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Paul is Professor of Digital Sociology and Social Policy. He is a Chief Investigator of the Australian Research Council Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision Making and Society (ADM+S), and Lead of the Social Services Focus Area in the Centre. Having degrees in sociology/social policy and computer science, and having worked in the public service, Paul has a unique insight into the intersection of digital technologies and their social implications.

For over 20 years, Paul's research has focused in the development, design, deployment and evaluation of digital technology, automated decision making and Artificial Intelligence (AI) in government and social services. Taking a multi-disciplinaray perspective, he explores the implications of automation and AI on policy, service delivery, service users and citizenship, governance and practices of power. His work considers the ethical, legal, social and pratical considerations of AI and automation.

Paul's research is regarded as influential in the development of Digital Welfare State and Digital Social Policy literatures. Past publications include Governing Electronically (Palgrave 2010), Performing the State (Routledge 2018), and Adminstering Welfare Reform (Policy, 2006). He is currently finalising Digital Government in an Age of Disruption with Professor John Halligan, which takes an international comparative, institutionalist approach.

His current research focus is on using critical social science to inform the development of practical digital and AI tools to advance pro-social outcomes,

• Data navigation for lawyers. Working with Economic Justice Australia and welfare rights community legal centres, Paul is working with colleagues to co-design and produce a data extraction and navigation tool. This tool will assist lawyers to better provide legal advice and support to clients who are contesting decisions by the Australian government's Services Australia and Centrelink.
• Trauma Informed Algorithmic Assessment Toolkit. Working with human service delivery agenies, this project is piloting a practical, online Toolkit to enable organisations to design and deploy AI and algorithmic enable services that is safe, responsible and avoids causing harm.

Dr Carmen Mills is an Associate Professor in Teaching, Learning and Classroom Pedagogy in the School of Education at The University of Queensland, where she is the Director of Teaching and Learning. Her research interests are informed broadly by the sociology of education. She has an international reputation for significant research contributions in the areas of social justice in education, schooling in disadvantaged communities and teacher education for the development of socially just dispositions. As a socially critical researcher, informed by the work of Pierre Bourdieu and others, she is concerned to explore questions related to whose interests are served by the social arrangements evident in educational contexts and how these arrangements might be structured more equitably. She is experienced in undertaking empirical research with others from a range of disciplinary backgrounds, bringing her particular experience in interviewing and observation, her empirical interest in equity and social justice, as well as her understanding of Bourdieuian theoretical concepts, to these research teams.

Dr Stefanie Plage is a Research Fellow with the Life Course Centre at the School of Social Science at UQ. Her expertise is in qualitative research methods, including longitudinal and visual methods. Her research interests span the sociology of emotions, disadvantage and health and illness. Stefanie has taught introductory and advanced courses in sociology and medical sociology, research design and qualitative inquiry, including the use of software for qualitative research (i.e. NVivo). Her work is multi-disciplinary. She completed her PhD at the Centre for Social Research in Health at The University of New South Wales. In her study she employed a mix of longitudinal qualitative interviews and visual elicitation methods to explore the lived experience of people with cancer. Currently, her research seeks to understand and improve the interactions of families experiencing social disadvantage with the social and health care systems.

Associate Professor Marnee Shay is a Principal Research Fellow in the School of Education at the University of Queensland. She is an Aboriginal woman whose maternal family is from the Ngen'giwumirri language group (Daly River, Northern Territory), born in Brisbane, with strong connections to Indigenous communities in South East Queensland. Dr Shay is an experienced and qualified secondary teacher.

A/Prof Shay has an extensive externally funded research program that spans the fields of Indigenous education, policy studies, flexi schooling, and youth studies. She has published in many journals, books and scholarly media outlets. A/Prof Shay advocates for strengths approaches in Indigenous education and Indigenous-based evidence to inform policy futures. She is the lead editor of a critical text in the field of Indigenous education, “Indigenous education in Australia Learning and Teaching for Deadly Futures”, published by Routledge in 2021 (with Prof Oliver). The book won a national award for ‘The Tertiary/VET Teaching and Learning Resource (wholly Australian) category at the Education Publishing Awards Australia.

A/Prof Shay’s research has substantially impacted policy and practice in her field. She has contributed to numerous policy submissions, non-traditional research outputs (such as podcasts) and school reviews. She serves on multiple Government and school boards and committees, including the Queensland Department of Education Ministerial Advisory Committee for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Education. Dr Shay’s research contributions to education were recognised in 2020 through a National Australian Council for Educational Leaders (ACEL) award, a Queensland branch ACEL Excellence in Educational Leadership Award, and the 2021 UQ Foundation for Research Excellence Award.

A/Prof Shay is a Chief Investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence "Indigenous Futures" 2023-2029.

Other current research projects include:

ARC Indigenous Discovery 2021 'Co-designing Indigenous education policy in Queensland'

ARC Centre of Excellence 'Digital Child' Associate Investigator and Indigenous Advisor

UQ FREA Award 'Reconceptualising Indigenous education through a discourse of excellence.'

Dr Leigh Sperka is a Lecturer in the School of Human Movement and Nutrition Sciences. She graduated with First Class Honours from the Bachelor of Health, Sport and Physical Education in 2013 and completed her Doctor of Philosophy in 2018.

Her research focuses on the outsourcing of education. This includes investigating decision-making around the practice, how outsourcing impacts curriculum, pedagogy, and assessment, and student perspectives of outsourced lessons.

In her teaching, she emphasises the importance of creating an inclusive environment in Health and Physical Education that allows all students to participate and experience success. Students are at the centre of her teaching. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been awarded:

• U21 Health Sciences Teaching Excellence Award (2021)
• UQ Commendation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2020)
• Faculty of Health and Behavioural Sciences Awards for Teaching Excellence (2020)

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.

Karen Thorpe is Australian Research Council, Laureate Professor and Group Leader in Child Development, Education and Care at the Queensland Brain Institute, University of Queensland. Her research is grounded in the understanding that early learning experiences shape brain development and are critical in establishing trajectories of health, social inclusion and learning across the lifespan. A particular focus of her work is early care and education environments including parenting, parent work, quality of care and education, and the early years workforce.

Karen leads a multi-disciplinary team of developmental scientists undertaking large scale longitudinal studies with embedded studies to explicate mechanisms that enable or limit children’s life chances. She was Foundation Psychologist on the Avon Longitudinal Study of Parents and Children at the University of Bristol, UK; led the evaluation of the Preparing School Trial for Queensland Government; led the Queensland team of the E4Kids study of quality in Australian Early Education and Care and a recent data linkage project with Queensland Government to track participants through their school journey. In partnership with Queensland Government, Goodstart Early Learning and the Creche and Kindergarten Association she led a large population study of the Australian ECEC workforce (ARC Linkage). Her current research, as a chief investigator on the ARC Centre of Excellence for Children and Families across the life course, and through an ARC Laureate fellowship, is to examine barriers to providing high quality early learning services in developmentally vulnerable communities.

In 2013 and again in 2019 Karen was named by the Australian Financial Review as among Australia's 100 Women of Influence for the impacts of her research on educational and family policy. In 2020 she was recognised by Australian Government, Advance Global Awards for her international contribution to education. Karen chairs the Australian Early Years Reference Council for Evidence for Learning, Australia whose remit is to build a strong evidence-base in early childhood education and care with focus on translation into policy and practice. She is also director on the board of the Australian Research Council for Children and Youth and advisor to the national board of Beyond Blue – Be You.

Professor Wojtek Tomaszewski is Deputy Director (Research) and a Research Group Leader at the Institute for Social Science Research, and is also Chief Investigator in the Australian Research Council (ARC) Centre of Excellence for Children and Families over the Life Course (the Life Course Centre). He holds a BSc and MSc in Mathematics, as well as an MA in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland and a PhD in Social Sciences from the European University Institute in Florence, Italy. Wojtek joined UQ from the National Centre for Social Research in London and has specialist expertise in quantitative research methods and advanced statistical analysis.

Wojtek has a strong research interest in the impact of disadvantage on educational and labour market outcomes in young people. He has undertaken a number of research projects for the State and Commonwealth Governments in Australia, and previously for the British Government. He has published in high-profile international academic journals across the fields of social sciences, education, and beyond.

An experienced researcher with a multi-disciplinary training background, Ning is a Research Fellow in the Education and Disadvantage group at ISSR. Ning has worked on the Student Engagement Research and Analysis Project for the New South Wales Department of Education, as well as a number of other projects funded by the Australian Department of Education, Brisbane Catholic Education, Queensland Department of Education, and NGOs.

Ning has strong expertise in delivering multi-year collaborative research projects, including complex mix-method evaluation projects (e.g., the national evaluation of the Australian Government’s Paid Parental Leave scheme and a follow-up ARC Linkage Project, funded by the Department of Social Services).

Ning has also significantly contributed to a number of projects funded though various research grant schemes, utilising data from LSIC, LSAC, LSAY and HILDA to investigate the impacts of a range of factors (e.g., individual, family, school and community) on disadvantaged students’ outcomes, such as socio-emotional wellbeing, academic achievement, university participation and graduate labour market outcomes.

Ning has specialist expertise in literature review, constructing theoretical framework to guide data analyses, data preparation, management, screening and analysis, which she has applied to great effect in these projects. Ning has a track record of successfully delivering accessible and policy informing documentation. She also specialises in longitudinal data analysis, and has published extensively on school climate, student engagement, and long-term education and labour market outcomes for students from equity groups.

Tomasz holds a MA and PhD in Sociology from the University of Warsaw, Poland. He has joined Wojtek Tomaszewski’s team at ISSR, coming from the University of Warsaw where he was an Assistant Professor at the Institute of Sociology and a researcher at the Education Quality Evaluation Unit (PEJK). Moreover, he worked at the National Processing Institute (OPI) in Warsaw where he was a member of the team responsible for developing the Polish Graduate Tracking System (ELA) on behalf of the Polish Ministry of Science and Higher Education.

He was also a visiting scholar at the Center for Studies in Higher Education, University of California, Berkeley and The Bamberg Graduate School of Social Sciences (BAGSS), University of Bamberg, Germany. Tomasz’s research interests include individual educational trajectories especially within tertiary education, labour market outcomes of graduates, and social inequality and its impact on the educational and professional paths of young people.