I am a Naarm-/Melbourne-based Cultural Studies scholar who specialises in migrant identity. A lot of my writing takes the form of academic publications and currently emerges from my research base in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. But I also write other things that sit outside of the academic template: short essays, art reviews, and creative non-fiction. Increasingly, the non-academic writing and the academic writing intersect, though not always. This site is my attempt to provide a house for the various threads of my work.
Research Interests
Critical cosmopolitanism, multiculturalism, and diaspora studies. I have an overall interest in exploring how contemporary art practice and digital interactions can be used to disrupt whiteness in neo-colonial contexts.
Things that are important to me
I believe in self-reflexivity, intersectionality, and the healing nature of the sea. I am a feminist killjoy.
PhD
I completed a Universitas-21 PhD in 2016, jointly-awarded by the University of Melbourne and the University of British Columbia. My dissertation analysed the intersection of everyday multiculturalism and digital storytelling.
Non-Linear Pathways
My path to academia was not linear, and I have found myself working in various areas under various “hats” over the years. After my undergraduate degree at Flinders University, I worked in Programming for the Queensland Folk Federation’s Woodford Folk Festival and its sister festival The Dreaming. This work heightened my interest in community-based arts and concepts of whiteness and cultural diversity, inevitably seeing me return to Flinders University to begin postgraduate studies. At Flinders University, I fulfilled various RA roles, including for the Yunggorendi First Nations Centre, where I had the privilege to work with the Ngarrindjeri Regional Authority on an Indigenous Governance Project. I also moonlighted for a couple of years as a manager of a visual-arts/design business (are/why?), and between 2013-2017 I co-managed an online arts community that explored the topic of refugees and global migration.
These experiences have given me a better understanding of the complexities at play at the interface of cultural studies and ‘cultural industries.’ They have helped refine my understanding of the critical role that cultural difference and re-translation plays in ensuring meaningful and rigorous engagement with place and identity in contemporary life.