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I am a media studies scholar studying current smart technologies and consequent ontological conundrums we face as these machines become smarter than us at telling how things are within ourselves and around our worlds. My previous research on the Internet of Things (IoT) was about these hidden arrangements of things in our background that machines constantly remind us of as those we should always be a little paranoid of, and how this normalized paranoia leads us to accept the IoT as a new smarter technique of self-governance. My first book Internet-ontologies-Things: Smart Objects, Hidden Problems, and their Symmetries (2023) argues these popular narratives of smart lives as our strategic and speculative responses to such common feelings: "Something is there, so embedded in our bodies, homes, and neighbourhoods. We feel it but cannot grasp it!"

Digital ontology is the term that best describes the nature of my research but it's less relevant to a pure philosophical inquiry about how things are in the world. Ontology in my practical and critical concern is rather related to the new capitalist ideology (or realism) that runs media industries’ current speculative economy. So, my critical reading of the ontological turn in humanities and social sciences focuses on its strategic dimension. How does this turn draw our attention to the things that our too-human perception always fails to pay the right attention to? How does this in turn mobilize our constant speculation about things beyond our perceptions and control, not only as the inexhaustible source of our anxieties but also as the inexhaustible resource of cultural production?

My current research interests include Digital Ontology, New Materialism, Speculative (Capitalist) Realism, Quantum Physics as Cultural Imagination, Science and Technology Studies, Actor-Network Theory, French Philosophers (e.g. Foucault, Deleuze, and Badiou), Eco- and Geo-philosophy/criticism, new materialist film and videogame studies.

Andrea is a Post Doctoral Fellow in Digital Cultures and Societies at the University of Queensland . She got her PhD at USC Annenberg, and is originally from Colombia. Broadly, her research interests lie at the intersection of media and Science and Technology Studies.She studies mobilities; cultures of transnational, remote work; on-demand workers and freelancers; feminized maintenance of workspaces; media tales of tech; civic social media in Latin America.

Her research can be found in New Media and Society, the International Journal of Communication, Mass Communication & Society, and in the edited volume Popular Culture and the Civic Imagination: A Casebook. She has also conducted research with the IDRC and USAID in projects about the "future of work" in the "Global South".

I am primarily interested in how we, as scientists, can make meaningful contributions to halting and reversing the ongoing global biodiversity crisis. I am particularly committed to tackling gaps in our knowledge needed for biodiversity conservation, focusing on the following three aspects.

(i) Identifying gaps in existing information and their drivers: I have been working on how information on biodiversity is distributed over space, time and taxa, and what causes the existing gaps in information availability.

(ii) Overcoming information gaps with modelling approaches: I have been applying modelling approaches to better inform conservation initiatives through the use of available, imperfect data. For this I have intensively worked on assessing long-term changes in global waterbird diversity (see for example our recent papers in Nature (also see my blog post) and Nature Climate Change (blog post))

(iii) Bridging the research-implementation gap: I am also keen to provide scientific information for conservation in a more accessible way and have been involved in the Conservation Evidence project as a statistical editor, with the aim of contributing to the implementation of evidence-based decision making in conservation.

I am leading the translatE project (transcending language barriers to environmental sciences), funded by the Australian Research Council, which incorporates the above three aspects in order to understand the consequences of language barriers in biodiversity conservation. The project aims to:

• assess the importance of scientific knowledge that is available in non-English languages,
• understand how language barriers impede the application of science in decision making,
• quantify language barriers to the career development of non-native English speaking scientists, and
• devise solutions for exchanging information across languages and cultures in an effective manner.

See our work on language barriers in science featured in Nature in 2019 and July and August in 2023, Science in 2020 and 2023, The Conversation in 2021 and 2023, The Guardian, and The Economist, and my presentation on findings from the project (plenary at the 2022 Joint Conference of the Ecological Society of Australia and the Society for Conservation Biology Oceania: from 48:48).

Also see the website of Kaizen Conservation Group for our research, members and latest publications.

I am also an affiliated researcher at the Centre for Biodiversity and Conservation Science.

Associate Professor Anthony Angwin is a speech pathologist conducting research on word learning and neurogenic communication disorders. In particular, his research interests are focussed upon the use of psycholinguistic and neuroimaging methodologies to investigate language processing and word learning in both healthy adults as well as people with Parkinson's disease, stroke and dementia.

Dr Stephan Atzert is Senior Lecturer in German Studies in the School of Languages and Cultures. To date Dr Atzert has contributed two monographs to the study of the reception of Schopenhauer's philosophy. His first book Schopenhauer in the works of Thomas Bernhard. The critical appropriation of Schopenhauer's philosophy in Thomas Bernhard's late novels was published in German in 1999 (Rombach). Since then, Dr Atzert contributes to the international scholarship on Schopenhauer with journal articles and book chapters, with a focus on Schopenhauer's role in the development of psychoanalysis and for the understanding of Buddhism in Europe. His second monograph in German In Schopenhauer's Shadow (Königshausen & Neumann 2015, 209 pp) investigates the role of Schopenhauer's philosophy in the writings of Friedrich Nietzsche, Paul Deussen and Sigmund Freud. At present (2019) he is developing a monograph on K.E. Neumann's reception of Schopenhauer in his translations of the Pali discourses into German.

Literary authors on which Dr Atzert possesses specialist expertise include Thomas Bernhard and Heiner Müller. Supervision interests other than those related to the areas of expertise referred to above include the work of Th. W. Adorno and the Frankfurt School, the German student movement and the Red Army Faction.

Lemi Baruh (Ph.D. University of Pennsylvania, Annenberg School for Communication, 2007) is a Senior Lecturer at the School of Communication and Arts at the University of Queensland. He is the co-founder of the Social Interaction and Media Lab at Koç University, Istanbul. His research spans various topics, including the effects of social media on interpersonal attraction, surveillance, online security, privacy in online environments, and the role of media in shaping public opinion. His recent work also investigates misinformation and conspiracy theories in the context of health communication, with a particular focus on the COVID-19 pandemic and the influence of news and social media on public perceptions and behaviors related to health.

Originally from the States, I've been lecturing at UQ since 2017. I teach Multimedia and Digital Project in the Bachelor of Communications, both of which center on embedding critical perspectives on media into creative and collaborative design and production processes. My research focuses on the relationship among gender, technological change and space. My methodological approaches combine textual analysis (looking at media content) with more industry-facing, hands-on approaches.

The current book projects turn to representations of gender violence in popular media. My second book, Representing Gender Violence in Contemporary Screen Media: Cutting Through the Park, is under contract with Routledge and it studies themes of surveillance technology in representations of stranger rape in television and film. My third book project, Feeling Safe: Gender Harm and Safety DIscourses in Platform Media, studies themes in gender safety discourses across various platforms including safety apps and dating apps.

My first book The Aesthetics of TV Nostalgia (Bloomsbury, 2019) is an industry study of the people designing sets and costumes for nostalgic US television programmes. I address how questions around gender play out on television alongside larger concerns around historical progress and regress that are attached to technological change. You can find my other publications in the areas of television representations of gender, the female body in narratives around nationhood, digital archives, and creative production in Adaptation, Television & New Media, Feminist Media Studies, Cinema Journal, Continuum, Surveillance & Society and Convergence.

Roland is Professor of International Relations and Coordinator of the Visual Politics Research Program. His research explores how images and emotions shape political phenomena, including humanitarianism, security, peacebuilding, protest movements and the conflict in Korea. Books include Visual Global Politics (Routledge, 2018); Aesthetics and World Politics (Palgrave, 2009/2012); Divided Korea: Toward a Culture of Reconciliation (University of Minnesota Press, 2005/2008) and Popular Dissent, Human Agency and Global Politics (CUP, 2000).

Roland’s main current research project is an interdisciplinary ARC Linkage collaboration (2022-2026) on The Politics and Ethics of Visualising Humanitarian Crises. The project involves eight researchers and the World Press Photo Foundation, the International Committee of the Red Cross, the Australian Red Cross and Médecins Sans Frontières.

Roland grew up in Zürich, Switzerland, where he was educated and worked as a lawyer. He studied international relations in Paris, Seoul, Toronto, Vancouver and Canberra. Roland also worked for two years in a Swiss diplomatic mission in the Korean DMZ and held visiting affiliations at Harvard, Cambridge, Humboldt, Tampere, Yonsei and Pusan National University as well as the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology and the Institute of Social Studies in The Hague. He is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Further informatin can be found on Roland''s personal website:

For an in-person or zoom appointment book here: https://calendly.com/bleiker

Selection of Recent Publications

“Decolonising Affect" Cooperation and Conflict (2024)

“Un-Disciplining the International” Alternatives: Local, Global, Political (2023)

"Visualizing International Relations” Journal of Visual Political Communication, 10,(2023

"Visual Violence" Interview with Brad Evans, Los Angeles Review of Books, 3 Jan 2022.

Lecturer in Strategic Communication at The University of Queensland’s School of Communication and Arts. PhD in Political Communication from The University of Queensland and MSc from the London School of Economic and Political Science (LSE). Long trajectory as a journalist, media relations and public affairs executive in Venezuela. Main areas of interest: political communication; strategic communication; populist communication; the mediatisation of politics and society; CGI/Virtual influencers and their impact on advocacy and PR; pandemic communication.

Selected articles

Block, E. and Negrine, R. (2017). The Populist Communication Style: Toward a Critical Framework. International Journal of Communication, 11(2017), 178-197

Block, E. (2013). A Culturalist Approach to the Concept of the Mediatization of Politics: The Age of ‘‘Media Hegemony’’”, 23(2013), 259-278

Book

Block, E. (2015). Political Communication and Leadership Mimetisation, Hugo Chavez and the Construction of Power and Identity. New York: Routledge

Sally Butler is a Reader in Art History.

Sally Butler took up the position as lecturer in Art History at the University of Queensland in 2004 after a period as Art History lecturer at the Australian National Univeristy in Canberra. Visual arts industry experience includes working for the Queensland Art Gallery and a number of freelance curating projects, and several years as Associate Editor of Australian Art Collector magazine and one of the edtiors for the Australia and New Zealand Journal of Art. Sally regularly writes for Australian visual arts magazines, maintaining a particular interest in contemporary Australian art, Australian indigenous art and new media art.

Research

Her research interests include cross-cultural critical theory, Australian Indigenous art, Australian contemporary art, photography and new media art. Current research includes: Indigenous art from Far North Queensland, Virtual Reality theory and photography, contemporary Queensland photography, and art and cultural tourism.

Nicholas Carah is Director of Digital Cultures & Societies in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences and Associate Professor in the School of Communication and Arts. He is an Associate Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for Automated Decision-Making and Society, and a Chief Investigator on ARC Discovery and Linkage projects. In 2023, they were Deputy Associate Dean (Research) in the Faculty of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences. Nicholas' research examines the algorithmic and participatory advertising model of digital media platforms, with a sustained focus on digital alcohol marketing. Nicholas is the author of Media and Society: Power, Platforms & Participation (2021), Brand Machines, Sensory Media and Calculative Culture (2016), Media and Society: production, content and participation (2015), Pop Brands: branding, popular music and young people (2010). And, co-editor of Digital Intimate Publics and Social Media (2018) and Conflict in My Outlook (2022). Nicholas is a Director and Deputy Chair of the Foundation for Alcohol Research and Education.

Professor David Carter's research interests include Australian literature and publishing history, cultural history, the history of the book, magazines and periodical studies, middlebrow cultures, and studies in modernity.

Professor Carter was Director of the Australian Studies Centre at the University of Queensland from 2001 to 2006, then Professor of Australian Literature and Cultural History in the School of Communication and Arts.

He is the author of Australian Books and Authors in the American Marketplace, 1840s-1940s (2018) with Roger Osborne, Almost Always Modern: Australian Print Cultures and Modernity (2013), Dispossession, Dreams and Diversity: Issues in Australian Studies (2006) and A Career in Writing: Judah Waten and the Cultural Politics of a Literary Career (1997), winner of the Walter McRae Russell Award for literary scholarship. His edited books include the co-edited Fields, Capitals, Habitus: Australian Culture, Inequalities and Social Divisions (2020); Making Books: Contemporary Australian Publishing (2007) with Anne Galligan; The Ideas Market: An Alternative Take on Australia's Intellectual Life (2004); Culture in Australia: Policies, Publics and Programs, with Tony Bennett (2001); and Outside the Book: Contemporary Essays on Literary Periodicals (1991).

He is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and Series Editor, Anthem Studies in Book History, Publishing and Print Culture, Anthem UK.

Professor Carter has extensive experience in teaching and developing programs in Australian Studies internationally. He was President of the International Australian Studies Association from 1997 to 2001; Manager of the Australian Studies in China program of the Australia-China Council (2002-16); a board member of the Australia-Japan Foundation (1998-2004); and Visiting Professor in Australian Studies at Tokyo University (2007-08 & 2016-17). He is a Board Member of the Foundation for Australian Studies in China.

Dr Chang's research interests lie in the fields of pragmatics, intercultural communication and business negotiation, with a focus on studying face, (im)politeness and humour. She is the author of face and face practices in Chinese talk-in-interactions: an empirical analysis of business interactions in Taiwan (2016, Equinox). She has also published a number of papers in edited volumes and international journals such as Journal of Pragmatics, Intercultural Pragmatics, International Review of Applied Linguistics in Language teaching, Journal of Politeness Research, Pragmatics, Multilingua, Lingua, and East Asian Pragmatics.

Her current research includes anaylsis of initial interactions in inter/intra-cultural settings and the role of humor in Australia-Chinese intercultural interactions.

Professor Ping Chen is Chair in Chinese Studies. His research interests include functional syntax, discourse analysis, semantics, pragmatics, sociolinguistics, and historical linguistics. His current research projects are related to information structure in Chinese, and uses of languages in present-day China.

He teaches in the areas of Chinese language and linguistics.

Dr. Ki Young Choi has been a researcher and educator in the field of Korean language, conducting research and teaching at universities in Korea, Thailand, and Australia since 2010. His key research interests include the critical analysis of Korean textbooks. Dr. Choi employs methods such as Critical Discourse Analysis (CDA) and Visual Image Analysis (VIA) to examine how ideologies, norms, and cultural values are represented in educational materials. His work significantly contributes to understanding and improving the quality of Korean language education internationally, aligning with broader efforts to promote Korean language and culture globally.

I am a classicist and a theatre and performance studies scholar, and am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and the Royal Historical Society. My area of expertise lies in the performance of Greek tragedy in contemporary theatre, and I am particularly interested in experimental, immersive, and postdramatic adaptations of tragic texts. My most recent research was supported through the Arts and Humanities Research Council in the UK, via a UKRI Innovation Fellowship titled Punchdrunk on the Classics. The research project built upon my prior work as academic consultant on Punchdrunk’s Kabeiroi (2017) and involved me going on secondment to Punchdrunk in a knowledge-exchange arrangement during which I worked as dramaturg on their production The Burnt City (2022-23). My monograph Punchdrunk on the Classics: Experiencing Immersion in The Burnt City and Beyond documented the intersection between immersion and ancient literature within the development and audience experience of the production, and was published with Palgrave Macmillan in 2023. My collaboration with Punchdrunk on The Burnt City was profiled in the New York Times here.

Other current research projects include an edited collection titled Experiencing Immersion in Antiquity and Modernity: From Narrative to Virtual Reality (Bloomsbury), a student edition of Euripides' Women of Troy for Methuen Drama, an invited chapter on dance, immersivity, and translation in Punchdrunk's The Burnt City and, together with Professor Chris Hay (Flinders University) a special issue of Contemporary Theatre Review on the theatre director Simon Stone.

My previous publications include the monograph Postdramatic Tragedies through the Classical Presences series at Oxford University Press (2019), and the co-edited collection Adapting Translation for the Stage (with Geraldine Brodie, for Routledge's Advances in Theatre and Performance Studies series, shortlisted for the 2019 TaPRA prize for editing). I have also published articles and chapters on Punchdrunk, Sarah Kane, Martin Crimp, and Katie Mitchell. My pieces for a general audience have appeared in popular publications including The Theatre Times, The Conversation, and Exeunt Magazine. Dictionary and encyclopedia entries include the 'drama, reception of' entry for the Oxford Classical Dictionary, and the 'Ancient Greek Drama in the Twentieth and Twenty-First Century' in the Methuen Drama Encyclopedia of Modern Theatre (2024).

I joined the University of Queensland in 2023. Prior to this, I worked at the University of Bristol from 2015-2023. Alongside academia, I work as a dramaturg and academic consultant on new writing and classical adaptation projects, and welcome contact from potential collaborators.

Dr Emma Crawford is an occupational therapist and researcher whose work centres on promoting wellbeing for infants, children, families and communities. Emma's primary focus is on cross-cultural projects that link with community organisations to create social change and reduce the impacts of disadvantage by supporting health enhancing environments and activities in early life. At the centre of Emma's work is the United Nations Sustainable Development Goal 3 - ensuring healthy lives and promoting wellbeing across all ages. Currently, Emma is leading several projects:

1) The BABI Project (research): refugee and asylum seeker families' expereinces during the perinatal period (systematic review, qualitative focus group and interview research)

2) The Uni-Friends program (student delivered service and student placement) - a social-emotional helth promotion program that draws on cultural responsiveness (The Making Connecitons Framework) and community development principles in an Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Community Controlled School

3) LUCIE-NDC (research) - mothers' experiences of accessing Neuroprotective-Developmental Care in the first 12 months of their infants' lives

Emma has a strong interest in understanding human experiences, community-driven initiatives, and strengths-based, innovative, evidence based, complex approaches to wellbeing that consider individuals and systems She also carries out research regarding allied health student placements in culturally diverse settings including low-middle income countries and Indigenous contexts. She works as a Lecturer at the University of Queensland, Australia after having worked in a range of occupational therapy roles including with children with autism, with asylum seekers, with Indigenous Australians with chronic disease, and completing her PhD in Political Science and International Studies in 2015.

I am an Associate Professor in the School of Languages and Cultures at UQ (since 2017), formerly assistant professor at the Centre for Applied English Studies (CAES), University of Hong Kong (since 2014). I hold an MA TESOL from the University of London and an M.Phil/Ph.D in applied linguistics from the University of Cambridge, UK.

My areas of research and supervisory expertise include corpus linguistics and the use of corpora for language learning (known as 'data-driven learning'), as well as computer-assisted language learning, and English for General and Specific Academic Purposes. I have published over 50 articles to date in many leading Q1 journals in the field of applied linguistics, 10+ book chapters, 4 books, 3 MOOCs, and several textbook series.

I am the Editor-in-Chief for the Australian Review of Applied Linguistics (from 2024). I am also currently serving on the editorial boards of the Q1 journals IRAL, Journal of Second Language Writing, Journal of English for Academic Purposes, and System, as well as Applied Corpus Linguistics, a new journal covering the direct applications of corpora to teaching and learning.

Dr Debashish Dev is an interdisciplinary researcher specializing in energy transition, communication, sustainable development, community engagement, and understanding social change processes. His work integrates social performance and regional development priorities of energy policies and initiatives, focusing on improving community participation and social acceptance.

Working at the UQ Gas and Energy Transition Research Centre, Dr Dev contributed to developing a participatory community-based monitoring framework for regional development in Northern Territory, Australia. Currently, he is working on implementing the framework in practice. In addition, his ongoing research engagement includes understanding social risks in coal seam gas waste management, public discourses in gas-related policies, the energy sector's contribution towards SDGs, energy-related social movements, and how energy information flows through the social systems.

Dr Dev's previous academic roles at the University of Queensland involved tutoring in courses- COMU2030: Communication Research Methods, COMU1130: Data & Society, HHSS6000: Research Design, and COMU7102: Communication for Social Change—Foundations. He was also involved in developing a course- QUT You 003: Real Action for Real Change, for the Faculty of Health, Queensland University of Technology, Australia, as a sessional academic. He previously researched and taught in Bangladesh, concentrating on agricultural extension, organization management, climate change adaptation, and gender dynamics. He holds a Bachelor's (Honours) in Agricultural Science (Bangladesh Agricultural University), a Master's in Agricultural Extension (Bangladesh Agricultural University), and a PhD in Climate and Development (UQ). He is certified in Carbon Literacy and is an Associate Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK). Dr Dev’s work bridges research with practical solutions, aiming to advance sustainable development through effective community engagement and participatory approaches.

I am originally from Buenos Aires, Argentina where I achieved a tertiary level degree as a teacher of English as a Foreign Language. In the year 2000, after completing these studies, I came to Australia as an international student to complete a BA (Hons) in Languages and Applied Linguistics. I then continued my postgraduate studies in the area of critical intercultural language pedagogy. For nearly two decades, I have been involved in teaching across Applied Linguistics, English, Italian and Spanish language programs in Australian higher education. I am a passionate languages and intercultural education scholar whose theoretical and empirical work centre on how insights from critical pedagogy and decolonial theories can help us un/re-learn the ways in which we engage with the world. In my teaching practice, I am committed to creating innovative and inclusive, liberatory learning experiences for language learners and fellow language educators to become critically aware of intersectional, power-bound dynamics in everyday interaction.