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I am currently an Honorary Fellow at The University of Queensland and a postdoc at UCLA and Stanford. I am a marine community ecologist and marine spatial planner. My research focuses on understanding the impacts of marine heatwaves on kelp forest ecosystems. I also research the role of marine protected areas and other effective area-based conservation measures for providing climate resilience and designing networks of climate-smart marine protected areas. I support conservation initiatives with NGOs, parks, and fishers, and teach decision tools such as Marxan. My heart remains in my beautiful Costa Brava, Spain (Catalonia), where I do my best to support conservation. I am a naive dreamer, and I know future generations will dive into healthy kelp forests and thriving marine ecosystems.

Rob Arcidiacono is a critical sociologist, food systems researcher, and civil society advocate focused on food sovereignty, agroecology, and social justice. He is a post-doc researcher at the Centre for Policy Futures at the University of Queensland, is a member of the Coordination Committee of the Civil Society and Indigenous Peoples’ Mechanism (CSIPM), contributing to global food policy through the Committee on World Food Security (CFS), and is on the Agroecology and Food Sovereignty Alliance (AFSA) National Committee.

Rob draws on experience from development and humanitarian roles across a diversity of cultural and geographic contexts to centre the Right to Food, and elevate the perspectives of farmers, civil society, and First Nations communities in domestic and global food governance processes. He currently coordinates the Agroecology Action Research Network (of academics in Australia), co-coordinates the Resilient Food Systems working group for the CSIPM, and is actively engaged in qualitative research projects based in food justice, social enterprise and policy processes. His PhD explored digital technologies and innovation narratives in Australian agriculture, providing him with strong analytical tools to critically assess power, discourses, and competing interests shaping food systems in Australia and globally.

Associate Professor Geoff Argus is the Director of Rural Health for the Faculty of Health, Medicine and Behavioural Sciences. He is a nationally recognised leader in rural health with a career spanning over 20 years as a clinician, health leader and academic. A/Prof Argus has served as the National Rural Health Deputy Commissioner with the Commonwealth Government and Board Director with the Australian Rural Health Education Network and the National Rural Health Alliance.

From 2017 to 2025, led the establishment, growth and expansion of Southern Queensland Rural Health (SQRH), a University Department of Rural Health, that operates as a partnership between UQ, the University of Southern Queensland, Darling Downs Health and South West Hospital and Health Service. In 2022, SQRH was awarded $5M under the Rural Health Mutlidisciplinary Training Program to establish a rural allied health training hub in St George Queensland and an aged care training hub in Chinchilla, Queensland.

A/Prof Argus holds qualifications in Clinical Psychology and Public Health with research interests in rural health workforce planning and development, rural health education and training strategies, innovative rural health service delivery models and health issues directly impacting rural communities.

Dr Ariotti is a Senior Research Fellow and Group Leader at the University of Queensland, Australia. Nick's Lab is focused on using cell biology, structural biology, and biochemistry to understand the molecular mechanisms of endocytosis including the organization of cargo for the transport and packaging of proteins into cells and, specialises in how defects in protein trafficking, and plasma membrane organisation can result in human diseases. He completed his PhD in 2013 at the University of Queensland. He then spent 4 years postdoctoral researcher at the Institute for Molecular Biosciences in Rob Parton’s laboratory where he focused on developing and applying correlative light and electron microscopy approaches to better understand endocytosis. In 2017, Dr Ariotti moved to the Electron Microscope Unit at UNSW to serve as the Associate Director of Biological EM. He spent 5 years at the Electron Microscope Unit establishing Cryo-EM and cryogenic-Correlative Light and Electron Microscopy. In 2022, Dr Ariotti returned to the IMB at UQ as an independent research group leader with a focus on developing and applying novel cryogenic correlative approaches to uncover protein structures in situ.

Dr Kate Ariotti is an ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Historical and Philosophical Inquiry at the University of Queensland. Her research examines the social and cultural impacts of war in Australia. She has published on wartime captivity and the experiences of Australian prisoners of war – including the 2018 book Captive Anzacs: Australian POWs of the Ottomans during the First World War (Cambridge University Press), which was nominated for the inaugural Les Carlyon Literary Award – as well as the ways in which Australians have historically remembered and commemorated wars. In 2017 she edited with Dr James Bennett Australians and the First World War: Local-Global Connections and Contexts (Palgrave).

Her current ARC-funded project ‘Between Death and Commemoration: An Australian History of the War Corpse’ will provide the first comprehensive account of the changing policies, practices and attitudes that have shaped the treatment of the physical remains of Australian war dead between the First World War and recent wars in the Middle East (1915-2015). This project will provide a valuable new perspective on the realities of Australian participation in war and a critical understanding of the place of death in war in the Australian past and present.

Kate teaches 19th and 20th century Australian history, and supervises both honours and postgraduate students working on research projects within this rich field. Several of her students have won prestigious national prizes for their work.

Kate has been a participant in several writer’s festivals, public symposia, and museum exhibitions, and has served as a judge for the NSW Premier's History Awards. Before commencing her position at the University of Queensland, Kate worked as a Historian in the Military History Section of the Australian War Memorial and, most recently, in the School of Humanities and Social Science at the University of Newcastle

Venero Armanno has published two collections of short stories and twelve novels, four of which have been published internationally. In 2002 his novel The Volcano won Best Australian Fiction Book in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards, and the same novel was shortlisted for the Courier Mail Book of the Year Award. Two years earlier his novel Firehead was shortlisted in the Queensland Premier’s Literary Awards. His latest publications are The Rays Slip Away and Thunder on the Mountain, as well as the first international publication of an earlier novel, Black Mountain. His short stories have been anthologised internationally, including publications in Barcelona, Hungary, Canada and Serbia. As well as writing for adults, Venero has three illustrated books for younger readers. Also a scriptwriter, Venero has worked with a number of production companies, including Tristram Miall Films (Strictly Ballroom, Children of the Revolution, Looking for Alibrandi) and Liberty Films (Fire, Medivac, The Day of the Roses), on film adaptations of his novels.

Looking ahead, Venero has novellas, an anthology, and a new book being readied for publication through 2025 and 2026.

Nigel is public health and health services researcher with interests and expertise in quantitative research methods, epidemiology, evidence-based health care, clinical trials, and digital health. He is a member of the Improving health outcomes after musculoskeletal injury group at the RECOVER Injury Research Centre, and is a chief investigator of the NHMRC Centre for Research Excellence in Better Outcomes for Compensable Injury. His work focusses on the epidemiology and burden of minor to moderate injuries, longitudinal data analyses of intervention trial data, population studies of health-related quality of life and chronic pain, and the potential of digital heath for assessment and intervention following injury.

Nigel has particular interests in new innovations in healthcare, and has previously worked in minimally-invasive surgical trials in gynaecology, and clinical trials assessing the feasibility, efficacy and effectiveness of clinical telemedicine in paediatric healthcare. His doctorate work (Awarded 2011, UQ School of Medicine) involved the design, development, and clinical/cost/acceptability evaluation of real-time telemedicine for acute consultation between a tertiary neonatal intensive care unit and four peripheral referring hospitals in Queensland. He maintains an active research interest in telemedicine, and more broadly in digital health. Between 2004 and 2015, Nigel was involved in the telepaediatric service at the Royal Children's, and the Lady Cilento Children's hospitals in Brisbane where he also co-ordinated an Indigenous Ear Health Screening Program. He is an associate editor of the Journal of Telemedicine and Telecare and an academic editor for PLOS ONE.

Nigel regularly participates in national and international grant review panels, and is an active HDR and occupational-trainee supervisor. He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Medicine and the Royal Society for Public Health (FRSPH), a member of the Australian Epidemiological Association (AEA), International Epidemiological Association (IEA), the International Association for the Study of Pain (IASP), the Association for Interdisciplinary Meta-Research and Open Science (AIMOS), and is a qualified Justice of the Peace, JP (qual).

Dr Danielle Armour is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DAATSIA Fellow in the School of Education at The University of Queensland. A proud Kamilaroi woman with cultural connections through her paternal lineage, Danielle's research focuses on Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander education and the intersections of Indigenous and Western knowledge systems in educational settings. Her current work centres on co-constructing culturally informed learning models with Traditional Owners, Elders, and communities to enhance STEM engagement and outcomes for Indigenous students.

Danielle has extensive expertise in community engaged research and culturally responsive pedagogies, working collaboratively with Elders, community members, schools, and education systems to ensure Indigenous knowledges are meaningfully embedded in teaching and learning. Before entering academia, she taught in urban and very remote communities, bringing valuable classroom experience to her research, teaching, and leadership.

Rebecca is a Senior Lecturer in Speech Pathology at the University of Queensland, and she has a particular clinical and research interest in paediatric populations. Clinically, Rebecca has experience working with school-age children, and she is passionate about sharing her interest and expertise in this area through her teaching and research aspirations. Rebecca’s teaching and research focuses on a range of paediatric areas of speech pathology practice, including speech, language, literacy and special needs in communication (including children with Autism Spectrum Disorder, and Developmental Language Disorders). To date, Rebecca has presented at national and international conferences and also has published in peer-reviewed journals published in the areas of Autism Spectrum Disorders, and also population-based research examining the early life predictors and long-term outcomes of language impairment.