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Karin Sellberg specialises in medical humanities, feminist and queer historiography, contemporary fiction and theories of gender, sexuality, disability,.embodiment and time. She is particularly interested in convergences and communication between feminist and queer fiction, and the intellectual history of science and medicine. She is currently working on transwomen's writing, transgender history, and different ideas of transitioning in trans* studies, feminist philosophy and the fiction of Jeanette Winterson, Angela Carter and Caitlin R. Kiernan.

Karin joined UQ as a postdoctoral research fellow in the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities in January 2014, and a lecturer in humanities in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry in 2017. Before this she held a postdoctoral research fellowship at the Institute for Advanced Studies in the Humanities at the University of Edinburgh and a postdoctoral teaching fellowship in the English Literature department at the University of Edinburgh. She was also co-director of the Scottish Universities’ International Summer School from 2012 to 2014, and has organised four large international conferences, "Bodies in Movement: Intersecting Discourses of Materiality in the Sciences and the Arts" (University of Edinburgh), "Sensualising Deformity: Communication and Construction of Monstrous Embodiment" (University of Edinburgh), "Technicity, Temporality, Embodiment: the 10th Somatechnics Conference" (SCU/UQ) and the "CSAA Conference 2019: Cultural Transformations".

Dr. Manu P. Sobti is a landscape historian and urban interlocutor of the Global South with research specialisations in South Asia, South East Asia, Central Asia, and the Middle East. Within the gamut of the Global, the Islamic, and the Non-Western, his continuing work examines borderland transgressions and their intertwinement with human mobilities, indigeneities, and the narratives of passage across these liminal sites. From his perspective, ‘land-centered’ and ‘deep’ place histories replete with human actors serve as critical and de-colonizing processes that negate the top-down master-narratives wherein borders and boundaries simplistically delineate nation states and their scalar range of internal geographies. He was previously Associate Professor at the School of Architecture & Urban Planning (SARUP), University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee USA (2006-16). He has a B.Dipl.Arch. from the School of Architecture-CEPT (Ahmedabad - INDIA), an SMarchS. from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Cambridge - USA), and a Ph.D. from the College of Architecture, Georgia Institute of Technology (Atlanta - USA).

As a recognized scholar and innovative educator, Sobti served as Director of SARUP-UWM’s India Winterim Program (2008-15). This foreign study program worked intensively with local architecture schools in Ahmedabad, Delhi and Chandigarh, allowing students and faculty to interact actively, often within the gamut of the same project. He also set up a similar, research-focused program in Uzbekistan, engaging advanced undergraduate and graduate students to undertake field research at sites, archives and cultural landscapes. In partnership with the Art History Program at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, and SARUP colleagues, Sobti also co-coordinated the Building-Landscapes-Cultures (BLC) Concentration of SARUP-UWM’s Doctoral Program (2011-13), creating opportunities for student research in diverse areas of architectural and urban history and in multiple global settings. He served as the Chair of SARUP's PhD Committee between 2014-16, leading an area of BLC's research consortium titled Urban Histories and Contested Geographies.

Sobti's research has been supported by multiple funding bodies, including the Graham Foundation of the Arts (USA), the Architectural Association (UK), the National Council for Eurasian and East European Research (USA), the French Institute of Central Asian Studies (UZBEKISTAN), the US Department of State Fulbright Foundation (USA), the Aga Khan Foundation (SWITZERLAND), the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation (USA), the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (USA), the Centre for 21st Century Studies University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee (USA), the Institute for Research in the Humanities University of Wisconsin-Madison (USA), Stanford University (USA), in addition to city governments in New Delhi/Chandigarh/Ahmedabad (INDIA), Samarqand/Bukhara (UZBEKISTAN), Erzurum (TURKEY) and New Orleans (USA). He has also served as a United States Department of State Fulbright Senior Specialist Scholar and received 7 Research Fellowships at important institutions worldwide. He is a nominated Expert Member of the ICOMOS-ICIP (Interpretation and Presentation of Cultural Heritage Sites) International Committee, responsible for debate and stewardship on contentious cultural heritage issues globally.

Beth Spacey is a Lecturer in Medieval History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry. Beth is a historian specialising in the religious cultures of Europe and the broader Mediterranean region. Her expertise lies in the history of the crusades and the Latin East, and she has broader research interests in medieval ideas about the supernatural, violence, gender, landscapes, and colonialism. She has published on the medieval Latin Christian historiography of the crusades, especially on ideas of the miraculous and masculinities, and is currently conducting research into attitudes towards nature and God's Creation in crusade texts. Her first book, The Miraculous and the Writing of Crusade Narrative, was published in March 2020 by Boydell and Brewer and was released in paperback in 2023.

Emeritus Professor Peter Spearritt is the co-editor of five major public websites, Queensland Places (over 1100 places, with their history and economy), Queensland Speaks (interviews with key government ministers and public servants), the Queensland Historical Atlas and Text Queensland, a resource for studying the state. He is also the co-editor of Victorian Places, a project with Monash University, detailing over 1500 settlements in Victoria.

A Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences in Australia, his research interests include coastal urbanisation and conservation, housing and the developer-led apartment boom, green space provision in urban areas and the use and abuse of water in our cities.

Martin Stuart-Fox is Emeritus Professor of History at the University of Queensland. After completing a BSc in evolutionary biology, he worked in PNG, Hong Kong and Laos before joining United Press International as a foreign correspondent covering the Second Indochina War. On returning to Australia he tutored and lectured in Asian history at UQ while undertaking an MA (on the rationale for an evolutionary theory of history) and PhD (developing an evolutionary theory of history). As Head of History at UQ, Professor Stuart-Fox taught courses on History, Time and Meaning, and Theory of History at the Honours level. He is currently pursuing research on evolutionary theory of history.

Stephen Townsend is a lecturer in sport sociocultural studies with the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. Stephen joined HMNS in 2019 after completing his PhD in Sport History. His current research examines social, cultural, and historical aspects of sports concussion.

His previous research has interrogated the ways that racial, religious, gendered, and political ideologies are transmitted through sports media, in addition to digital history epistemologies. He has published widely in academic journals and books, with his most recent publications analysing historical representations on sports concussion in the Australian newspaper press. His teaching and research interests span multiple spheres of sport and culture, as he seeks to critically understand the ways that people have historically constructed and transmitted meaning through sport and physical activity.

Dr Akiko Uchiyama specialises in translation studies and her research interests include postcolonial translation theory, gender in translation, girls’ fiction in translation and the history of translation in Japan. She is the Convenor of the Master of Arts in Japanese Interpreting and Translation (MAJIT) program, and is accredited by the National Accreditation Authority for Translators and Interpreters as a professional translator.

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).

Dr Walters has published on Cavendish, Shakespeare, Milton, and Renaissance women in relation to gender, science, philosophy, sexuality and political thought. She welcomes research proposals relating to these topics.

She is author of Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (Cambridge University Press, hardback 2014, paperback 2017) and is editor of The Blazing World and other Writings, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2025), which is the first edition to modernise the spelling and grammar of Cavendish’s prose fiction.

Her co-edited volume, Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (2022), was published by Cambridge University Press and won Co-Honorable Mention for the 2022 Collaborative Project Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender.She is also co-editor of the Restoration section of the Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women’s Writing (2021-2026); the General Editors won the 2025 Digital Scholarship, New Media, & Art Award from the Society for the Study of Early Modern Women and Gender. In addition, she is co-editor of Cavendish and Milton, which is forthcoming with Oxford University Press. Currently, she is co-editing Cavendish's Philosophy of Literature, which is under contract with Routledge.

Dr Walters is the managing and founding editor of Margaret Cavendish: A Multidisciplinary Journal. Currently, she serves on the Editorial Board of ANQ: A Quarterly Journal of Short Articles, Notes and Reviews, Anthem Press, and was President of the International Margaret Cavendish Society.

Dr Walters is also Deputy Chair of the Equity, Diversity and Inclusion Committee for the Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences (HASS) and is the Honours Thesis Coordinator for the Western Civilisation Centre.

She obtained her doctorate and masters degree from the University of Edinburgh, Scotland and her BA from the University of California Santa Cruz. Previously, she was a postdoctoral research fellow at Ghent University, Belgium. She has also held academic positions in England, America, and Scotland and was a visiting professor at Université Catholique de Lille, France. Between studies, she worked in Tokyo, Japan.

Books

Lisa Walters. Margaret Cavendish: Gender, Science and Politics (Cambridge University Press, hardback 2014, paperback 2017)

Lisa Walters and Brandie Siegfried, eds. Margaret Cavendish: An Interdisciplinary Perspective (Cambridge University Press, 2022).

Lisa Walters, ed. The Blazing World and other Writings, Oxford World's Classics (Oxford University Press, 2025)

Suzanne Trill, Natasha Simonova, and Lisa Walters, eds. "Restoration."Palgrave Encyclopedia of Early Modern Women's Writing (Palgrave 2020-2025).

Ann Coiro, Lara Dodds, and Lisa Walters, eds. Cavendish and Milton (Oxford University Press, forthcoming)

Daniel Whiting and Lisa Walters, eds. Cavendish's Philosophy of Literature (under contract with Routledge)

Tony is an expert mining structural geologist who applies his skills to problems of deep earth mass mining, giant open pits, near-mine exploration, and the local and regional lithostructural controls on complex metalliferous mineral deposits. As a Senior Research Fellow in mining and engineering geology at the University of Queensland, Tony’s pioneering research focussed on the geological modelling and data inputs required for planning deep cave mining operations, an area that had received little previous consideration from geologists. He led the Geology and Mass Mining Project (GMM), which examined the geoscientific inputs required for exploring, defining, establishing, and mining block and sub-level caving operations that were being developed on giant porphyry copper-gold systems and IOCG deposits. While much research was being done in Australia to explore the deep earth environment, very little was being done to model the geology of large and deep mineralized systems, and then to use the new data and models to plan and extract any large discoveries made. Tony’s pioneering work was some of the first and most comprehensive to be done in this field.

• Fellow and chartered professional (geology) of the Australasian Institute of Mining and Metallurgy
• Fellow of the Society of Economic Geologists
• Fellow of the Geological Society
• Fellow of the Australian Institute of Geoscientists
• Member, Geological Society of Australia
• Member, Australasian Society for Historical Archaeology

Tony is presently a Principal Structural Geologist with a Brisbane-based geophysical and geological consulting group.

I am an Australian Research Council Future Fellow working in the field of bioarchaeology in Australia and New Guinea.

Professor Zhao (PhD, ANU, 1993; MSc, Univ Adelaide, 1989; BSc, Nanjing Univ, 1985) has ~30 years research experience in isotope geochemistry and geochronology, with research interests straddling across the fields of geological, geochemical, geographical, environmental, ecological and archaeological sciences. He developed the mass spectrometry U-series dating methods at UQ and applied them to dating coral reefs in the Great Barrier Reef and other parts of the tropical oceans, karstic deposits (stalagmites, stalactites, flowstones, etc) and calcite veins across different continents, as well as important hominid and fauna records in China, South East Asia, Australasia, Europe and Polynesia, which have received widespread recognition and public attention. Most recently, his team has been developing laser-ablation ICP-MS in situ U-Th and U-Pb dating methods for applications in earth, environmental and archaeological research. Since 1991, Zhao have authored >350 refereed publications, won more than 50 competitive grants and contracts, supervised or mentored more than 50 research high-degree students and early-career researchers, and received one ARC APD fellowship (1995), one ARC research/QEII fellowship (1998), one UQ research excellence award (2001), one Chinese National Science Foundation distinguished overseas young scholar award (2000), and the prestigious inaugural Australian Museum Eureka Prize for Outstanding Mentor of Young Researchers (2011).

The Radiogenic Isotope Facility (RIF) that Prof Zhao took charge since 2005 is a ~200 m2 HEPA-filtered, fully-automated, ultra-clean low-blank chemistry and mass spectrometer laboratory, housing two Nu Plasma multi-collector ICP-MS instruments, two Thermo iCap-RQ and one Thermo X-series II quadrupole ICP-MS instruments, and two ASI RESOlution SE laser ablation systems for high-precision radiogenic/metal-stable isotope and trace element analysis in both solution and in situ laser-ablation modes. The facility is unique in its design and capabilities in Australia, representing one of only a small number of establishments with its level of analytical sophistication, range and quality of mass spectrometers and proven ultra-low analytical blank performance. It is widely acknowledged by peers in the field as being among of the most advanced facilities of its kind in the world. It services a multidisciplinary research community on campus, nationally and overseas in traditional earth science research, palaeoclimate, palaeoenvironmental and palaeoecological research, coral reef research, environmental science research, archaeological research, and forensic research.