Find an expert

I’m a researcher and lecturer at The University of Queensland Business School. My expertise is in critically evaluating how people and organisations use language to communicate about themselves and shape the world around them. I’m committed to doing research that promotes justice and equity, and helps government, the media, and industry communicate for the common good.

My recent research has explored sustainability in the arts and culture sector, news reporting on violence against women and girls, and COVID-19 crisis communication.

I’ve recently collaborated with various peak bodies in the Australian arts and culture sector such as Theatre Network Australia, and arts companies of various sizes (e.g., Queensland Ballet and La Boite Theatre) to develop a free peer coaching program known as “Creating out Loud.” This program builds networks of mutual support for artists and arts workers across all levels of the arts and culture sector.

Enriching the arts and culture sector is of high importance to me. In 2021, I was awarded an Advance Queensland Industry Research Fellowship to support arts workers recovering from the COVID-19 pandemic.

To find out how I can help your organisation, email me at k.power@business.uq.edu.au. You can also follow me on LinkedIn.

Sol's research interests include: (Critical) Discourse Analysis, Trauma and Memory Studies, Perceived Discrimination, Critical Translation Studies, Decolonial Thought.

Sol is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Languages and Cultures, University of Queensland in Australia. She teaches language, literature, and cultural studies courses. Sol’s research interests include memory and trauma studies, everyday discourses of discrimination, and Decolonial Thought. Sol has over 50 publications, including four books, one co-edited book, and five books as a translator. Her work has appeared in journals such as Social Semiotics, Critical Discourse Studies, Memory Studies, Journal of Pragmatics, Languages in Contrast, Babel, Delaware Review of Latin American Studies, and JILAR among others. Her co-authored historical Graphic Memoir Historias Clandestinas (2014) had a second edition in 2023 and is currently being made into a film. The English version of the graphic novel was published in 2023 in the U.S.

Melanie Saward is a proud Bigambul and Wakka Wakka woman. She is a lecturer of Australian Studies in the School of Communication and Arts and has recently (July 2024) been appointed as the coordinator of BlackWords. Her research looks at Indigeneity in romantic comedy fiction with a focus on diversity, intersectionality, and the Australian publishing industry.

Melanie is a writer and editor. Her debut fiction book, Burn, was published in 2023 with Affirm press and her first romantic comedy novel, Love Unleashed, was published in August 2024.

Ken Tann is an in-house linguist at the UQ Business School. He specializes in applying linguistic and semiotic techniques to interdisciplinary research, and helps industry professionals add value to their professions through effective communication. His analytical framework has been applied across media, forensic, education and workplace contexts. He is currently supervising PhD research in marketing, finance and aged care.

Human-centred design of interactive systems

Stephen Viller is a researcher and educator in human-centred design methods, particularly applied to designing social, domestic and mobile computing technologies, and understanding how people's interactions in everyday settings inform the design of such technologies. He has over 30 years of experience in Computer Supported Cooperative Work (CSCW), Interaction Design, and Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) research, where he has focused on bridging disciplines and diverse methodological perspectives. He has concentrated on qualitative methods, particularly observational fieldwork, contextual interviews, diary studies and field trips, but also increasingly on more ‘designerly’ approaches such as cultural probes, low-fidelity prototypes, speculative design.

Stephen is an Associate Professor in the School of Electrical Engineering & Computer Science (EECS), where he leads the Human-Centred Computing discipline. He is also UQ's Theme Leader for the Digital Worlds and Disruptive Technologies theme in the UQ-Exeter Institute, and national chair of CHISIG, the Computer-Human Interaction Special Interest Group of the Human Factors and Ergonomics Society of Australia (HFESA). From 2016-2019 he was the EECS (ITEE at the time) Director of Coursework Studies (Chair of T&L committee) and from 2011-2016 he was Program Director of the Bachelor of Multimedia Design and Master of Interaction Design. His publications span various interdisciplinary journals and conferences in HCI/CSCW and technology design. He has a BSc (Hons) Computation (UMIST), MSc Cognitive Science (Manchester) and PhD Computing (Lancaster).

Assoc. Prof. Dr. habil Franzisca Weder, Senior Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Brisbane (Australia), is researching, writing and teaching in the areas of Organizational Communication and Public Relations with a specific focus on Sustainability Communication and Corporate Social Responsibility.

She worked as Guest Professor at University of Alabama (USA), University of Eichstätt-Ingolstadt (GER), University of Waikato (NZ), RMIT (Melbourne, AUS) and University of Ilmenau (GER).

Franzisca Weder is Chair of the International Environmental Communication Association (IECA) -> check this out (and become a member :-): https://www.theieca.org

Curious about her work? check…

• her eco-culture jamming
• her sustainability related conversations with artists and campaigners
• one of her papers on Sustainability and Storytelling
• one of her books
  • on Sustainability Communication: THE SUSTAINABILITY COMMUNICATION READER
  • on integrated CSR Communication: INTEGRATED CSR COMMUNICATION
  • or (in case you speak German..) on Organizational Communication and PR
• or other recent papers:
  • on how (much) Covid made us more sustainable
  • on sustainability as cognitive friction https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fcomm.2020.00008/full
  • or on antagonistic framing and CSR Communication https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/CCIJ-01-2018-0014/full/html
  • or (in case you speak German), her ideas on cultures of sustainability

Beck Wise teaches and researches in professional, technical and academic writing, with specialisations in the rhetoric of science, multimodal writing, writing in digital environments, and feminist rhetorics.

Current research projects focus on:

• Rhetoric, risk and public health
• Feminist rhetorical histories of science
• Writing across the curriculum

Yunxia Zhu is an award-winning researcher and educator and has an international reputation in cross-cultural management and business negotiation. Yunxia’s PhD is from the Australian National University in the area of international business communication. She is a negotiation expert trained in Advanced Harvard negotiation programme and Oxford Programme on negotiation at Saïd Business School, University of Oxford. She has taught Undergraduate, MBA, Doctoral and Executive Development programs at universities in Australia and abroad. She was a visiting academic to Imperial College London, University of Michigan and Lund University Sweden.

Yunxia has been a recipient of numerous prestigious awards. She is the winner of 2015 UQ Teaching and Learning Fellowship, 2014 Australian National Teaching Citation Awards, UQ Vice Chancellor’s 2013 Internationalisation award, UQ 2013 Outstanding Teaching Citation award, 2011 Best Researcher Award and 2006 Best Publication by Association for Business Communication, and 2008 UQ Business School Research Excellence award, just to name a few.

As an active researcher, Yunxia has written two scholarly books and has published extensively in prestigious international journals (e.g., top-tier of A* or A journals ABDC ranking). She serves on a number of editorial boards for prestigious journals including Academy of Management Discovery, Academy of Management Learning and Education, Journal of World Business, Discourse and Communication, and Public Relations Review. She also serves as an intercultural expert for the prestigious Pragmatics & Beyond New Series (PBNS), John Benjamins.

Yunxia serves as the Vice President of Association for Business Communication in the Asia Pacific Region and is holding adjunct and honorary professorial positions with a number of major Chinese universities with the most recent being awarded by the Top 500 Chinese Enterprises Research Centre, Shanghai University of Finance and Economics. She has served on expert advisory board and panels for publicly listed companies, providing professional consulting and training in relation to internationalization and market development in the global business contexts.