Researchers

Charles Barbour is an Associate Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a School-based Member of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. His research falls into three broad categories: the intellectual history of the nineteenth century, especially of the young Marx and his contemporaries; contemporary political philosophy, with an emphasis on questions of secrecy and deception; and theories of technology and society, including artificial intelligence.

Alison’s researches the differing roles graphic design plays in the mediation, construction and communication of everyday life. Alison often uses creative methods and has developed innovative interdisciplinary geo/graphic methodologies drawing on graphic design, cultural geography and anthropology.

Valentina is a School-based Member of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. She conducts research on the application of communication for development in peacebuilding with a focus on realities affected by violent conflict.

Brett M. Bennett is an Associate Professor in Modern History in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. He investigates how the interaction of human actions and natural processes created contemporary ecosystems, scientific ideas, and conservation policies.

Denis is an archaeologist whose research and writing promote new ways of thinking about the material legacy of transnational migration and the archaeological signatures of the Anthropocene.

Associate Professor Fiona Cameron is Principal Research Fellow, Contemporary Museologies and HDR Director at the Institute. Working at the intersection of social, ecological crises and digital transformation, Fiona researches contemporary global transformations in culture and society for positive change.

Dr Zelmarie Cantillon is a Vice-Chancellor’s Research Fellow (Cultural Policy and Planning). Her research focuses on the intersections between spatiality, cultural policy, heritage and tourism. Her most recent work considers the role heritage initiatives play in urban transformations, community renewal and city branding strategies.

Bhavya Chitranshi is a PhD fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society. She has completed her Masters in Gender Studies and MPhil in Development Practice from Ambedkar University Delhi. She is the co-founder of an adivasi (Indigenous) single women's collective, Eka Nari Sanghathan, in Odisha, India.

Cecelia Cmielewski is a Research Fellow at the Institute and an arts industry leader with over twenty-five years’ experience in the cultural sector. She is a Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University (WSU) on the ARC funded The Collaborative Museum – Embedding Culture in the City (2021 -2025).

Dr Hart Cohen is Professor in Media Arts in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts and a member of the Institute for Cultural and Society and the Digital Humanities Research Group at the University of Western Sydney, Australia. Hart's research focus is Visual Communications, Indigenous Media and Digital Cultural Heritage.

Associate Professor David R. Cole, Centre for Educational Research, focuses on the inter-linked areas of globalisation, critical thinking, literacies, the philosophy of education, and the work of Gilles Deleuze.

Professor Collin is a Principal Research Fellow at the Institute and Co-Director of the Young and Resilient Research Centre and the Intergener8 Living Lab. She researches the role of the digital in the social, cultural and political lives of young people, with a focus on health and wellbeing.

Louise is an Professor at the Institute of Society and Culture. Her research focuses on the social, ecological and economic sustainability of community-driven housing developments in Australia; on housing innovation in practice and policy; on complex adaptive systems theory in urban contexts; and on property rights, institutional design and democracy.

Professor Ann Dadich, School of Business, is a registered psychologist, a full member of the Australian Psychological Society, and a Justice of the Peace in New South Wales. Ann's research focus is health service management, notably knowledge translation.

Daniele Fulvi is a School-based Member of the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. He specialises in Modern and Contemporary Continental Philosophy, Moral Philosophy, Environmental Ethics, and Ethics of New Technologies.

Dr Garrido is a senior lecturer within the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. He is a bassist, composer and producer who has worked with some of Australia’s top musicians. Dr Garrido has produced two solo albums, Dejame Tocarte (Sony) and Loco (Festival/Mushroom).

Alison Gill is a school-based member at the Institute of Culture and Society, as a design educator and researcher in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Alison is the co-convenor of the research program Urban Futures in the Institute. She is a co-editor and contributor to the book Design/Repair: Place, Practice and Community (2023, Palgrave Macmillan), and her research explores the many roles for design in mediating social relations and practices.

Gerard Goggin is an internationally renowned scholar in communication, cultural, and media studies, whose pioneering research on the cultural and social dynamics of digital technology has been widely influential. He has held appointments at the University of Sydney

Dr Benjamin Hanckel is an Associate Professor in the Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University. Benjamin is based at the Young and Resilient Research Centre. His work examines youth health and wellbeing, social inequalities in health, and social change.

Associate Professor Stephen Healy's research has concentrated on the relationship between economy, subjectivity and the enactment of new econo-socialities exploring various topics: health care reform policy, cooperative and regional development, and the solidarity economy movement.

Dr Aimee Hourigan is a Postdoctoral Research Fellow at the Institute for Culture and Society. Broadly, her research explores how differing sociocultural knowledges and lived experiences inform everyday digital cultures and imagined digital futures, with a further emphasis on practices of digital inclusion, digital sovereignty, and decoloniality.

Professor Kate Huppatz is a Senior Lecturer in Sociology in the School of Social Sciences at Western Sydney University and a School-based member of the Institute for Culture and Society. Her research explores the relations between gender, social class, occupations and mothering.

Dr Dariush Izadi is an Associate Lecturer and a School-based member at the Institute. His research explores the ways language, materiality, and social interaction shape everyday life, identity, and belonging across diverse contexts, including markets, retail spaces, and digital platforms.

Paul James is a social theorist researching on globalisation and its impact upon social relations, social change and the human condition, and sustainability with an emphasis on sustainable urbanisation. He has been an advisor to a number of agencies and governments.

Associate Professor Jorge Knijnik is Deputy Director of the Centre for Educational Research and member of the School of Education. He researches positive youth development health and wellbeing promotion programs; gender equity in sports and education; sport, globalisation and society; critical pedagogy; and sports, media and fandom.

Norma Lam-Saw is an Associate Lecturer in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Her past research examined the political praxis of passive resistance at the nexus of literature and philosophy. Her current research explores interdisciplinary approaches to language, technology and concepts of agency. She's currently involved in collaborative research projects examining the interrelations of Large Language Models with forms of knowledge and agency, which resonates with current technological and pedagogical discourses informing her teaching practice.

Professor Alana Lentin is a teacher and writer, and a Jewish European woman who is a settler on Gadigal-Wangal land. She works on the critical theorization of race, racism and antiracism. She has previously lived and worked in countries including the UK, France, Italy, Ireland and the US. She speaks English, French, Italian and Hebrew. Her work has been cited over 5,000 times.

Dr Thomas Longden is a Senior Research Fellow at the Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University. His work on energy and technological change has been published in leading international journals (including Nature Energy, Climatic Change, Energy)

Dr Isaac Lyne is a Research Fellow at ICS. Isaacs's research has focused on social enterprise and social entrepreneurship, rural community development, rural livelihoods and resilience and his current research focuses on the impact of digital finance on farming.

His current research investigates how AI works across different scales of human subjectivity, social stratification and geopolitical organisation. He has contributed to studies of intersectional bias and cultural understandings of AI, and techniques for analysing AI via interviews, media analysis and code experiments.

Luigi's research explores the opportunities and challenges of digital communication technologies in Public Communication. He is interested in the use of social media in public and political communication and everyday life, with a particular focus on the ethical implications of organisational listening and monitoring activities through digital technologies.

Dr Milad Milani is a Senior Lecturer in Religious Studies at Western Sydney University and a School-based Member of the Institute for Culture and Society. He is the academic lead of the Humanities Religious Studies Research Collective, a research concentration located within the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, and Co-Editor of the Journal for the Academic Study of Religion.

Nicky Morrison is Professor of Planning and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Cambridge University. She is a leading academic authority on overcoming barriers to securing affordable housing through the planning system and ways to deliver sustainable communities and inclusive growth through participatory planning practices.

Professor Brett Neilson’s research and writing aim to provide alternative ways of conceiving globalisation, with particular emphasis upon its social and cultural dimensions.

Associate Professor Nicholas directs the genders and sexualities research grouping at WSU. Their research has two streams: gender and sexual diversity including non-binary and queer ethics; and men and masculinsm, including men's use of violence, its intersection with radicalisation, anti-feminism backlash and men's behaviour change.

Dr Ehsan Noroozinejad is a Senior Research Fellow at the Urban Transformations Research Centre, where he specializes in Resilient Construction and Infrastructure. His research interests encompass a wide range of topics, including smart materials and structures, resilience-based design, artificial intelligence, modular construction, and digital twins in construction.

Tanya Notley is from the School of Humanities and Communication Arts. Her recent and ongoing research projects examine young people and media literacy, adults and media literacy, young people and news media, misinformation on social media, the relationship between digital and social inclusion, media representation, the politics embedded in digital media infrastructures and emotion mapping.

Joanne Orlando, School of Education, researches in the areas of technology, education, children, and digital culture. Joanne takes an informed and positive position to consider: the potential of technology to enhance learning, shifting knowledge in the digital era, understanding digital family life, the impact of digital on childhood.

A/Professor Alexie Papanicolaou blends the frontiers of molecular biology and computer science to secure Australia's agricultural and natural ecosystems in the face of a changing climate. He is a genome bioinformatician working on ecological and economically important species, such as the Heliconius butterflies, Helicoverpa armigera the cotton bollworm moth, invasive Tephritid fruit flies and eucalyptus trees.

Neil is an Associate Professor in Corporate Social Responsibility and Sustainability. He specialises in progressive economics approaches to environmental economics and policy and in ecological economics, an interdisciplinary field of research emphasising the interdependence of economic and ecological values.

Melissa is a practitioner-academic (pracademic) who has previously worked for the United Nations and for international NGOs in South Sudan, the Horn of Africa (Kenya and Ethiopia), Libya and the Middle East. She has also worked with asylum seekers in immigration detention in Australia and managed a refugee resettlement project.

Emma Power is a School-based Member of the Institute. Emma’s programme of research is concerned with urban living and the politics of care. It envisions a world of more caring and just cities, asking how cities can better support human life and the practice of care through studies of housing systems and governance, urban planning and cultures of home.

Associate Professor Quah Ee Ling is Convenor of Culture and Society, School of Humanities and Communication Arts. She is a fire dragon feminist. Ee Ling's research draws from anti-colonial and transnational feminist perspectives and centres around dismantling coloniality, racial capitalism, neoliberalism and white supremacy.

Patcharapar (Kate) is an Associate Research Fellow at the Institute for Cultural and Society, Western Sydney University, with a background in software engineering, finance, international business, and the sharing economy. Her research focuses on the nexus of mobile communication and artificial intelligence (AI) and their development as part of the 'After the Smartphone' project, with a specific focus on the Southeast Asian region.

Ned Rossiter is Professor in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts, ICS Institute Fellow and the Director of Research at the Institute. Ned is a media theorist noted for his research on network cultures, the politics of cultural labour, logistical media and data politics.

Juan is a researcher, author and videographer who engages with communities and places where the environmental and cultural challenges of living sustainably are starkly exposed. His work explores the coupled dynamics of social-ecological change and is underpinned by a collaborative ethos across the arts, artists, science and activism.

Professor Pejman Sharafi is the head of the Modular Prefab Design Laboratory (MPD-Lab) and a principal research academic in the Centre for Infrastructure Engineering (CIE) and Urban Transformation Research Centre (UTRC).

Karen Soldatic is a Professor in the School of Social Sciences and an ICS Institute Fellow. Karen's research on global welfare regimes builds upon her 20 years' experience as an international, national and state based senior policy analyst and practitioner. Karen is on leave from Western until 2026.

Timothy Erik Ström is a writer based in Melbourne, Australia who uses political and philosophical approaches to research the overlapping realms of technology, ecology and capitalism. Tim is an editor at the radical publishing cooperative Arena and is the author of 'Globalization and Surveillance', and his writings have been published in many journals and publications. His forth coming book, 'Cybernetic Capitalism' will be published by Verso.

Corrinne Sullivan is an Aboriginal scholar from the Wiradjuri Nation in Central-West of New South Wales. She is a Professor in Human Geography, and the Associate Dean (Indigenous Education) in the School of Social Sciences. Her research interests are multi-disciplinary and focus broadly on experiences and effects of body and identity in relation to Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples.

Malini Sur is an Associate Professor in Anthropology at the School of Social Sciences and an Institute fellow. Her research addresses three lines of inquiry – agrarian borders, urban space and environment.

Professor Third is also the Co-Director of the Young and Resilient Research Centre. Her research focuses on the socio-cultural dimensions of young people's technology use; on children's rights in the digital age; the intergenerational dynamics; and vulnerable young people's technological engagements.

Cris Townley is a sociologist whose research explores what happens when we put the child, young person and family at the centre of the nexus between service delivery and education. This requires an intersectional approach, that recognises the multiplicity of identities lived by children, young people and families, and requires listening to their voices.

Professor Dimitris Vardoulakis works on political, social and cultural philosophy. His is primarily interested in how materialist philosophy conceives democracy and sovereignty, with a particular focus on conceptions of technology.

Dr Jessica K Weir is an Associate Professor at ICS. Jessica's research focuses on socio-ecological justice, knowledge practices, and public sector governance.

Dr Vanita Yadav is a Senior Research Fellow (Senior Lecturer- Research) at the Urban Transformations Research Centre, Western Sydney University. She specialises in Sustainable Business Strategies, Entrepreneurship, Innovation Strategy and Business Model Innovation.