Research Showcase 'Academics'

We aim to showcase a new researcher every 3 to 4 months.

Sarah De Nardi

Sarah de Nardi 2020

Sarah is a Lecturer in Heritage and Tourism in the School of Social Sciences, and works as a cultural justice activist in Italy, Pakistan and Australia. She curates participatory practices that channel sense of place from the perspective of transnational (Italy) and conflict-scarred communities (Pakistan). Sarah’s chief contribution to the social sciences is the creative methodology she first published in 2014, consisting in participatory, community-led mapping and visualisation practices that channel sense of place from the perspective of local stakeholders, activists and avocational scholars. Capturing the many facets of place experience from the point of view of community voices explores place-making agencies and achieves a variety of outcomes, from positive social change to a stronger and more cohesive sense of community.

Sarah’s recent publications include:

  • De Nardi, S. (2020) ‘The Materiality of conflict memory: Reflections from contemporary Italy’. Journal of Material Culture. 19 (4): 443–464.
  • De Nardi, S. (2020) ‘Migrant Service providers in Italy’. In Georgeou, N. and Hawksley, C 2020 (eds.) State Responses to COVID-19. Humanitarian and Development Research Initiative (HADRI), Western Sydney University pp. 108-110.
  • De Nardi, S. (2019) Visualising Place, Memory and the Imagined. London: Routledge.
  • De Nardi, S., Orange, H., High, S. and Koskinen-Koivisto, E. (eds) (2019) The Routledge Handbook of Place and Memory. London: Routledge.
  • De Nardi, S. (2018) Everyday heritage activism in Swat Valley: Ethnographic reflections on a politics of hope. Heritage and Society 10 (3), 237-258.

Sarah recently presented her research at the following Conference:

The Second African Studies Group Conference, University of Melbourne, 14 March 2020. Paper entitled ‘Capturing the spatial experiences and creative agency of recent African migrants in Italy: a case study with potential for Australian application’. Part of ‘Borders, Identities and Belonging in a Cosmopolitan Society: Perspectives from African Migrants in the Diaspora’.

Geir Henning Presterudstuen

Geir H Presterudsteun

My recent work builds on more than ten years of ethnographic research in Fiji and the broader Pacific. Conceptually my overarching concern is with documenting and analysing ‘Pacific modernities’ as they are constructed and experienced in urban Fiji. Within this broad framework I pay particular attention to how social categories such as gender, sexual identity, race and ethnicity, and the cultural assumptions framing them, are reconstructed and negotiated in context of the modern market economy. At present this research agenda is articulated in four specific projects: first, I am engaged in a comprehensive ethnography of two squatter settlements in urban Fiji where I pay particular attention to the relationship between people’s everyday socialities and economic practices in context of ongoing encroachment on publically available land. Second I am increasingly interested in ‘fashion’ as a lens through which I can analyse young people’s experiences and constructions of gendered self-identities. To this end I am curating a special issue on ‘Fashion: Economies of Dress and Bodily display in Oceania’ for the journal Critical Studies in Fashion and Beauty due to be published in 2021. Third, I continue to develop the notion of ‘monster anthropology’ as a way to understand the relationship between people, ancestors and land as well as the dynamics of vulnerability and fear in context of rapid social change. Finally, I am using my own ethnographic experience to facilitate broader interdisciplinary discussions about participant observation as a method with a particular interest in how intimacy, empathy and vulnerability are operationalised in the research encounter.

Geir’s recent publications include:

Books:

  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. Performing Masculinity: Body, Self and Identity in Modern Fiji. London/New York: Routledge.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. and Y. Musharbash (eds.), 2020. Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds through Monsters. London/New York: Bloomsbury.

Monster Anthropology Book Whitlam Institute Pacific Perspectives

Journal Articles:

  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. “Reclaiming the Social from ‘social distancing”. Social Anthropology, 28:2, pp. 335-336.

Chapters in books:

  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. “Monsters, Place and Murderous Winds in Fiji”. In Y. Musharbash and G.H. Presterudstuen (eds), Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters. London/New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 159-172.
  • Musharbash, Y. and G.H. Presterudstuen. 2020. “Introduction: Monsters and Change”. In Y. Musharbash and G.H. Presterudstuen (eds), Monster Anthropology: Ethnographic Explorations of Transforming Social Worlds Through Monsters. London/New York: Bloomsbury, pp. 1-28.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. “Mana”. In A. Possamai and A.J. Blasi (eds), SAGE Encyclopaedia of the Sociology of Religion. London: SAGE.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. “Monsters and Horror”.   In A. Possamai and A.J. Blasi (eds), SAGE Encyclopaedia of the Sociology of Religion. London: SAGE.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2020. “Taboo”. In A. Possamai and A.J. Blasi (eds), SAGE Encyclopaedia of the Sociology of Religion. London: SAGE.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2019. “Understanding Sexual and Gender Diversity in the Pacific Islands”. In J. Ravulo, T. Mafile’o and B. Yeates (eds), Pacific Social Work: Navigating Practice, Policy and Research, London/New York: Routledge.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. and D. Schieder. 2018. “Bati as Bodily Labour”. In A. Biersack and M. Macintyre (eds), Emergent Masculinities in the Pacific. London/New York: Routledge.
  • Presterudstuen, G.H. 2018. “Entering the living room: Sex, space and power in a cross-cultural and non-heteronormative context”. In M. Cook and A. Gorman-Murray (eds.), Queering the Interior. London: Bloomsbury, pp. 26-36.
Research report:
  • Newton Cain, T., G.H. Presterudstuen and J. Cox. 2020. Pacific Perspectives on the World: Listening to Australia’s island neighbours in order to build strong, respectful and sustainable relationships. Sydney: Peacifica and the Whitlam Institute.

Geir recently presented his research at the following Conference and Seminar Presentations:

  • “Sex, Sexuality and the Modern Body: A case from urban Fiji”. Presented at the European Association for Social Anthropologists’s annual conference ‘New anthropological horizons in and beyond Europe’, Lisbon 2020.
  • “Taking two roads into town: reflections on mobility and inequality in modern Fiji”. Presented at the Finnish Anthropological Association’s Annual Conference, Helsinki 2019.
  • “The human economy of Fiji’s squatter settlements”. Presented at the Association of Social Anthropologists in the UK’s Annual conference, Norwich 2019.
  • “Creative Trading and Unruly Commodities: the informal economy of Fiji’s squatter settlements”. Presented at the Australian Anthropological Society’s annual conference, Canberra 2019.
  • “Sex, self, and fashion in urban Fiji”. Presented at the European Society for Oceanists’ biennial  conference, Cambridge 2018.
Media:

Geir has been on ABC radio twice this year and three times in the aftermath of the Conversation article below last year:

Cyclones, screens, lost souls: how the ghosts we believe in reflect our changing fears

https://www.whitlam.org/publications/2020/6/9/australias-indigenous-relations-are-not-only-a-domestic-matter

Ryan Thorneycroft

Ryan Thorneycroft

Ryan Thorneycroft is a Lecturer in Criminology in the School of Social Sciences. He is an early career researcher (awarded his PhD in 2018), and recently published his first book (Reimagining Disablist and Ableist Violence as Abjection) with Routledge’s Interdisciplinary Disability Studies series. Ryan’s work sits at the intersections of criminology and sociology, and he is broadly interested in the regulation and domination of marginalised populations, and particularly disabled people. Ryan draws from queer and crip theory in much of his work, and recently has published in the areas of: mad studies, pornography, research methodology, and critical disability studies.

Ryan’s recent publications include:

  • Thorneycroft, R 2020, Reimagining Disablist and Ableist Violence as Abjection, Routledge, London and New York.
  • Thorneycroft, R 2020, ‘Walking to the Train Station with Amal: Dis/ability and In/visibility’, Disability & Society, 35(6): 861-875.
  • Thorneycroft, R 2020, ‘If Not a Fist, Then What about a Stump? Ableism and Heteronormativity within Australia’s Porn Regulations’, Porn Studies, 7(2): 152-167.
  • Thorneycroft, R 2020, ‘When Does Research End? The Emotional Labour of Researching Abjection’, Methodological Innovations, DOI: 10.1177/2059799120926350.
  • Thorneycroft, R 2020, ‘Crip Theory and Mad Studies: Intersections and Points of Departure’, Canadian Journal of Disability Studies, 9(1): 91-121.
  • Thorneycroft, R and Asquith, NL 2019, ‘Cripping Criminology’, Theoretical Criminology, DOI: 10.1177/1362480619877697.

Ryans Book

Ryan recently presented his research at the following Conference:

‘Queer and Crip Temporalities During COVID-19: Sexual Practices, Risk, and Responsibility’, with Lucy Nicholas, TASA 2020 Virtual Event, 24 November. A version of this presentation can also be found in Deborah Lupton and Karen Willis’ upcoming edited collection The COVID-19 Crisis: Social Perspectives (Routledge, due April 2021).