diaspora who become celebrities in the Philippine entertainment industry. She graduated with a master’s degree in Korean studies, a joint international program by Chulalongkorn University in Thailand and Seoul National University in Korea, under the ASEAN University Network Scholarship. She also holds a M.A. in Communication and a B.F.A. in Creative Writing from Ateneo de Manila University in the Philippines. She was a former KF Korean Language Training Fellow at Yonsei University’s Korean Language Institute.

Theresa Coye

Theresa Coye is a PhD Candidate in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Auckland University of Technology. Her research interests lie in the intersection of postcolonial theory & decolonial praxis in higher education, multicultural literature, feminist and ecocritical landscapes, social justice, poetry, and transnational indigeneity. Theresa is from the Caribbean.

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Nicole Danks

Dr Anna Denejkina is an award winning mixed-methods and interdisciplinary researcher. She has a PhD in the Social Sciences from the University of Technology Sydney and over 10 years of research experience and training. Her research has been published internationally in scientific journals and books, and she has presented research insights at national and international scientific conferences.

Anna has experience in qualitative, quantitative and mixed-methods research, and has conducted national and international research with young people in sectors including health, arts, higher education, government and more. Previously, Anna was a lecturer and researcher at one of Australia’s leading universities, where she conducted research focused on wellbeing and mental health.

Anna is passionate about research innovation, methods and ethics, and achieving real impact through research-informed decision making. She believes that understanding individual human experience and using a human-centric and people-first approach is critical to research, its insights, outcomes and impact.

Steph Daughtry

Steph Daughtry is a multi-disciplinary artist and current PhD candidate within the Creative People, Products and Places (CP3) Research Centre, UniSA Creative, University of South Australia. Steph’s research interrogates the viability of a performing arts career in Australia and explores how we can better support artists to sustain their professional creative practice.

Eduardo de la Fuente

Eduardo de la Fuente is Adjunct Senior Lecturer in Justice and Society UniSA, University of South Australia. Recent publications include the co-edited volume with Ariella Van Luyn, Regional Cultures, Economies and Creativity: Innovating through Place in Australia and Beyond (Routledge, 2020); and a co-edited special issue with Margaret Gibson, Michael Walsh and Magdalena Szypielewicz entitled, “Thinking Place: Materialities, Atmospheres and Spaces of Belonging” (Thesis Eleven, October 2022). He has also published (and has in the pipeline) essays, book chapters and journal articles on concrete, sandstone, the built environment, landscape, sound and silence, place studies, and the theoretical and practical possibilities opened up by thinking about the world “texturally”.

Dr Zihong Deng

Zihong is a research fellow at the School of Education, Culture & Society, Monash University. She received her PhD from Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Sydney. Her research interests include migration, social protection, and social determinants of health and wellbeing. This presentation is based on the interviews with adults in her PhD fieldwork.

Professor Kevin Dew

Kevin Dew is Professor of Sociology at Victoria University of Wellington. He is a founding member of the Applied Research on Communication in Health (ARCH) group. Current research activities include studies of cancer survivorship, sociology of sleep, and healthcare decision-making. His books include The Cult and Science of Public Health: A Sociological Investigation, Public Health, Personal Health and Pills: Drug Entanglements and Pharmaceuticalised Governance, Complementary and Alternative Medicine: Containing and Expanding Therapeutic Possibilities, and he has co-edited the Encyclopedia of Health Research in the Social Sciences.

Dr Amy Dobson

Dr. Amy Shields Dobson (they/them) convenes the Digital and Social Media program at Curtin University, on Whadjuk Boodjar. They are an expert across gender politics, youth, and social media. They lead the Digital Intimacies research stream within Curtin’s Centre for Culture and Technology and are a Humanities Gender Research Champion for Curtin’s Gender Research Network. Amy has published widely on youth sexting, gendered representations in contemporary popular media and digital cultures, and contemporary feminine subjectivities. They are the author of Postfeminist Digital Cultures (2015), and editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media with Nicholas Carah and Brady Robards (2018). Amy’s current ARC and other competitively funded research projects include work on young people’s responses to #MeToo and gender violence awareness; facial image editing apps, body image, and selfies in youth cultures; and below-the-line youth-targeted alcohol and nightlife marketing on social media.

Tiffany Downing

Mrs Tiffany Downing has over 20 years of experience in government and six years in the not-for-profit sector in policy/strategy development, program development and management, evaluation and reporting at the State and Federal Government level. She is the Policy and Grants Manager at Sammy D Foundation and is currently completing a Graduate Diploma of Research Methods at Flinders University.

Lianara Patricia Dreyer

As a sociologist, my focus is on labor, technology, and organization. My research investigates the interactions, scope, and consequences of digitalization processes, particularly in relation to the transformation of work and organizations. It is important to note that digital technologies are not static objects, but rather are developed within a social context and shaped by society. In addition, the integration of digital technologies into working practice and the differences in their appropriation must be examined in the particular context of use.

Duane Duncan

Duane Duncan is Senior Lecturer and currently Convenor of Sociology at the University of New England, Armidale, NSW. His research areas of focus include gender, sexuality and the body, masculinity and men's health, and the study of and policy responses to alcohol-related violence.

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Terese Edwards

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Johanne Eldridge

Johanne is a PhD candidate in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University. Johanne’s current research project uses a mixed methods (focus groups and survey) based examination to ‘find’ wellbeing through the reconceptualising of a Western concept from the perspectives of migrants. This project explores cultural understandings of wellbeing, settlement, integration and social cohesion (and the relationship between these) from the perspectives of adult migrants from countries with emerging economies: India, Sri Lanka, the Philippines, Vietnam, Zimbabwe, Kenya, Iran and Lebanon who are settled in Perth, Western Australia. Drawing from an inter-disciplinary background in psychology and public health, Johanne’s research interests lie in mixed methods methodology, social network analysis and migrants’ wellbeing and quality of life.

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Professor Karen Farquharson

Karen Farquharson is Professor of Sociology, Chair of the Anti-Racism Hallmark Research Initiative, and President of Academic Board at the University of Melbourne. Her research is focused on the sociology of ‘race’, racism and diversity, particularly in the contexts of media and sport. Her recent work has looked at how organisations manage diversity including organisational opportunities for and barriers to increasing diversity.

Dr Mehrnosh Lajevardi Fatemi

Dr. Mehrnosh Lajevardi Fatemi is a graduate specializing in the study of religion within the Department of Social Science at Western Sydney University. Having recently completed her doctoral studies and submitted her thesis in December, she is now actively engaged in teaching at the university. Her research is centered on the dynamic intersection of Islamic leadership, Muslim immigration, and societal integration. In 2021, Mehrnosh authored a notable book chapter titled "Islamic Leadership and Muslim Immigration: A Framework for Reflection and Analysis," which was prominently featured in the esteemed volume "Religion, Migration, and Existential Wellbeing." Beyond her academic pursuits, Mehrnosh is deeply involved in various scholarly and research initiatives. She is a distinguished member of Western Sydney University's Religion & Society Research Cluster and contributes her expertise to significant projects such as the Challenging Racism Project. Additionally, Mehrnosh holds esteemed affiliations with professional associations including the Australian Association for the Study of Religion (AASR), The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), and the Australasian Association of Islamic Studies (AAIMS). Through her multifaceted involvement, Mehrnosh is committed to advancing understanding and fostering dialogue on critical issues related to religion, migration, and societal well-being.

Gregory Fayard

Gregory Fayard is an Assistant Professor in Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research looks at the importance of transportation and travel in constructing identities and social boundaries. His current research analyses how Chinese tourism is instrumental to shaping geopolitical worldviews and to spatial performances of national identity.

Shujie Feng

I am currently postgraduate student majoring Journalism and Communication. My research interests lie on digital feminist, femininity & masculinity, and social media.

Bronwyn Fielder

Dr Fielder is a Research Fellow at the University of Tasmania. Her research focuses on the reproduction of inequalities in society and ways in which these inequalities can be addressed. Fielder, working with Ezzy, Hilkejmeier, Dwyer and Richardson-Self, was instrumental in the organisation, data collection and analysis of the pilot study, Religious Freedom and LGBTI Discrimination: The experience of same-sex attracted and gender diverse workers in government funded faith-based schools and social service providers (2018). In 2019 Fielder (with Ezzy, Dwyer and Richardson-Self) conducted a Tasmanian government funded national survey of LGBT+ people in the workplace with a focus on Tasmania. Publications from these research projects are found on this website under ‘Related Research’.

Clayton Fordahl

Clayton Fordahl is an Associate Professor at the University of Akureyri in Iceland. He was formerly an Assistant Professor at the University of Memphis in the United States. His teaching and research interests include religion, politics, culture, and social theory. He has published on these and other topics in journals that include the British Journal of Sociology, the European Journal of Social Theory, and Thesis Eleven. In 2023, he contributed to the commemorative volume Vilfredo Pareto’s Contributions to Modern Social Theory (Routledge) and in 2020 he published his first book, The Ultimate Sacrifice: Martyrdom, Sovereignty, and the Secularization of the West.

Professor Nick J Fox

Nick J Fox is professor of sociology at the University of Huddersfield, UK, and adjunct professor of sociology at Torrens University, Australia. He has researched and written widely on new materialist and posthuman social theory as applied to health, embodiment, sexuality, creativity and emotions, and is currently working on issues in political sociology including social inequalities, governance and policy. This includes a re-analysis of Marx’s Capital, which revealed insights into what capitalism does that have never before been fully addressed in sociology, or in either right- or left-leaning political economic theory. Nick is author (with Pam Alldred) of Sociology and the New Materialism (London: Sage, 2017), and four previous books.

Professor Farida Fozdar

Farida Fozdar is Professor of Sociology and Dean of Global Futures, at Curtin University. She has published widely in a range of academic and policy relevant outlets, with over 140 publications, and several million dollars in research grants. Her work explores social inclusion, migration and settlement, multiculturalism, nationalism and post-nationalism, mixed race, and cosmopolitanism.

Dr Marika Franklin

Dr. Marika Franklin completed her PhD in health sociology in 2019. As an interdisciplinary qualitative researcher Marika has worked at several universities on projects examining the intersection between sociology and health. Marika has a particular interest in exploring individual perspectives, roles, and responsibilities but also the structures and processes that underpin health and wellbeing. Her work aims to bring together the field of individual decision-making with broader social and policy forces to advance knowledge for improving health-related quality of life. Marika’s research advances knowledge on dominant contemporary constructs such as self-management, goal setting, person-centredness and supportive care by providing insights into the changing roles of patients and health professionals in the contemporary healthcare context. Underlying all her research is a focus on equity. Marika has a commitment to collaborative multidisciplinary research and knowledge translation focused on supporting people with chronic conditions to live well.

Professor Simone Fullagar

Simone Fullagar (she/her) is Professor and Chair of the Sport and Gender Equity research hub and lead for the Inclusive Play theme in the Reimaging Disability, Griffith Inclusive Futures programme at Griffith University, Australia. She has published feminist, interdisciplinary sociological research using postqualitative approaches across sport, leisure and mental health fields. Simone collaborates with colleagues to produce theoretically informed research that explores intersectional inequity, gender relations and diverse forms of embodied movement. Simone is a co-editor of the new Routledge book series Postqualitative, New Materialist and Critical Posthumanist Research. Simone lives on the unceded lands of the Yugambeh and Kombumerri peoples of the Gold Coast.

Dr Melyssa Fuqua

Dr. Melyssa Fuqua is a Melbourne Postdoctoral Fellow. Her fellowship research explores how sporting clubs influence aspiration and participation of rural youth in tertiary education and work, and the clubs’ role in their wider community. Originally from Massachusetts, Melyssa was a P-12 teacher in rural Victoria for a decade before returning to higher education and research. She is the manager of the Rural Education Research Student Network connecting research students, early-career researchers, and experienced scholars; and hosts the annual International Emerging Rural Scholars Summit. Melyssa is on the editorial team of the Australian and International Journal of Rural Education.

Dan Furlanetto

After completing medical school in São Paulo, Brazil, I specialised in psychiatry and practised in the country’s public system for seven years while pursuing additional training in psychoanalysis. Complementing my clinical background, I hold a post-graduation in sexuality and a master’s in health sciences, in which I explored anomalous experiences in spiritist mediums, comparing them to hallucinatory phenomena. Working as a facilitator in a psychotherapy group for lesbians, gay men, and bisexual people introduced me to struggles involving conflict with their faith. Recognising the limitations of traditional psychoanalytical frameworks, I turned to sociological theories, such as gender studies and criminology, to better address contemporary expressions of sexual orientation and gender diversity and their relationship with religiosity. Over the last three years, I have furthered my inquiry into this complex topic through a PhD candidacy in Social Sciences. In addition to my PhD journey, I have been working as a Clinical Skills tutor at UNSW’s Faculty of Medicine and Health. Through this experience, I have been able to integrate psychosocial theories into the essential stages of medical education, preparing the next generation of doctors to be not just clinically adept but also culturally sensitive.

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Jayne Garrod

Bio: Jayne Garrod (she/her) is a PhD candidate in sociology at Deakin University. She has several years of experience as a lecturer and tutor in sociology and has worked on a diverse range of research projects as a research assistant. In addition to her scholarly experience, Jayne holds a master’s degree in social work and has several years of experience working in the field of disability support and advocacy. As a neurodivergent and physically disabled person, her research is informed by her social location and lived experience. She is passionate about empowerment and agency for disabled people and amplifying the voices of marginalised groups.

Richa George

Richa George is a final year PhD candidate at the School of Social Sciences, Monash University. Her research lies at the intersection of masculinity studies and digital media research. Her research interests include decolonising social theory, intersectional methodology and approaches, postcolonial approaches and qualitative practice.

Dr Manonita Ghosh

Dr. Manonita Ghosh is Research Fellow in the ECU SAGE Futures Lab. Additionally, she serves as the Editor-in-Chief for the Anthropology and Ageing Journal and leads research editorial teams. With a background in anthropology and public health, her research explores cross-cultural influences on health behaviour, aging and social care, health service evaluation, and music and migrant health. Manonita holds two master's degrees: one in Sociology from Dhaka University, Bangladesh, and another in Anthropology from the University of Western Australia. She completed a PhD in Population Health at the University of Western Australia. Manonita leads the Arts & Music Engagement stream in the SGE Future Lab. A trained musician, Manonita applies her skills in music direction to multicultural communities. With over 15 years of experience, she has worked in government organisations like the Department of Health WA and the Department for Communities. She has also made significant contributions to non-governmental health organisations, focusing on training, capacity building, and community development.

Esther Gounder

Esther Gounder is an early career academic with expertise in health and wellbeing and working with Indigenous communities. She is of Indo-Fijian background and has played sport (Oztag, Tag football) at representative level. Esther is also part of the casual teaching team in Social Work at Western Sydney University.

Genevieve Grava

Genevieve Grava is a doctoral student at the University of Auckland, currently in the last legs of her studies. She is doing her doctoral research in family sociology, migration and mobilities. She was previously a professional teaching fellow in sociology at the University of Auckland, teaching A Sociology of Relational Life. She is from the Cebu province of the Philippine archipelago. Herself a product of inter-generational and multiple migrations, Genevieve makes problematic what was taken for granted in her life; that is, structural migration within the political economy of the Philippines labour export policy (LEP). The LEP has seen the dispersal of millions of Filipinos across the globe, has given rise to the Filipino labour diaspora and the transnational Filipino family. Her work explores how public policy impinge on personal life and shape migratory patterns. Her research contributes to relational sociology and is attentive to the importance of understanding families within broader networks of relations and their embeddedness within wider social, political and structural contexts.

Dr Louise St Guillaume

Dr Louise St Guillaume is a disability studies researcher and lecturer in sociology at The University of Notre Dame Australia. She was a Summer Scholar at the Federal Australian Parliamentary Library in 2014, the 2019 E.G. Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University, and a Whitlam Fellow at the Whitlam Institute within Western Sydney University until 2023. She is currently a member of the Catholic Council for Pastoral Research. Her research often examines the National Disability Insurance Scheme and how Australian social security policies intersect and operate to govern the lives of people with disability.

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Neil Hall

Neil Hall is an Associate Professor in Social Work at Western Sydney University with extensive experience in research and PhD supervision in sport and wellbeing. His teaching expertise is in group work and has significant experience as a practitioner in that area. He has also been a Rugby player, coach and administrator.

Myra Hamilton

Associate Professor Myra Hamilton is an ARC Mid-Career Industry Fellow in the Disciplibe of Work and Organisational Studies at the University of Sydney. She is a sociologist and social policy scholar whose research focus is on gender, work and care over the lifecourse. Myra’s research explores how policies and services can build wellbeing and financial security in work and in care over the life course. She combines traditional academic research with applied policy research for government and non-government organisations, including evaluations of policies and programs. She makes regular contributions to public and media debate on issues such as grandparenting, retirement decisions, care services, balancing work and care, and intergenerational relationships. She has close working relationships with the community sector including peak bodies in the areas of parents, carers and seniors, is Reviews Editor of the International Journal of Care and Caring and sits on the NSW Carers Advisory Council and the Board of COTANSW.

Jiashan Han

Jiashan (Mary) Han is a scholar originally from Xi’an, China, specializing in Gender and Feminism studies. She is currently undertaking a Ph.D. in at Hong Kong Baptist University. Her Ph.D. research is focused on how and why misandry (male-hating) might be different from other forms of group-oriented hatred that was documented in sociological theories and studies of emotion. She is interested in studying gender inequality, online feminism, and how expressions of emotions online facilitate affective solidarity and support for women and feminism. She has previously completed a Master of Social Science (M.S.S.) at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA), and a bachelor’s degree in business administration (BA) from Seattle University. She co-authored the paper, “Mommy and Me: raising implicit followership theories”, which was published on Industrial and Commercial Training, and presented this paper at two international conferences: the Association for Psychological Science (APS) and the Global Followership Conference (GFC).

Associate Professor Benjamin Hanckel

Associate Professor Benjamin Hanckel is a sociologist at the Institute for Culture and Society and Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University. His work examines health and wellbeing, social inequalities in health and social change. Hanckel’s research includes projects on youth wellbeing, genders and sexualities research, as well as work examining digital technologies and health. He is co-editor in chief of the Journal of Applied Youth Studies, and associate editor of Health Sociology Review.

Jenna Imad Harb

Jenna Imad Harb is a Research Fellow based at the School of Regulation and Global Governance at the Australian National University. She holds a Bachelor’s degree in Legal Studies and Business, as well as a master’s degree in Sociology—both from the University of Waterloo. Her doctoral research examines how inequality, regulation, transnational governance, and digital technologies interface in the delivery of crisis relief. She has published on issues of anti-violence technologies, policing technologies, data protection, digital platforms, the regulation and social implications of AI, and the financialization of welfare. She has several years of experience conducting ethnographic fieldwork in the Middle East and United States and collaborating with humanitarian practitioners and researchers on the sector’s use of biometric technology for refugees.

Imogen Harper

Imogen is a PhD candidate in Sociology studying with the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies in the University of Sydney. Her PhD is on the experiences of young adults living with physical chronic illness (diagnosed or un-diagnosed). It will examine the complexities of living with poorly-understood conditions, especially during young-adulthood, and engage with questions surrounding the role of diagnosis, paradoxical desires for concealment and recognition, the temporal tensions of chronic illness, and online information and communities.

Professor Anita Harris

Anita Harris is a youth sociologist with a focus on cultural diversity, mobility, gender and citizenship in changing times. Her recent research has investigated youth transitions in the context of transnational mobility; young people’s practices of digital citizenship; and young people and social inclusion in the multicultural city. She is the author of many works in youth studies, including Thinking About Belonging in Youth Studies (with Cuervo & Wyn; 2022); Young People and Everyday Multiculturalism (2013), Next Wave Cultures: Feminism, Subcultures, Activism (ed) (2008), Young Femininities (with Aapola & Gonick) (2005); Future Girl (2004), and All About the Girl (ed) (2004).

Dr Ashleigh Haw

Dr. Ashleigh Haw (she/her) is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Communication at the University of Canberra. She specialises in advancing social inclusion in communication policy, advocacy, and practice, with a special interest in understanding how marginalised communities engage with (and are impacted by) media representation of their needs and experiences. Ashleigh’s most recent research uses Covid-19 as a case study to examine the social and health implications of racism, exclusion, and mis/disinformation during global crisis events; emphasising notable scholarly and policy implications at the intersections of sociology, social policy, and communication.

Dr Sophie Hickey

Sophie Hickey is an applied sociologist and health service researcher at the Molly Wardaguga Research Centre, Charles Darwin University. She is a strong advocate for research done in partnership with community and makes an impact. She is also keen to boost the profile of applied sociology and public sociology nationally and internationally

Nicholas Hill

Dr Nicholas Hill is a sociologist located in the School of Social and Political Sciences, University of Melbourne. His research focuses on LGBTIQA+ experiences of mental health and suicidality, and lived experience of psychiatric diagnoses and related care, including compulsory treatment orders. Nicholas specialises in community engaged research, undertaking innovative participatory projects exploring sensitive topics, and producing practical resources for service users, community organisations and government.

Christina Ho

Christina Ho is an Associate Professor of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. She researches cultural diversity, inequality and education, and experiences of Asian diasporas. Her books include Aspiration and Anxiety: Asian Migrants and Australian Schooling (Melbourne University Publishing), For Those Who’ve Come Across the Seas: Australian Multicultural Theory, Policy and Practice with Andrew Jakubowicz (Australian Scholarly Publishing) and Beyond the Hijab Debates: New Conversations on Gender, Race and Religion with Tanja Dreher (Cambridge Scholarly Press).

Dr James Holmes

Dr James Holmes recently completed his doctoral research on fantasy readers and is working on publishing this research. His research focuses on cultural sociology and social theory, particularly reading and reception, phenomenology and the imagination. Currently, James teaches both sociology and writing, and is interested in a teaching focused academic career.

Associate Professor Susan Hopkins

Susan Hopkins is an Associate Professor of communications based in UniSQ College at the University of Southern Queensland, Springfield campus, Australia. Susan holds a Ph.D. in social science and a Masters (Research) in education. Her research interests include enabling education, gender and media studies.

Dr Ashley Humphrey

Dr Ashley Humphrey is a Social Researcher, whose research, writing and presenting focuses on how differing cultural, social and political environments shape people’s behaviors, mental health and quality of life.

Zubair Hussain

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Takashi Iguchi

Associate Professor, Department of Sociology, Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences, University of Tokyo. Areas of Research: Critical Dementia Studies, Sociology of Health and Illness, Welfare Sociology. Article in English: "Rethinking the Conflict between Prevention and Preparedness: Towards a Sociological Perspective on Coexisting with Dementia," Gender and Culture in Asia, 7, 11-24, 2023.

Dr Sarosh Iqbal

Dr. Sarosh Iqbal is an experienced professional, having extensive expertise in social research and academia. She has worked with numerous prominent International development partners, including USAID, UN agencies, and the World Health Organization. In addition to her practical experience, Dr. Iqbal holds a PhD degree in Sociology and a Post Graduate Diploma in Knowledge Management. She is currently serving as Assistant Professor & Chairperson for the Dept. of Sociology, School of Social Sciences & Humanities at the University of Management & Technology, Lahore. Dr. Iqbal's scholarly contributions mainly focus on women's empowerment. By mentoring young researchers and students, she is actively engaging a new generation of advocates for women's rights and empowerment

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Vaishalini Singh Jamwal

A postgraduate with an MBA in OBHR,I am highly invested in the nuts and bolts of HR practices. I consider myself an avid reader and through my staunch interest in academia, I aspire to make scholarly contribution the research community of OBHR.

Dr Mark Jennings

Mark Jennings is Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Wollaston Theological College and University of Divinity. Mark Jennings (he/him) is the Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Wollaston Theological College and University of Divinity in Australia. He has published on Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity, gender and sexuality, secularisation, and neoliberalism. HIs second monograph, 'Happy: LGBTQ+ Experiences of Australian Pentecostal-Charismatic Christianity," is available now from Palgrave Macmillan.

Dr Amy Johnson

Amy Johnson is a military families sociologist at Central Queensland University. Her research seeks to understand and support modern military families by focusing on the impacts of service on individuals, families, communities, and broader society. Amy is a lived experience expert as an officer in the Royal Australian Navy (Reserve) and the partner of an Australian Defence Force (ADF) veteran.

Dr Belinda Johnson

Dr Belinda Johnson is a senior lecturer and researcher in disability studies and creative practice at the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT University, Australia. She has published in disability studies journals and books including Disability & Society and the Routledge International Handbook of Children’s Rights and Disability. In 2023, she co-presented at the Modes of Capture dance studies symposium in Ireland with Anna Hickey-Moody. Drawing from critical disability studies and posthuman feminism, she is curious about the valuable insights gleaned from less-considered lives. Belinda co-convenes the Sociology of Emotion and Affect Thematic Group of TASA. She also belongs to dance communities in Melbourne and Down syndrome communities with her daughter.

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Milo Kei

Milo Kei is a PhD candidate, sessional academic and Faculty Medal and Vice Chancellor scholarship recipient in Sociology and Anthropology at the University of Newcastle. His ongoing research examines individual and collective political participation and social stratification among School Strike for Climate activists. Using qualitative methods and ethnographic fieldwork for his doctoral project, emerging trends about the levels of political engagement of young environmental protesters in the Hunter region of NSW and Melbourne, Victoria are examined. Milo is a member of The Australian Sociological Association (TASA), Political Studies Association (UK) and participates in the Young People’s Politics specialist group. Connected to local community and environmental organisations in Newcastle NSW, Milo’s research is driven by social concerns about the efficacy, accessibility, and sustainability of social movements in Australia (and the globe).

Dr Katherine Kenny

Dr. Katherine Kenny is Deputy Director of the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, ARC DECRA Senior Research Fellow, and SOAR Prize recipient in the School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Sydney. Katherine is also the Editor in Chief of Health Sociology Review (2023-2026). She gained her PhD in Sociology and Science Studies from the University of California, San Diego in 2015. Prior to joining The University of Sydney, she held positions as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Practical Justice Initiative and Centre for Social Research in Health at UNSW Sydney. Her research draws on social theory and qualitative methodologies to better understand how health and disease, (or illness and wellness) are understood, ‘treated’, experienced and made meaningful in clinical contexts and in everyday life.

Mr. Salman Khan

Salman Khan is a master student at the University of Stirling, Scotland.

Angelina Kinda

Angelina Kinda is a third-year undergraduate law/arts student at The University of Notre Dame Australia who is majoring in sociology.,

Joe Kneipp

Joe Kneipp is a PhD student at the University of Queensland. He holds a Master of Arts (Applied Sociology) from the University of New England, a Bachelor of Law (Hons) and a Bachelor of Arts from the University of Queensland. Joe’s research focuses on the experiences of rural Australians in border communities. Additionally, Joe is a qualified lawyer currently working in criminal law for Tasmania Legal Aid in Hobart, Tasmania.

Charlotte Krolokke

Charlotte Krolokke is Professor in the Department of Culture and Language at the University of Southern Denmark. She has been principal investigator of several interdisciplinary research projects and has been editor-in-chief of the Nordic Journal of Feminist and Gender Research. Charlotte works primarily within the field of feminist cultural science studies and is author or co-author of more than 50 peer-reviewed journal articles as well as several books and book chapters.

Dr Lukasz Krzyzowski

Dr Lukasz Krzyzowski is a Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University, focusing on the intersections of migration, sexual orientation, and gender diversity. His research addresses complex social issues affecting marginalised communities, including LGBTIQ+ individuals, older people, and culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) populations. He has led the Rainbow Migrants project, which investigates support mechanisms for CaLD LGBTIQ+ people, including refugees and international students. His initiatives, such as 'Karaoke with an Accent', enhance the visibility and inclusion of rainbow migrants through cultural expression and innovative digital solutions. His expertise spans social network analysis, mixed methods research, action research, and co-design approaches, which he utilises to develop culturally safe services and shape policy recommendations. Dr Krzyzowski's work addresses aged care, migration, diversity, digital citizenship, and intimate partner violence, advocating for an intersectional approach to service co-design. His academic, advocacy, community, and industry engagement experience contribute to advancing social justice and equal access to support services, with both theoretical and practical applications in the field of sociology.

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Dr Lutfun Nahar Lata

Dr. Lutfun Nahar Lata is a Lecturer in Sociology and Social Policy in the School of Social and Political Sciences. Lutfun's primary research area focuses on the Sociology of work and employment including the gig economy and the future of work. She has written about gig economy, urban marginality, poverty governance, housing and place-based disadvantage. She is a mixed-methods researcher with extensive experience in conducting and publishing qualitative, quantitative and digital research and working with multidisciplinary teams that include stakeholders from academia, industry and local and central governments. Lutfun is the author of Spatial Justice, Contested Governance and Livelihood Challenges in Bangladesh (Routledge 2023). Her research has been published in a number of high-ranking international journals such as Current Sociology, The Sociological Review, Sociology Compass, Gender, Work & Organization, Cities, Geographical Research, Housing Policy Debate, Journal of Contemporary Asia, and Government Information Quarterly. Lutfun is currently on the Editorial Boards of Gender, Work & Organizations and Gender Issues. Lutfun is also the Book Review Editor of Journal of Contemporary Asia.

Alexandra Lee

Alexandra Lee (she/her) is a submitted PhD candidate in Sociology at Deakin University. Her qualitative research examines how living overseas shapes young Asian Australians’ experiences of futurity and their relationships with Australia, in the context of past and ongoing experiences of racialised marginalisation. In doing so, she more broadly explores how futurity is felt and experienced through the (racialised) body, and through place. Alexandra is also a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne, with the ALIVE National Centre for Mental Health Research Translation, in the field of lived-experience mental health research. Her wider research interests extend to youth mobilities, 'multicultural' youth in Australia, racialised embodiment and critical phenomenology, and interdisciplinary research.

Dr Emma Lees

Dr. Emma Lees is a social scientist and student-at-law (LPAB, NSW). She completed her doctoral thesis through the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney and is currently affiliated with the Work and Organisational Studies Discipline. Her research interests include work, employment, and job quality, co-operative enterprises, economic democracy, diverse economies, and the social and solidarity economy. Her PhD thesis studied the Catalan co-operative movement and the solidarity economy (1975–2019). Building on her doctoral research, Emma’s current research extends her lines of enquiry to investigate service-sector professionals’ and technicians' activities in Australia. She is a member of the Community Economies Research Network (CERN), the Sydney Employment Relations Research Group (SEERG), the Co-operatives Research Group, and she collaborates on projects with the Co-op Federation.

Dr Sophie Lewis

Dr. Sophie Lewis is Senior Lecturer at the University of Sydney. A qualitative researcher and health sociologist, her research takes a person-centred approach and provides in-depth insights into individuals’ experiences of health, illness and care and the social forces that shape these experiences. She uses innovative qualitative methods to critically examine intersections between chronicity, incurability and social connectedness for people with long-term and/or life-limiting conditions, across diverse illness and care contexts (e.g. metastatic cancers, obesity, culturally diverse populations, informal carers). This includes research on loneliness, stigma and social suffering, end-of-life care, death and dying, and the complexity of healthcare decision-making.

Rachel Lim

Rachel Lim is an Honours student specialising in Cultural Studies. Passionate about exploring the intricate dynamics of culture, identity, and society, Rachel's academic journey has been marked by a keen analytical eye and a profound curiosity about the world. Her research delves into the multifaceted layers of cultural expression and its impact on social structures, shedding light on the nuanced intersections of race, cultural and social identities, and media. Rachel's dedication to her field is evident in her thoughtful and innovative research project. Her current research focuses on the Southeast Asian diaspora and their connection with cultural roots, examining how migration and globalisation influence cultural identity and heritage preservation. This project has allowed her to collaborate with faculty on various interdisciplinary studies, challenging conventional perspectives and encouraging a more inclusive and critical understanding of cultural phenomena. Rachel's academic journey is complemented by her active participation in cultural organisations and student groups. She frequently engages in discussions and events that highlight diverse cultural narratives, fostering a vibrant academic community. Her involvement in these activities not only enhances her understanding of cultural dynamics but also reinforces her commitment to advocating for diversity and inclusion. As she continues to advance her studies, Rachel aspires to contribute to the broader discourse on cultural studies through both scholarly work and community engagement, aiming to bridge the gap between academic research and real-world applications.

Dr Ben Lohmeyer

Dr. Ben Lohmeyer is a Youth Sociologist and Youth Worker. He is a Senior Lecturer in Social Work in the College of Education, Psychology and Social Work at Flinders University. Ben's research interests include youth, loneliness, violence and bullying within intersections into youth policy and practice. Before beginning his academic career, Ben worked as a youth worker in alternative education and accommodation settings.

Gabriela Silva Loureiro

Gabriela Loureiro is a queer feminist lecturer and researcher mainly interested in gender, antiracism, decoloniality, migration, sexuality and emotions. Her main research project is focused on Brazilian feminisms and examines the role of emotions in activism in Brazil and the UK, combining discussions of sociology of emotions, transnational feminist praxis, intersectionality, and social media for the development of feminist communities and solidarity. She currently works as a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Wollongong, and before coming to Australia she lectured in Sociology of Emotions at the University of Edinburgh and in Gender Studies at Middlesex University. She holds a PhD in Media at the University of West London and a MA in Gender Studies from the University of Leeds. Before joining academia, Gabriela worked for magazines and feminist NGOs in Brazil as a writer and producer.

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Associate Professor Fiona MacDonald

Associate Professor Fiona MacDonald is Principal Research Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities, VU Research, Victoria University. A Sociologist, Fiona’s research investigates the impact of contemporary social and cultural structures on the everyday lives of children and young people, both face to face and online. Taking a social justice perspective, Fiona focuses on the engagement and empowerment of young people. Working across disciplines, Fiona collaborates with community organisations, government and industry stakeholders, conducting research with practical outcomes and impact for young people and those who work with them. Fiona has led research around young people in disasters, writing the IGEM Evidence from Experience report on young people’s experiences of the black summer bushfires; led the VU research partnership for the Future Proof: young people, disaster recovery and (re)building communities bushfire relief and recovery project that brings together 14 partners across Victoria. Fiona is the joint research lead, on the newly funded Centre of Excellence in young people and disasters, a partnership between Victoria University and Youth Affairs Council Victoria that aims to bring together expertise around young people (12–24-year-olds), young participation and disasters.

James Hazel Maher

James Hazel Maher is a researcher, composer, and sound artist whose work explores the cultural production of experimental working-class musical and sonic practices. James's research has been published in The Acoustic Ecology Review, Limelight Magazine, Liquid Architecture's Disclaimer journal, Carriageworks Journal, and ACT: Journal for Music & Performance. He is the co-director of the interdisciplinary arts publication ADSR Zine and is currently a PhD candidate at the University of Melbourne.

Professor Samuel Makinda

Samuel M. Makinda is the Professor of International Relations and Security Studies at Murdoch University. Prior to joining academia, he was a senior journalist in Nairobi and a Foreign Policy analyst in the Parliamentary Research Service at the Australian Federal Parliament. He has published five books, over 50 chapters, and more than 100 journal articles on a wide range of issues, including terrorism, the UN, US security policies, China’s foreign relations, arms control and disarmament, Australia-US relations, the theories of international politics, critical security studies, human rights, and global governance. He has been a consultant to the Australian government, the European Union and several African governments on governance and security issues. He has been a researcher at the International Institute for Strategic Studies in London, the Brookings Institution in Washington, DC, Cambridge University, Oxford University, and the Centre for Strategic and International Studies in Jakarta. He was awarded the Medal of the Order of Elder of the Burning Spear by the then President of Kenya, Mwai Kibaki, in December 2011 for his “distinguished service rendered to the nation”. Professor Makinda was elected a Fellow of the World Academy of Art and Science in September 2001.

Olha Maksymenko

Olha Maksymenko leading sociologist at the Department of Methodology and Methods of Sociology, editor of English publications for the journal “Sociology: Theory, Methods, Marketing”, librarian at Pavlo Usenko Library for Children, Centralised Library Management System of Dniprovskyi District of the city of Kyiv.

Sambit Mallick

Sambit Mallick is Professor of Sociology at the Department of Humanities and Social Sciences, Indian Institute of Technology Guwahati, India. He specializes in the sociology of science and technology, and also includes historical sociology and philosophy of the social sciences among his research interests. His research and teaching are at the intersection of ‘philosophy’, social theory and science studies.

Dr Simone Marino

Dr. Simone Marino is currently a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab within the School of Arts and Humanities at Edith Cowan University (ECU). In addition to his academic role, he also holds the position of Music & Cultural Engagement Consultant at WA InCasa Aged Care & Community Service. Dr. Marino's expertise is notably interdisciplinary and intercultural. His research interests encompass the transmission and construction of ethnic identity, the impact of dementia, and the well-being of individuals from diverse migrant backgrounds. His research is grounded in ethnographic observation and employs geriatric depression scale analyses alongside medical screening tools. Dr. Marino is actively engaged in the pursuit of grants and funding opportunities to support a comprehensive trial of his co-designed music engagement intervention, Comusichiamo. The aim is to gather empirical evidence that can substantiate the intervention's efficacy and its potential impact.

Dr Cathy Martin

Catherine Martin is based at the McCusker Centre for Citizenship, where she educates students about social issues, social justice, and civic engagement. In addition to researching the drivers of citizen science engagement for older adults, she is also currently researching the intersections between student teamwork, critical consciousness, and social responsibility. Her research background is in issues around race, migration, nationalism, and national belonging, and her PhD took a critical discourse analysis approach to examine the use of metaphors in press discourses around immigration to Australia (1854-2018). She has also contributed to published research on the Australian national curriculum and national identity.

Sonia Martin

I am an experienced academic having held positions in universities in Melbourne and Adelaide and policy, and practice and research positions in the community sector. My experience in higher education includes program management of post-graduate and undergraduate social work degrees, Honours coordination, extensive teaching in social policy, social research and sociology, as well as work on a range of research projects. My scholarly work is primarily concerned with poverty, inequality and social inclusion informed by a commitment to social justice. Building upon my PhD, my research focus is primarily on social policy issues, state welfare, stigma, the underclass thesis and research methodologies that capture lived experience. My research track record includes work on several ARC and other large grants, presentations at national and international conferences, formal training in spatial methodologies and a co-authored book on the lived experiences of welfare.

Dr Jenny Maturi

Dr. Jenny Maturi is a research fellow at the University of Queensland’s Institute for Social Science Research. Her research interests include gender-based violence, refugee and migrant studies, social movements and institutions, and feminist theory. Prior to academia Jenny worked in the human services for 15 years, mostly in domestic violence and refugee resettlement organisations. Building on this work experience, Jenny’s research has a particular focus on strategies addressing gender-based violence at the level of policy, advocacy and front-line service delivery. Her work to date examines the inclusion and exclusion of marginalised groups from mainstream systems and institutions, and explores what can be done differently to address social inequalities. Jenny has published in international journals on intimate partner violence and refugee communities; gender, race, ethnicity and culture; and gendered violence in a broader context of structural inequalities aimed at addressing issues of social justice.

Ms. Hannah McCole

Hannah McCole is a PhD Candidate in Anthropology at La Trobe University. Hannah’s work focuses upon the socio-political contexts of agriculture, environmental management, environmental civil science, resource management and sustainable development. For her undergraduate degree, Hannah studied both human and physical geography. Throughout her undergraduate degree, Hannah focused upon hydrological management and the interrelationship between water and society. In 2019, for her honour’s degree, Hannah completed a thesis a titled “Reimagining hydrology: How do hydrological models conceptualize epistemological integration?”. This thesis examined the role of civil science in developing water management models. For her master’s degree, Hannah completed a thesis titled “How farmers understand their autonomy and the significance of this understanding for environmental management in New Zealand”. This thesis explored the current socio-political landscape of farming in New Zealand and investigated whether certain legislative reforms impeded upon farmer imaginings of autonomy. Hannah's current PhD research explores on-farm natural capital accounting and its role in developing social resilience amidst Australian farming communities. Specifically, Hannah’s research will attempt to converge multiple understandings of resilience, expand upon the top-down nature of social resilience research and intertwine both ecological and sociological perspectives of resilience.

Dr Vanessa McDermott

Dr McDermott researches policies and rules, with a focus on risk and improving outcomes for workers. Her work on the impact of regulatory responses for worker safety in civil construction, and for athletes subject to anti-doping policies in elite sport considers how policies and rules can increase the compliance burden for those subject to those rules, inadvertently contributing to inequality and poor outcomes. She conducts evaluations of programs and initiatives in the public and corporate sectors, translating findings into actionable recommendations for change that seek to influence policy and positive outcomes for communities and individuals.

Dr Jordan MCKENZIE

Dr Jordan McKenzie completed his PhD at Flinders University and is now a lecturer in Sociology at the University of Wollongong. His research is largely informed by European social and critical theory, and these perspectives contribute to his current research in the sociology of emotion. In particular, Jordans work critically engages with the current cultural fascination with happiness and the good life in order to better understand how emotional experience reflects modernization and social change. This research has culminated in his most recent monograph Deconstructing Happiness: Critical Sociology and the Good Life (2016).

Monique McKenzie

Monique McKenzie is a Postdoctoral Research Associate in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. Her research interests are centred on the new and emerging methods through which individuals build their incomes and wealth. She had studied precarious work constracts including creative freelancing and platform work, and currently the role of assets in building wealth in the 21st century. She has published work on the platform economy, precarious labour and the asset economy.

Caitlan McLean

Caitlan is a PhD candidate with the Research Centre for Public Health, Equity and Human Flourishing at Torrens University Australia. Her PhD is investigating social practices relating to oral health, natural parents and preschool aged children in Australia. A background working in paediatric and community based occupational therapy sparked an interest in social and health research.

Dr Kim McLeod

Dr Kim McLeod is a Senior Lecturer in Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania, on the lands of the palawa and pakana peoples of lutruwita, Tasmania. Kim re-envisions health and education in her academic work towards equitable access, experiences, and outcomes. Interdisciplinary collaboration underpins Kim's research, teaching, and supervision, which aims to facilitate health and education professionals to approach their work in diverse environments as a form of equity practice. Kim's books include Wellbeing Machine: How Health Emerges from the Assemblages of Everyday Life (Carolina Academic Press, 2017); Culture, Diversity, and Health: Towards Culturally Safe Health Care (with Tinashe Dune and Robyn Williams, Routledge, 2021), and Progressing Critical Posthuman Perspectives in Health Sociology (with Simone Fullagar, Routledge, 2024).

Sean McMorrow

Sean McMorrow is editor of Parrhesia: A Journal of Critical Philosophy and teaches at the School of Culture and Communication, University of Melbourne.

Dr Charlotte McPherson

Dr. Charlotte McPherson is a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow at the Youth Research Collective at the University of Melbourne. Her current research project explores perceptions, experiences, and navigations of opportunities and community among working-class young people in rural areas in Victoria and Scotland. This project builds on her research about youth, social class, place, and social justice. Charlotte's research prioritises understanding young people's lives from their own perspective through qualitative and participant-led approaches. Prior to joining the University of Melbourne, Charlotte led on the qualitative strand of a major national study of youth transitions in England at King's College London. She is a member of the editorial team of the Journal of Youth Studies.

Dr Ramón Menéndez

Dr. Ramón Menéndez is currently a sociology lecturer at UDIT (University of Design, Innovation and Technology) in Madrid, Spain. His has conducted research on authenticity as a sociocultural phenomenon in connection to ideas of self and personal identity. He has published in Journal of Sociology and Celebrity Studies.

Xavier Mills

Xavier Mills is a PhD candidate at Swinburne University of Technology in the School of Social Sciences, Media, Film, and Education. His doctoral research is an institutional ethnography examining the ruling relations that govern the everyday lives of queer families. Using a queer deconstructive approach, he seeks to understand how certain forms of family are upheld as ‘normal’, thereby having a generalising effect on queer folk and families broadly.

Dr Maja Lindegaard Moensted

Dr Maja Lindegaard Moensted is a postdoctoral research fellow at University of Sydney with more than 15 years of experience researching the meeting between disadvantaged people and welfare institutions. Taking a sociological and qualitative approach her research aims to address complex challenges in communities such as health equity and social determinants of health; youth disadvantage; the relationship between social connectedness and health; substance use; homelessness and integrated care for vulnerable people. Collectively her research provides insights into the complexity of health and social inequities across different populations and care contexts.

Kelly Moes

Kelly Moes is a doctoral candidate in the School of Media, Creative Arts and Social Inquiry at Curtin University in Perth, Western Australia. Kelly holds a Master's degree in Disability Studies, and a Graduate Certificate in Research Methods. Shaped and informed by her professional experience in the Community Services and Health Industry and her own lived experience with chronic illness-disability, her research interest focuses on more inclusive, responsive and coordinated health and social supports for people with chronic illness-disability. Kelly's PhD research foregrounds the collective knowledge and experiential expertise of those who live Intracranial Hypertension. By broadening the narrative about this condition her research seeks to change the way it, and chronic illness-disability more broadly, is understood, researched and managed.

Dr Habib A. Moghimi

Dr Habib A. Moghimi teaches at the University of Sydney. In his research, he combines critical social theory with creative research methods to gain new insights into how media represents real life. After completing his PhD on the representation of everyday life in Iranian cinema at the University of Sydney in 2021, his recent publication explores various ways to create documentaries using sociological imagination. His manuscripts, currently under publication, focus on censorship in Iranian cinema and the multimodal construct of refugees in Australia and Canada.

Eibhlis Moore

Eibhlis is a second year PhD candidate in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. Eibhlis’ project is investigating the current employment experiences and working lives of women aged 45-60 who work in customer-facing service roles in retail and hospitality industries in Melbourne and Geelong. Eibhlis’ broader research interests include, gender and work, Australian social policy, affect and embodiment, and narrative methods.

Natasha Moore

Natasha Moore in a second-year undergraduate student at The University of Notre Dame Australia who is completing a Bachelor of Arts (Majors: Sociology and Politics).

Carolyn Morgan

Carolyn Morgan is a doctoral candidate at the University of New England, researching the experiences of older Australians living in aged care during the COVID-19 lockdowns. Drawing from personal experience as a family member of an aged care resident during this period, her research examines the impact of lockdowns on residents' human rights. Carolyn has a strong interest in advocacy for both residents and their carers. Her 35 years of lived experience as a parent of a child with a disability has provided her with an understanding of the social and institutional barriers faced by individuals with disabilities. This personal experience has fuelled her interest in advocacy. Carolyn's extensive volunteer work includes assisting students with disabilities in accessing education, such as scribing for exams for students with dyslexia, dysgraphia, and other disabilities. She has also worked in a local specialist school, supporting children with moderate to severe needs. Her research aims to shed light on the often-overlooked experiences of aged care residents during the pandemic, highlighting the importance of upholding human rights within aged care. Carolyn's unique combination of personal experience, advocacy work, and academic research makes her a valuable contributor to the ongoing conversation about aged care in Australia.

Dr Amy Mowle

The focus of Amy’s research reflects a commitment to understanding and addressing complex social problems, spanning across disciplines such as public health, digital sociology, community action research, and knowledge translation. Since earning her PhD in 2022, she has been building up a rich track record of high-quality research outputs, including peer-reviewed publications in high-impact journals and presentations at international conferences. In her current role as a Research Fellow on an $11 million project of community research and action, she is engaged in an exploration of issues of power they relate to co-designed research and practice that seeks to improve population health outcomes.

Associate prof Lejla Mušić

Mušić Lejla, associate prof of Sociology of Gender I, and Sociology of Gender II.

Rosy Musumeci

Rosy Musumeci is senior researcher in Sociology of Cultural and Communicative Processes at the Department of Cultures, Policies and Society, University of Turin, where she teaches Sociology of the Family, Sociology of Economic and Social Inequalities, and Cultures and Social Services and Policies.

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Professor Camille Nakhid

Camille Nakhid is a professor in the School of Social Sciences and Humanities at Auckland University of Technology. Camille is from Trinidad and Tobago.

Hien Thi Nguyen

Hien is a research fellow at the ECU Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab, School of Arts and Humanities, Edith Cowan University. She has over 16 years of experience working as a social researcher and development practitioner in Vietnam and Australia. Her scholarship includes migration, ageing, diversity, gender, and development. Her current research questions focus on social care solutions, with a particular focus on social frailty prevention and reduction among culturally and linguistically diverse (CaLD) communities to promote their health outcomes and wellbeing.

Greg Noble

Greg Noble is Professor at the Institute for Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. He has been involved in research in multiculturalism for 40 years, with a special interest in the relations between youth, ethnicity, class and gender; migration and intercultural relations; cultural pedagogies; Bourdieusian theory; multicultural education and cultural complexity. He is the author or editor of 11 books, including: Fields, Capitals, Habitus (2021), Doing Diversity Differently (2021), Convivialities (2018), Disposed to Learn (2013), On Being Lebanese in Australia (2010) and Bin Laden in the Suburbs (2004).

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Anita Eseosa Ogbeide

Anita Eseosa Ogbeide is a PhD candidate from the School of Social Sciences at the University of Tasmania. Her research interest focuses on marginalised and racially/ethnically diverse populations and how they interact with health and social services. This interest is also represented in her teaching experience which emphasises multicultural diversity in healthcare settings alongside the promotion of culturally responsive and safe care. Her PhD research aims to investigate the unheard experiences and strategies of Culturally, Ethnically and Linguistically diverse (CEALD) mental healthcare professionals in providing culturally safe and responsive care to CEALD patients in Australia.

Dr Michelle O'Shea

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Frey Parkes

Frey Parkes is a lecturer within the University of Southern Queensland UniSQ College Pathways.

Professor Roger Patulny

Roger Patulny is a Professor of Sociology at Hong Kong Baptist University. His research interests include socilogical studies of loneliness, social isolation, the sociology of emotions, emotion management, social capital, social inclusion and connection, unemployment and the future of work, social mix in public housing, gender and social networks, volunteering, trust, and digital interaction.

Dr Michelle Peterie

Dr. Michelle Peterie is an Australian Research Council DECRA Fellow and University of Sydney Robinson Fellow in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Sydney. She co-leads the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies' research themes on 'Work, Education and Welfare', and 'Migration, Im/mobility and Belonging'. Michelle is an Associate Editor of the Australian Journal of Social Issues and a past co-convener of The Australian Sociological Association's Sociology of Emotions and Affect thematic group. Michelle’s research investigates the impacts of social policies and practices on individual and collective wellbeing. Taking a person-centred approach – and in close collaboration with research participants and third-sector stakeholders – her work seeks to improve outcomes for disadvantaged children, families and communities. Michelle is currently leading a number of research projects focused on children's experiences of parental deportation (ARC DE23, CIA), the reverberating impacts of immigration detention (ARC LP23, CIA), and the politics of care and solidarity.

Amanda Peters

Amanda is a PhD candidate at Monash University. Her theoretical PhD is titled The paradox of gender equality policy; How government interventions designed to address gender employment patterns are underpinned by the patriarchal structures which create the issue. The thesis uses feminist methodology to analyse Australian, Dutch and Icelandic gender equality policy.

Hannah Petocz

Hannah Petocz is a third year PhD candidate with the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre, Monash University, in Melbourne. Hannah’s research focuses on young Australian women’s experiences of everyday digital dating abuse and use of safety work in these spaces. Her research has directly informed the South Australian Police Family and Domestic Violence Section training on the topic of digital dating abuse, and has been presented at both national and international forums. Hannah is additionally the Monash Gender and Family Violence Prevention Centre HDR Representative, a Monash Digital Cultures Research Group HDR Representative, and is teaching Digital Literacies in the Bachelor of Education, at La Trobe University.

Felicity Picken

Felicity Picken is a Lecturer at Western Sydney University. Her scholarship is concerned with the changing relations between humans and nature in the strange living out of the Anthropocene. She follows the emergence of the ‘blue planet’ as a significant social actor by exploring how relations with oceanic environments evolve through pleasurable encounters including art, heritage, tourism, and leisure.

Giulio Pitroso

Giulio Pitroso is a PhD Candidate at the School of Humanities Languages and Social Science at the Griffith University. He has been part of several civil society organisations in Sicily and in Catalonia, including Libera – Associazioni, nomi e numeri contro le mafie, and Generazione Zero.

Mel Powersmith

Mel Powersmith is a PhD candidate in sociology, research assistant, and casual academic at the School of Social Science at the University of Queensland. She is also treasurer and policy advisor with the Antipoverty Centre. Her research interests include welfare programs, urban sociology, qualitative research methods, and people’s attachments to home and place. Mel uses her own first-hand experiences of residual welfare programs, such as accessing statutory payments, social housing, and having been in ‘out of home care’, to relate to and empower research participants. This aligns with the work of Antipoverty Centre, which seeks to bring policy affected peoples’ expertise on welfare programs and poverty to the fore in policy and research.

Sujith Kumar Prankumar

Collective biography of the presenters’ interconnections, AI-generated from our online conversation about the pluriverse: Kim, Anita, Penelope, and Sujith are closely linked through a network of professional relationships and shared academic interests. Their connection started when Kim and Penelope bonded over a retweeted PhD advertisement on Twitter, which grew into a professional relationship. Kim and Sujith collaborate through their roles in teaching culturally safe healthcare at the University of Tasmania's Rozelle campus. Anita was introduced to Kim through a mutual colleague at Western Sydney University, with whom Kim had co-edited a textbook. This led to Anita taking on a tutoring role at the Burnie campus and pursuing her PhD. Additionally, Sujith's connection to Kim stemmed from a colleague he knew at UNSW. Biscuit is Kim’s golden retriever and got looped into the network by sharing his responses to our online conversation about the pluriverse.

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Dr David Radford

David Radford's research focuses on mobilities, identities and social change. David investigates migration, diversity and interculturality in rural/regional and urban Australia. His research emphasises the importance of the micro, everyday lived experiences of migration and interculturality while drawing on macro factors impacting these experiences; the role of local government has been central to his research. David's present research projects include investigating refugee-background and migrant settlement in rural Australia and exploring how the Council of Europe’s Intercultural Cities (ICC) model and interculturalism is unfolding in different regions of the world (Australia/Canada/Spain).

Adam Rajcan

Adam Rajčan is a PhD candidate at Macquarie University and Adjunct Research Officer in the Department of Social Inquiry at La Trobe University. He is currently researching publishing patterns of Australian and New Zealand sociology doctoral students along several lines: gender, destination journals, university ranking, and monograph v thesis by publication.

Dr Ivana Randjelovic

Ivana is the Senior Research Officer at ISCRR responsible for conducting primary research and environmental scans. Since 2006, Ivana has accumulated vast experience in delivering research and implementing projects across university, government and non-government organisation sectors. She has a background in anthropology (BA Hons) and Gender and Politics (MA) and holds a PhD in Social Sciences from Swinburne University.

Kazi Sharmin Rashid

Kazi is a PhD candidate at Western Sydney University. Her areas of interest include migration, transnationalism, integration, identities, sense of belonging, Islamophobia, racism and anti-racism. Her work utilizes quantitative and qualitative techniques influenced by multidisciplinary research (post-colonial feminism, intersectionality, transnationalism, sociology, social and cultural geography).

Md. Abdur Rashid

Highly experienced in the government service and have around 30 years of experience in the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) under Ministry of Agriculture. After completing Master of Arts in Economics from Rajshahi University on 1981 (held on 1983) and joined Government service on 15-021988 qualifying the competitive examination conducted by the Bangladesh Public Service Commission (BPSC) as a research Officer in the Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM) under Ministry of Agriculture. During the service time with warmth dedication and service to the nation, Govt. & NGOS and other stakeholder’s satisfaction inspired me to make confidence in the related service successfully with honesty. Service Statement: BCS Official (30 Years in Department of Agricultural Marketing (DAM), Agricultural Ministry, Bangladesh).

Dr Laura Simpson Reeves

Laura is a Research Fellow in the School of Nursing, Midwifery, and Social Work at The University of Queensland. She is also a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre. She is a highly experienced qualitative social researcher with a strong background across the social sciences and humanities. Her research broadly aims to understand social and cultural responses to inequity and disadvantage, with a strong focus on lived experience. Laura works with vulnerable and marginalised groups at the nexus of culture and disadvantage, especially around ethnicity, gender and sexuality, poverty, and experiences of exclusion and discrimination. She has a particular focus and interest in diaspora and issues around belonging, identity, and social cohesion/isolation.

Dr Omid Rezaei

Omid is a Research Associate in the School of Medical and Health Sciences at Edith Cowan University (ECU), where he is currently engaged in an intriguing study on the lived experiences of individuals with neurological conditions. Concurrently, he serves as a Sessional Lecturer in the School of Arts and Humanities at ECU.

German Ricci

German Ricci is a sociologist originally from Argentina. He has a master's in Public Policy from the University of Sydney and is currently a Phd candidate in the School of Social Sciences at UNSW. His research interests include sociology, international relations, international organisations, power, and inequality.

Dr Alexandra Ridgway

Alexandra Ridgway is a Lecturer of Criminology and Justice Studies at RMIT University in Melbourne, Australia. A socio-legal scholar, Alexandra is interested in how law shapes family and personal lives. She has investigated the role of law in experiences of family breakdown and crisis, especially those involving divorce and/or family violence. Much of her research has considered these topics in the context of migration. Alexandra completed her Ph.D. in Sociology at The University of Hong Kong in 2020, where she remains a Fellow at the Centre for Criminology.

Professor Celia Roberts

Celia Roberts is Professor in the School of Sociology at the Australian National University. Working in feminist technoscience studies and social studies of health, biomedicine and sexuality, she is the author of several books, including Messengers of Sex: Hormones, Biomedicine Feminism (Cambridge University Press, 2007), Puberty in Crisis: The Sociology of Early Sexual Development (Cambridge University Press, 2017), with Adrian Mackenzie and Maggie Mort, Living Data: Making Sense of Health Biosensing (Bristol University Press, 2019), and Reproduction, Kin and Climate Crisis: Making Bushfire Babies (Bristol University Press, 2023), with Mary Lou Rasmussen, Louisa Allen and Rebecca Williamson.

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Dr Sasikala. A.S.

Dr. Sasikala. A.S. is Associate Professor at the Department of History at GITAM Deemed to be University, Bengaluru. She has completed her PhD in Gandhian Studies from IIT Madras. Her areas of research interest are Gandhian Thought and Philosophy, Modern Indian History, Peace and Conflict Resolution, and Environmental Philosophy. She has contributed articles and chapters to various reputed journals and book projects. She has given various invited talks in schools and colleges and through the country's public broadcasting system, All India Radio.

Fazal E Subhan Safi

Fazal E Subhan Safi is a Master student at Liverpool Hope University United Kingdom.

Ms. Saira

Ms. Saira is completed M.Phil Sociology from Bahauddin Zakariya University Multan

Simran Sandhu

Simran Sandhu is a PhD candidate at La Trobe University, Australia. She is conducting an interdisciplinary research that explores the intersection of migration and public health. The question she is currently exploring includes understanding how older Indian migrants in Victoria, Australia perceive and experience emergency health care services. She is particularly interested in examining the existence and the intersection of various axes of differentiation that may shape the use of, meaning of and attitude towards the existing emergency health services amongst older adults from diverse cultural backgrounds.

George Sarantoulias

George Sarantoulias is a PhD candidate in the Literary and Cultural Studies Graduate Research Program at Monash University, Australia. He holds an Australian Government Research Training Scholarship and teaches social and political theory as an Assistant Lecturer in the School of Social Sciences at Monash University. He also teaches sociology and social theory sessionally at Flinders University. He is currently working on a dissertation titled In pursuit of the Political: Marcel Gauchet, Citizenship, and the Crisis of Democratic Culture. He is Co-Editor-In-Chief of Colloquy: Text Theory Critique. His research centres around social imaginaries, citizenship, democracy, and depoliticisation. His most recent publications are ‘Instruction and Information, Images and Icons: Governing Contagion, Social Regulation and Public Health’ (Roach Anleu and Sarantoulias 2024), ‘Complex data and simple instructions: Social regulation during the Covid-19 pandemic’ (Roach Anleu and Sarantoulias 2022), and ‘Mapping the theme of Creativity in Cornelius Castoriadis’s and Paul Ricoeur’s Social Imaginaries’ (Sarantoulias 2019).

Brigitta Scarfe

Brigitta Scarfe is a PhD candidate at the Western Australian Academy of Performing Arts and Kurongkurl Katitjin, Edith Cowan University. She is a descendant of Irish and English immigrants and grew up in Albury, Wiradjuri Country. Since 2016, she has worked with the Derby community in the West Kimberley region, with whom she continues to conduct research investigating relationships between Country, wellbeing, and contemporary musicking practices. She is also a choir facilitator, amateur musician, and teaches tertiary ethnomusicology.

Dr Emma Seal

Dr. Emma Seal is a research fellow in the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT University. Emma’s interdisciplinary research expertise intersects the cognate areas of sociology, humanities and critical theoretical approaches and broadly focuses on examining health and social inequalities. She has conducted applied research in a variety of contexts, including mental health and people's everyday health experiences. Emma’s research is driven by community engaged research practices and participatory methodologies to establish a common purpose and collectively work towards social change.

Eyram Ivy Sedzro

Ms. Sedzro Eyram Ivy is a graduate researcher with the School of Social and Political Science at the University of Melbourne. Her current project examines Ghanaian female domestic and care workers' risk perception as one of the Gulf's most marginalised, devalued, and least protected working sectors. Prior to her doctoral thesis, she has worked across different thematic areas such as skilled and unskilled labour migration, policy development and analysis, gender and community development, financial management skills, and risk management. Ms. Sedzro draws upon her extensive work experiences and deep research interests to create inclusive spaces that promote empowerment, social impact, and effective communication about migration management and risk.

Mingzi Shen

Mingzi is doing an Honours degree in Sociology at the University of Melbourne. She is interested in media culture, gender and relationships.

Tom Short

Tom Short is a doctoral candidate in Critical Mental Health at RMIT University. His research explores young people's lived experience of a diagnosis of borderline personality disorder from a critical relational perspective.

Dr Rosie Shorter

Rosie Clare Shorter is a feminist researcher interested in gender, sexuality and religion. She is currently a Research Fellow at Deakin University, and is part of a team researching spirituality in Australia. Her PhD research has focused on gender and evangelism in the Sydney Anglican Diocese. She has tutored and lectured across sociology, gender studies and studies of religion. She has previously completed a Bachelor of Creative Arts and a Master of Research at Macquarie University, in the department of Media, Music, Communications and Cultural Studies.

Maddison Sideris

Maddison Sideris (she/her) is a PhD Candidate, research assistant and sessional tutor. She is researching Australian’s digital intimate practices at the Youth Research Collective, University of Melbourne, Australia. She completed her Bachelor of Arts (Honours)/Laws at Deakin University, with her Honours thesis exploring how young women construct their identities on Instagram.

Aimee Sinclair

Aimee (she/her) is in the final stages of her PhD at Curtin University. Her work, which draws from Mad studies and post-humanist thinking, considers the effects of inclusion regarding peer support within formal mental health systems. Outside of academia, Aimee is involved with supporting the lived experience (peer) workforce through training and supervision.

Sage Sloane

Sage is an honours student at Curtin University, located on Whadjuk Noongar Boodja. They graduated with a Bachelor of Arts in Anthropology and Sociology in 2024, with specialisations in Social Media and Professional Writing. Sage was invited to enrol in the honours course in 2024 due to high achievement in their undergraduate studies. During their undergraduate degree, Sage’s research focused primarily on gender and sexuality, influenced by their positionality as a queer/sapphic non-binary person. They are passionate about inclusivity, intersectionality, and reflexivity in research. Sage believes that social scientists should engage meaningfully and thoughtfully with the groups (and individuals) they are studying, to ensure that their perspectives are accurately reflected in the research. They enjoy engaging in various qualitativem research methods, including ethnography, action research, semi-structured interviews, and thick description writing. During their honours year, Sage authored a thesis titled “Looking and Feeling Queer: Researching the Relationship Between Queer Self-Styling Practices, Sense of Self, and Community Connection”, during which they conducted eleven semi-structured interviews with participants of various genders and sexualities, unified under the queer umbrella. After taking a brief break from academia, Sage plans to expand their existing honours thesis, either independently or in the context of completing a PhD in the future.

Dr Anthony K J Smith

Dr Anthony K J Smith (he/him) is a sociologist of health, gender, and sexuality specialising in HIV, sexual health, and LGBTQ+ communities. He is employed as a postdoctoral researcher at the Centre for Social Research in Health, UNSW Sydney. His research draws on sociological theory, data justice, critical public health, and science and technologies studies. Anthony is Editorial Advisory Board member of Health Sociology Review and Associate Editor of Sexual Health.

Associate Professor Gavin Smith

I am the Head of Sociology at the Australian National University. I am a generalist sociologist interested in the social relations that shape and emerge from interactions that occur between human and non-human social agents, things and environments. My research has mostly explored the social impacts of surveillance technology, specifically looking at the intersubjective meanings ascribed to everyday practices of watching and being watched, be that through CCTV camera surveillance systems or via social media cultures. I am currently looking at the rise – and increased use – of facial recognition technologies in various contexts as part of an ARC Discovery Project, When your face is your ID: Public responses to automated facial recognition (2020-2024). I have been an editor of Surveillance & Society and I am on the Editorial Board of the journal, Big Data & Society. I am a Director of the Surveillance Studies Network and I am currently a visiting scientist at CSIRO.

Dr Naomi Smith

Naomi Smith is a digital sociologist at the University of the Sunshine Coast. She has a broad range of scholarly interests, including emerging technology, place and bodies. Her digital work has primarily focused on the intersection of the internet and bodies, and how online communities influence how we make sense of our bodies and lived experiences.

Penelope Smith

Collective biography of the presenters’ interconnections, AI-generated from our online conversation about the pluriverse: Kim, Anita, Penelope, and Sujith are closely linked through a network of professional relationships and shared academic interests. Their connection started when Kim and Penelope bonded over a retweeted PhD advertisement on Twitter, which grew into a professional relationship. Kim and Sujith collaborate through their roles in teaching culturally safe healthcare at the University of Tasmania's Rozelle campus. Anita was introduced to Kim through a mutual colleague at Western Sydney University, with whom Kim had co-edited a textbook. This led to Anita taking on a tutoring role at the Burnie campus and pursuing her PhD. Additionally, Sujith's connection to Kim stemmed from a colleague he knew at UNSW. Biscuit is Kim’s golden retriever and got looped into the network by sharing his responses to our online conversation about the pluriverse.

Jenena Solmayor

Jenena Solmayor is a faculty member at Mindanao State University- General Santos City. She works in both the Department of Sociology and the Institute for Peace and Development in Mindanao (IPDM), where she coordinates educational programs. Currently, she is involved in two important initiatives. First, she's collaborating with the City Social Welfare and Development Office (CSWDO) to investigate how they handle cases involving children in conflict with the law (CICL). Second, she's actively participating in community peace-building projects across Mindanao.

Prof Ramon Spaaij

Ramón Spaaij investigates complex social problems including racism and violence, identifying solutions that create and sustain thriving communities as Professor of Sociology at Victoria University.

Asha Steer

Asha is a Barkandji woman, currently living and working on Wurundjeri Woiwurrung Country and undertaking a Doctor of Philosophy in Indigenous Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her research focuses on the racialisation of Indigenous women in sport, with emphasis on the everyday stereotyping of Indigenous women’s physicality and intellect. This research fits with Asha’s academic interests of sport, critical race theory, feminism and gender studies.

Catriona Stevens

Catriona Stevens is Vice Chancellor's Research Fellow in the Social Ageing (SAGE) Futures Lab at Edith Cowan University. Cat's research interests include labour migration and migration policy, transnational caregiving, and the abuse of older people (elder abuse).

Callum Stewart

Callum Stewart is a social and political theorist currently completing a PhD in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne. Callum’s research theorises the reproduction and transformation of social and political relations, with a particular interest in temporality. His research engages critically with decolonial theory, settler colonial studies, sovereign Indigenous theory, and queer theory. In his PhD thesis, Callum aims to theorise the colonial conditions underpinning White settlers’ claims to the future and to expose the possibility of decolonial futures grounded in Indigenous sovereignty. Callum has also authored articles on the coloniality of age, representations of childhood in the same-sex marriage debate, and co-authored an article on the intersections of race and settler colonialism. Callum holds an MPhil in the Sociology of Marginality and Exclusion from the University of Cambridge.

Kate Stodart

Kate Stodart is an emerging academic completing a Master of Arts (Sociology) by research at La Trobe University. Employing qualitative methods, her research revolves around placing the lived experiences of individuals with mental health conditions at the core of inquiry. Kate’s current research focuses on the relational components and interpersonal dynamics of self-care concepts and practices.

Katja Strehle

Katja is a PhD candidate in Sociology within the Religion and Society Research Cluster, at Western Sydney University. Her thesis, titled Lived Experiences of Australian Atheist and Humanist Women in Nonreligious Groups: Gendered Performance and (Dis)Engagement, is currently under examination (June 2024). Her current research focuses on gender relations in nonreligious groups in Australia. She is Deputy Editor of the Research Blog by the Non Religion and Secularity Research Network for which she also writes. She is a sessional academic at Western Sydney University. Outside of research, her interests are governance and services to the student community. Katja facilitated and co-hosted monthly webinars for Higher Degree Research Students in 2021 and 2022 as a member of the Research Continuity Student Council. She is also a member of the Vice Chancellor's International Student Advisory Committee, in which she brings pressing issues concerning International HDR students to the Vice Chancellor's attention. For this work, the team received the Vice Chancellor’s Excellence Award for University Engagement 2023. Further, Katja has been an advocate for International Students. In 2016 she co-authored “From Buses to Billboards: the Atheist Bus Campaign in New Zealand” with Dr. Will Hoverd, Massey University, New Zealand.

Dr Zoei Sutton

Zoei Sutton is Lecturer in Sociology at Flinders University, where her research focuses on critical approaches in qualitative research that includes other animals. She is the co-founder of the International Association for Vegan Sociologists (IAVS), co-created and co-convenes the Australian Sociological Association’s (TASA) Sociology & Animals thematic group and is a member of the Institute for Critical Animal Studies (ICAS) Oceania collective. She currently serves as a Book Review Editor for Society & Animals and is an affiliate of the New Zealand Centre for Human Animal Studies (NZCHAS) and Deputy Chair of the Australasian Animal Studies Association (AASA).

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Rebecca Nalwanga Tamusuza

Rebecca is a researcher and community worker. As a researcher, Rebecca is a PhD fellow in Anthropology & Development at the University of Melbourne, where she works alongside Dr. Violeta Schubert and Prof. Keith McVilly in exploring the links between development, democracy and disability, with particular reference to children within primary education in Uganda. As a community worker, Rebecca works across various multicultural communities with other colleagues at Edmund Rice Community Services in Australia. She is also the founder of Ten Billion Hearts Foundation in Uganda.

Dr Josephine Taylor

Josephine Taylor is a writer, editor and educator, and an Adjunct Senior Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University. Her debut novel, Eye of a Rook, which used her award-winning PhD thesis as source material, was published in 2021 and subsequently shortlisted in the WA Premier’s Book Awards. Her creative and critical writing has been anthologised and published widely, including in Australian Book Review, Axon: Creative Explorations, Meniscus, Outskirts, Southerly, TEXT, Westerly and, most recently, Australian Feminist Studies (co-authored paper). Josephine is regularly requested as a teacher, mentor, judge and festival moderator in literary fiction and creative non-fiction. Her research interests are wide-ranging and include female disorder, with a focus on vulvodynia; chronic pain and disability; the creative response to disorder; Australian fiction, especially from emerging authors; and fiction dystopias. Josephine was a 2022 Emerging Writer-in-Residence at the Katharine Susannah Prichard Writers’ Centre, where she began work on her second novel. She also continues to write articles, personal essays, short fiction and poetry.

Samuel Teague

Sam is a passionate educator who has taught across multiple levels of higher education, including enabling programs, undergraduate, and postgraduate coursework. His research spans a number of areas relevant to the Social Sciences, but in particular, has focused extensively on mental health stigma and the role of storytelling in breaking down or reinforcing it. This interest in mental health and wellbeing has extended into the tertiary education sphere, with an interest in staff and student wellbeing, and how academics managed their public and private selves during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Nelgyn Tennyson

Nelgyn Tennyson, is a PhD Candidate and Research Officer at the Social Ageing Futures Lab under Edith Cowan University and specializes in economics and demography. His research interests span across issues including life course demography, dementia, neurodegenerative and neurodevelopmental disorders, health policy, social epidemiology, and gerontology.

Dr Aaron Teo

Dr Aaron Teo is a lecturer at The University of Southern Queensland. He was awarded a PhD from the University of Queensland, Australia, and has been a Business and Legal Studies teacher at a Brisbane-based Independent School. He is Co-Convenor for the Australian Association for Research in Education Social Justice Special Interest Group, Queensland convenor for the Asian Australian Alliance, and 2023 winner of the Carolyn Baker Memorial Prize. Aaron’s research focusses on the raced and gendered subjectivities of migrant teachers from “Asian” backgrounds in the Australian context, as well as critical pedagogies in white Australian (university and school) classroom spaces. He is interested in qualitative research methods, particularly the use of critical autoethnography as a form of reflexive, emancipatory inquiry. He is also a Research Fellow on the project: ‘National Anti-Racism Framework Project – Scoping research on anti-Asian racism and role of the national human rights institution’, for the Australian Human Rights Commission 2023-2024., Dr Carl Anacin completed his PhD at Griffith University, Australia, researching the identity, musicality and translocality of Filipino migrant musicians. Carl’s research interests include popular music, migration, social media and interdisciplinary studies. Carl is also a gigging musician and radio host (Radio 4EB, Brisbane). His recent publications include “Musical Aspirations and DIY/DIO Practices in Online Communities of Amateur Independent Filipino Songwriters" in Rethinking the Music Business: Music Contexts, Rights, Data, and COVID-19 (edited by Guy Morrow, Daniel Nordgard, & Peter Tschmuck, 2022) and Mimicking the Mimics: Problematizing Cover Performance of Filipino Local Music on Social Media (co-authored with David Baker and Andy Bennett) in Media, Culture & Society (2021).

Dr Dorinda t'Hart

Dorinda 't Hart is a health sociologist affiliated with the School of Population and Global Health. With a commitment to advancing knowledge, her research spans various facets of public health, with a specific emphasis on women's health, reproductive health, motherhood, community dynamics, and qualitative research methodology.

Katharine Throssell

Katharine Throssell is a researcher at Sciences Po Bordeaux. Her research focuses on children's political socialisation, learning about politics, and the development and sharing of political identities. She is particularly interested in children and young peoples' reactions to the climate crisis and the rise of the far-right.

Justine Topham

Justine Topham is completing her third year of a PhD in Sociology at Federation University Australia. She has a strong interest in self-help and wellness culture on social media, and how this content shapes social norms and values. Her Honours thesis focused on the transformation of diet culture into wellness as observed in YouTube ‘What I Eat In A Day’ videos. Her PhD conducts a cross-platform analysis of women’s self-help content across YouTube and TikTok videos, and Spotify podcasts. This project situates self-help within discourses such as neoliberalism, new age spirituality, popular psychology and postfeminism. Justine co-wrote the article ‘One day of eating: Tracing misinformation in ‘What I Eat In A Day’ videos’ with Dr Naomi Smith, published in the Journal of Sociology.

Dr Nooshin Torabi

Dr Nooshin Torabi is an interdisciplinary social scientist with experience in undertaking both quantitative and qualitative research in RMIT since 2011. Nooshin brings a wealth of experience from her involvement in interdisciplinary research projects with diverse stakeholders. Her expertise lies in adaptive governance, climate change responses, sustainability communication, and energy justice. Currently, she is immersed in two research projects: one focusing on sustainable consumption to end food waste, and the other exploring the link between climatic and non-climatic vulnerabilities. Completed her PhD within the Interdisciplinary Conservation Science Research Group at the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies, Nooshin’s thesis delved into the socio-cultural motivations of private landholders participating in biodiverse carbon plantings. Her research also examined the perspectives of policymakers and academics in the carbon and biodiversity realm. Notably, she developed a Bayesian Belief Network model for predicting landholder participation rates in such plantings. This model explored the impact of program design, financial incentives, and landholder values on participation probabilities.

Carolina Triana-Cuéllar

I am a doctoral researcher in Migration Studies at the University of Sussex (UK), currently living and writing my thesis on Dharug land/Parramatta NSW. My research interests lie at the intersection of migration, arts, and culture, with a particular focus on questions of inequality and the politics of cultural production. My PhD thesis examines the experiences of professional theatre artists who have migrated to the UK. Drawing on semi-structured interviews and ethnographic fieldwork with 32 London-based theatre-makers in various creative roles and with diverse demographic characteristics, my thesis offers insights into the ways artists challenge exclusions and claim inclusion in the British theatre field and, more generally, the structural factors and conditions that shape artistic labour following migration—an understudied area of research. I hold a BA in Sociology from Salamanca University (Spain) and postgraduate and master's degrees in arts and cultural heritage management from the University of South Australia and the University of Turin and Politecnico di Torino, respectively. Prior to starting my PhD, I worked as a cultural manager and creative producer in Colombia and Australia in roles focused on social justice and equity in the arts.

Prof. Ming-Chang Tsai

Ming-Chang Tsai is a Research Fellow in the Research Center for Humanities and Social Sciences, Academia Sinica, and a professor of sociology, National Taipei University, Taiwan. He was former president of Taiwanese Sociological Association and President of Research Committee of Social Indicators (RC55) of the International Sociological Association. He served as a PI/local coordinator for a number of cross-national survey projects including World Values Survey and East Asian Social Survey. His research interest is comparative values, social changes and life conditions. His works appear in China Quarterly, Journal of Contemporary Asia, PLoS ONE, among others. He is the author of Global Exposure in East Asia (Routledge, 2015).

Elna Tulus

Elna Tulus is a PhD candidate at the University of Technology Sydney, Faculty of Health, School of Public Health. Her research is on the sustainability of the global food system with the case study on Australian wheat and Indonesian instant noodles. She investigates the consequence on public health from the transformation of food production and consumption over time that have been affected by politics, economy, environment.

Associate Professor Marianne Turner

Marianne Turner is an Associate Professor and currently the Associate Dean (Graduate Research) in the Education Faculty at Monash University, Melbourne, Australia. She researches context-sensitive approaches to the integration of language and content and her work has been published widely in both language education and general education journals, such as Language Teaching Research, System and Teaching and Teacher Education. Her interests include the leveraging of students’ linguistic and cultural resources for learning, and the language production of students from different language backgrounds in bilingual programs. She has written a book entitled Multilingualism as a resource and a goal: Using and learning languages in mainstream schools (Palgrave Macmillan).

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Mr. Shahab Uddin

Shahab Uddin is a Master student at Edinburgh napier university, Scotland.

Kadek Wara Urwasi

Kadek Wara Urwasi is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Advanced Research (IFAR) at Monash Indonesia. Wara earned her Ph.D. from the Department of Sociology at Northwestern University, Illinois, USA. Her research interests include urban sociology, comparative urban politics, cultural sociology, and communal conflict. Her dissertation examines the factors and processes behind the patterned variation of governmental responses to urban informal settlements in Jakarta across regimes, focusing on the role of local leaders’ interests, community power, and the politics of ideas.

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Dr Leah Williams Veazey

Dr. Leah Williams Veazey is ARC DECRA Research Fellow in the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies, School of Social and Political Sciences at The University of Sydney, Australia. Her research centres around migration, care, health, motherhood and digital cultures. Her first award-winning book entitled, Migrant Mothers in the Digital Age: Emotion and Belonging in Migrant Maternal Online Communities (2021), explores the experiences of migrant mothers in Australia through the lens of their online communities, arguing for the importance of examining relationships among mothers and migrants as they move, settle and establish themselves in a new country. Building on this work, her new project uses the concept of relational mobility to explore the transnational and local intersections of care and work in the lives of migrant healthcare workers and students in Australia. Dr Williams Veazey co-convenes The Australian Sociological Association’s Migration, Ethnicity and Multiculturalism Thematic Group, and co-leads the Migration, Im/mobility and Belonging Research Theme at the Sydney Centre for Healthy Societies. She is Associate Editor at the Australian Journal of Social Issues, and an Associate Investigator at the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child.

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A Venkataraman

A.V. Raman earned his PhD in the sociology of work, organisations and Industrial Relations from the University of Warwick, Coventry UK in 2013. He has an MPhil degree in Sociology with a distinction and a First Class MA respectively from the University of Hyderabad India, before his PhD. Subsequently, he has taught previously in XLRI and at IIM Kashipur from 2016. His current areas of academic interest are Trade Unions and Employee-Employer relations drawing upon the ethnographic tradition of field research in Industrial Relations, Labour Process theory and Evaluating Change Management and their outcomes especially when templates of work and HRM practices are implemented in other cultural contexts.

Kalpana Vignehsa

Kalpana Vignehsa is Senior Research Fellow in the Governance and Economy department at the Institute of Policy Studies. She is an expert in qualitative and ethnographic methods and works on topics related to immigration and families. Before returning to Singapore and joining IPS in 2020, she led the User Research team within R&D at the Australian Consumer Association. And prior to this, Kalpana was Assistant Professor at UTS Business School, with a focus on the sociology of work and organisations.

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Matt Wade

I'm a Lecturer in Social Inquiry (Sociology & Criminology) at La Trobe University. My primary research interests lie mainly within the sociology of ethics, morality, science, technology, and health, particularly in critically exploring expected practices around proving our ‘moral worthiness’. This includes assessing applications of policy and technology in shaping judgments of deservedness in charitable causes and philanthropic giving. Who determines the ‘deserving’ and ‘undeserving’? What role should charity, philanthropy, state-based welfare, crowdfunding, mutual aid, and other redistributive and recognition-based mechanisms play in society? How does faith, culture, and other systems of belief shape these judgements? When does 'big' philanthropy exert excessive power over policymaking, resource distribution, and cultural ideals? How do we deal with giving from 'tainted' sources of wealth? What safeguards are needed to mitigate fundraising in support of extremist causes?

Matthew Waites

Matthew Waites is Reader in Sociology within the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Glasgow, UK. He is co-editor (with C. Lennox) of Human Rights, Sexual Orientation and Gender Identity in the Commonwealth: Struggles for Decriminalisation and Change (School of Advanced Study, 2013). He is author of journal articles and chapters addressing the international political sociology of global queer politics in relation to human rights and decolonizing, including 'Genocide and Global Queer Politics' in the Journal of Genocide Research (2018) and in journals such as Current Sociology, International Sociology and International Review of Sociology. Full publications and further details on University of Glasgow website: https://www.gla.ac.uk/schools/socialpolitical/staff/matthewwaites/

Chi-Chung Wang

Chi-Chung WANG is an Assistant Professor in Si Wan College at National Sun Yat-sen University. His current work focuses on the exam-oriented education and the shaping of class identity and status hierarchy, as well as specific patterns of cultural engagement. His research interests include cultural sociology, youth cultural studies, and sociology of education, and popular music studies. His works have been published in Journal of Youth Studies and the Sociological Review.

Professor Megan Watkins

Megan Watkins is Adjunct Professor in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Her research interests lie in the cultural analysis of education and the formation of human subjectivities. In particular, her work engages with issues of pedagogy, embodiment, discipline and affect and the interrelation of these to human agency. Megan has written extensively in these areas. Her most recent book is Doing Diversity Differently in a Culturally Complex World (Bloomsbury, 2021).

Dr Ash Watson

Ash Watson is a Scientia Senior Lecturer at UNSW Sydney and Fiction Editor of The Sociological Review. Her research uses qualitative and creative methods to explore the meaning of technology in people's everyday lives and how they imagine the future. She is especially interested in the impacts of emerging technologies on belonging and wellbeing.

Ethel Wee

A sociologist by training, Ethel possesses a passion for addressing societal issues and driving social change. Her research interests encompass an intersectional lens, delving into gender, work and family; social inequalities and precarity; governance and citizenship.

Dr Greta Werner

Dr Greta Weston Werner is a Postdoctoral Research Associate at the Henry Halloran Research Trust at The University of Sydney. She is interested in population change, infrastructure provision and urban development, working on research projects funded by the Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute. Her research examines the social and economic processes that inform urban infrastructure development, with a focus on housing policy and civic solidarity.

Associate Professor Brad West

Brad West is an Associate Professor of sociology at the University of South Australia. He is a Faculty Fellow in the Center for Cultural Sociology at Yale University and was previously the co-President of the International Sociological Association's Research Committee on Sociological Theory (2018-2023). His recent publications include the sole authored books Finding Gallipoli: Battlefield Remembrance and the Movement of Australian and Turkish History (Palgrave Macmillan) and Re-enchanting Nationalisms (Springer) and the co-edited collections Militarization and the Global Rise of Paramilitary Culture (Springer, with Thomas Crosbie) and The New Australian Military Sociology (Berghahn, with Cate Carter). Amongst other professional service he currently sits on the advisory editorial boards of the American Journal of Cultural Sociology and Scandinavian Journal of Military Studies. He is co-founder of the Military Organisation and Culture Studies Group and Self@Arts that runs an arts based wellbeing program for the Australian Defence Force Soldier Recovery Centre in Darwin.

Raelene West

Raelene West is a Research Fellow at the Melbourne Disability Institute – University of Melbourne. Her research field is critical disability studies, with a focus on delivery of support services. Dr West has also been involved in disability advocacy, has lived experience of disability and has been on numerous disability committees. She has worked for several years on various disability and aged care research studies, and has coauthored 8 published journal articles and 5 major reports.

Dr Sam Whiting

Sam is a Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow at RMIT University, pursuing a project focused on crisis in the Australian music industries. His research is primarily concerned with issues of capital, labour, and value as they relate to the cultural economy, as well as the impact of generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) and other technologies of automation on the Australian music industries. Dr Whiting's recent book, Small Venues: Precarity, Vibrancy and Live Music, is out now through Bloomsbury.

Himashini (Hima) Whitley

Hima is a PhD student with the Institute of Physical Activity and Nutrition (IPAN) at Deakin Univeristy. Hima’s research adopts a critical constructionist position to examine how discourse shapes children’s local active mobility practices. Her work aims to inform public health policy and research.

Rebecca Williamson

Rebecca Williamson is Research Fellow at the Monash Bioethics Centre at the Monash University. She specializes in ethnography and qualitative research. Her research and published work encompass the topics of maternal health, embodiment and epigenetics, reproduction and climate change, geographies of care, and migration, multiculturalism and urban public space. She co-authored the book Reproduction, Kin and Climate Crisis: Making Bushfire Babies (Bristol University Press, 2023), with Celia Roberts, Mary Lou Rasmussen and Louisa Allen.

Dr Indigo Willing

Dr. Indigo Willing has an extensive history working with Asian Australian communities and projects that advance social inclusion. Adopted from Vietnam to Australia, she is the founder of the project Adopted Vietnamese International (www.adoptedvietnamese.org). She is also the co-founder of the Asian Australian Films, Forum and News (https://asianaustralianfilmforum.wordpress.com) that was launched in 2011 and over its 12 year history has been supported filmmakers, writers, academics and activists. In 2023 Dr Willing is also joined the editorial board of the Asian Australian Studies series published by Australian National University Press (https://press.anu.edu.au/authors/submit-book/editorial-boards/asian-australian-studies) and the advisory board of Skateistan, an award winning non-profit that builds skateparks in South Africa, the Middle East and South East Asia. She is also a Principal Co-Investigator on the project: ‘National Anti-Racism Framework Project – Scoping research on anti-Asian racism and role of the national human rights institution’, for the Australian Human Rights Commission 2023-2024.

Professor Karen Willis

Karen Willis is a health sociologist and qualitative researcher. Her current role is Professor, Public Health, at Victoria University, Melbourne. Her research examines how individual health behaviours are linked to the broader social and political context. Her current ARC funded research examines loneliness in people with chronic health conditions. She has just completed recent research examining how organisations can support the mental health of frontline healthcare workers during crises [see https://www.blackdoginstitute.org.au/news/future-proofing-the-frontline/]. Recent books include co-authorship of “Experiences of healthcare workers during the COVID-19 pandemic: In their own words:” Routledge (with Bismark, Lewis and Smallwood), and edited texts The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives, Routledge (with D Lupton) and Navigating Private and Public Healthcare - Experiences of Patients, Doctors and Policy Makers, Palgrave Macmillan (with F Collyer).

Melanie Winter

Melanie is a PhD Candidate at Swinburne University of Technology. Her main research interest is people’s relationship with nature and understanding this through methods of phenomenology and geography.

Dr Emily Wolfinger

Dr Emily Wolfinger is a sociologist in the School of Social Sciences and Young and Resilient Research Centre at Western Sydney University. Her research sits in three broad areas of interest: sole mothers, caregiving, and social policy; young people and money management; and student engagement and performance. Emily’s current projects include research on contemporary and historical discourses on sole mothers, policies and practices that support mothers and caregiving, and young adults’ financial decision-making in relationships and work-family plans and expectations for the future.

Alexandra Wong

Alexandra Wong is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She received her PhD at the University of Edinburgh, UK. Her research focuses on three areas of interest: (1) creative cities and cultural policies, (2) migration and multiculturalism, and (3) urban studies and sustainable development. She is currently working on two ARC Discovery Projects titled 'Civic Sinoburbia? New Chinese migrants and everyday citizenship in Sydney' (ARCDP 200102072) and 'Schooling, Parenting and Ethnicity: Asian Migration and Australian Education' (ARCDP 200102727) with a team of researchers from Western Sydney University and the University of Technology Sydney.

Brett Woods

Brett Woods is Research Fellow in the Institute for Sustainable Industries and Liveable Cities and a member of the Youth & Community Research Group. Brett is a researcher, educator and qualified lawyer, with extensive experience in the youth and community sector. Brett is Research Fellow on the Future Proof: young people, disaster recovery and (re)building communities project and the recently Federal Government funded establishment of a Centre of Excellence: Young People and Disasters. The Centre will bring together expertise around young people (12-24 years), youth participation and disasters. Brett's research focuses on young people, youth participation and disasters, critical feminism, gender equality and primary prevention of gendered violence in education settings, and university students and university residential settings.

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Anjali Yadav

Anjali is a doctoral student at the La Trobe University. Her broad research interests are Environment, Energy and Climate Change and their intersection with human society. In her PhD thesis, she is studying social norms, pro-environmental behaviors and their implications for common pool resources, such as the Ganga river. She employs mixed-method approach to study the coupling between common pool resources and social norms. Her methodology combines quantitative surveys, spatial analysis and multivariate statistics.

Ravita Yadav

I am a motivated and dedicated demographer with extensive research experience in population studies, specialising in the dynamics of caste, gender, and social issues in rural communities in North India. In my Ph.D. research, I demonstrated a strong ability to conduct comprehensive fieldwork, design data collection tools, and employ a variety of qualitative methodologies such as grounded theory, content, narrative, thematic, and discourse analysis to derive nuanced insights in my ethnographic study using different software. With the use of these abilities, I have been able to shed light on the underlying social structures and inequalities that exist in these communities due to the patriarchy and caste hierarchy. I have been able to address these challenges through my research by utilising contemporary factors such as the media, and law enforcement, education, exposure, and modernity. Making a significant difference in the lives of people residing in rural India is something I am passionate about doing with my experience. I have also investigated the impact of life course events during adolescence on mental health in early adulthood among females by analysing secondary data from the UDAYA study to provide comprehensive insights into mental health outcomes using different quantitative data analysis approaches.

Xuannan Yang

Xuannan Yang is currently a teaching assistant and research assistant in sociology at the School of Humanities and Social Science, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Shenzhen. Over the past two years, she has been responsible for assisting in three sociological courses: Introduction to Sociology, The Sociology of Food, and The Sociology of World Consumption. As a member of the research team focusing on “Alternative Systems, Standards, and Sustainability,” Yang has investigated the culinary culture in China and the hidden labor embedded in it. The study was published on Sixth Tone, one of the best online publications that produce insightful content on contemporary China; and Yang was also interviewed by China Echo and CNS Media UK to discuss some of the research findings. Further, this year, Yang’s independent study on the construction of the Chinese new digital gig market was accepted for the Future of Work in the Global South and Global North Symposium, organized by the School of Social and Political Sciences, The University of Melbourne. Yang’s another independent study on the dynamics of power and subjectivation in governmental practices was also accepted for the International Foucault World Congress, organized by the Research Center Social Theory, University of Innsbruck.

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Yuanya Zhang

Yuanya Zhang is a PhD researcher at the School of Education, Durham University. Her research focuses on the engagement of Chinese rural middle school students with social media in relation to their schooling experiences, particularly among students often labelled as "school-disengaged", “low achievers”, or “bad students”. Many of these students are active social media users, where they find more opportunities for identity expression and exploration. Through ethnographic fieldwork in a rural middle school, including both online and offline observations and interviews, her research aims to understand the role of social media cultural production in the experiences of "school-disengaged" students in rural China.

Yang Zhao

Research Fellow in Social Science at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

Yerong Zhao

My name is Yerong Zhao. I am a PhD student. And I am interested in the inequality of LGB in Japanese workplace and how the discrimination against in the workplace affects LGB's willingness to continue working.

Hao Zheng

Hao Zheng (she/her) is a final-year (submitted) PhD candidate based on the unceded land of the Kulin Nations (Melbourne, Australia). Her PhD research examines Chinese queer female students’ queer and adult identity-making in Australia. Hao’s research interests are in the areas of gender and sexuality, transnational mobilities, digital cultures and queer female studies. She has been working as a sessional teaching staff and research assistant in the fields of sociology, gender studies, cultural studies, Internet studies and migration/mobility studies. Prior to winning the Graduate Scholarship at Deakin University, Hao completed her B.A. (Honours) and was awarded First Class Honours at the University of Melbourne. Her honours thesis examines Chinese lesbians’ double marginalisation in the digital era.

Dr Farnaz Zirakbash

Dr Zirakbash lectures and tutor in sociology and is also a research fellow. Farnaz completed her PhD in sociology in 2014. Her PhD thesis explored the lives of highly educated, professional Iranian women who migrated to Australia after the Islamic revolution of 1979. The study highlights the roles of gender and education in migration studies; issues not well addressed in previous research studies. Farnaz also has done a MA degree by research in sociology prior to her PhD and women studies in Australia utilising qualitative research methods. Farnaz has 14 years’ experience in teaching and has taught multiple sociology units at Swinburne that explore issues of identity, gender, race, class through to challenges of living in a digital age. Farnaz is specialised in research projects exploring very sensitive issues such as domestic and family violence and have interviewed vulnerable groups including victims of domestic and family violence, refugee women and low socio-economic status background families. In 2021, Farnaz began guest lecturing in Graduate Certificate in Family Violence at Chisholm institute. At Chisholm Farnaz lectures in Gender, Power & State unit as well as Primary Prevention in Family Violence.

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