DrBelinda Middleweek

Belinda Middleweek has extensive curriculum development, leadership and teaching experience across media studies and journalism studies, both at undergraduate and postgraduate levels. She has received numerous awards and citations for her teaching, including the Dean’s Teaching and Learning Award in 2024 for “Embedding of the Indigenous Graduate Attribute related to developing Professional Capabilities to work with and for Indigenous Australians” and the Dean’s Teaching and Learning Award for “Integrating research theory and practice into the new media studies sub-major” in 2013. She has been the Teaching and Learning Lead for Journalism since 2020, successfully leading the discipline through two reaccreditation processes, and in 2021 was named a “pedagogical leader” in the discipline.

In 2008, Belinda was appointed a post-doctoral position at the University of Sydney to lead research on the year-long, tri-faculty project, “Systematising Quality Enhancement and Assurance Processes to Better Support Student Learning” that involved a peer observation of teaching initiative. 

TEACHING AREAS:

Current
News Now (for Undergraduate students)

Professional Project (for Undergraduate students)

Past

Journalism Major Project (for postgraduate students)

Entrepreneurial Journalism (for postgraduate students)
Narrative Multimedia Journalism (for undergraduate students)

Live Action! Multiplatform Journalism (for undergraduate students)

The Hive (for undergraduate students)

Media Power (for undergraduate students)

Investigating Media, Reflective Practices (for undergraduate students)

Audiences, Users, Publics, Communities (for undergraduate students)

Media, Mediation and Power (for undergraduate students)
Citizenship and Communication (for undergraduate students)
Australian Media Studies (for undergraduate students)
Modern Rhetoric (for undergraduate students)

Systemic Functional Linguistics (for undergraduate students)

AWARDS

2024: FASS Teaching and Learning Awards for 'Embedding of the Indigenous Graduate Attribute related to developing Professional Capabilities to work with and for Indigenous Australians'

2023: End of Year Heroic Awards for 'Outstanding Contribution' 

2013: FASS Teaching and Learning Awards for 'Integrating Research Theory and Practice into the new Media Studies sub-major' - joint recipient

HDR SUPERVISION

5 successful HDR completions since 2018; 2 full-time ongoing and 1 part-time ongoing.

1.        2025+ (as co-supervisor) PhD, Aletheia Araneta, Comparative analysis of social media use and practice among selected Philippine and Australian media organisations in reporting natural hazards-induced disasters.

2.        2024+ (as co-supervisor) PhD, Jacqueline Park, Learning from experience: How women-led news startups are rethinking everything.

3.        2022 (as co-supervisor) PhD, Imran Firdaus, Gaspar Noé: A Poetics of Transgression (COMPLETED)

4.        2022 (as principal supervisor) Hons, Lucy Tassell, Control and Couture: comparing Sydney newspaper coverage of Tanya Plibersek and Michaelia Cash in the post #MeToo media landscape (COMPLETED – UNIVERSITY MEDAL)

5.        2020 (as co-supervisor) PhD, Shan Huang, Gender, Place and Inequality: A Case Study of Media Institutions in a Small Chinese City (COMPLETED)

6.        2020 (as principal supervisor) Hons, Melanie Canosa, ’Ni Una Menos’ (Not another woman less): the translation of online to offline feminist activism in Argentina (COMPLETED)

7.        2018 (as principal supervisor) Hons, Vanessa Papastavros, How does the representation of 'deviant' motherhood differ in Eastern and Western animated films? A content analysis of two leading female antagonists (COMPLETED – UNIVERSITY MEDAL).