DrPaola Eiras

CURRENT PROJECTS:

 

1) School of Communication and Social Sciences - Global citizenship in pratice: perspectives from international and domestic students 

Role: Chief Investigator:  (Jun-2025 to Dec- 2026)

(Ethical approval: ETH25-11238)

Recipient of FDS Research Support Scheme Funding 0201259/ 2026)

Dr Jytte Holmqvist - Research Assistant

 

This project examines how higher education students participating in global exchange programs understand, experience, and enact global citizenship, with a dual aim of enhancing the quality of international student experiences and critically interrogating how both international and domestic students conceptualise global citizenship locally and internationally. Focusing on two cohorts, international students undertaking exchange in Australia, and domestic students participating in the Global Exchange program abroad, the study asks what “global citizenship” means to students, how it is practised during experiences abroad, what factors enable or constrain its exercise, and how students’ cultural identities shape their engagement with the world. Responding to critiques that global citizenship is often framed through vague, institutionalised, and policy-driven discourse, this research recentres student voices and lived experience. In doing so, it challenges normative definitions and contributes to the decolonisation and democratisation of global citizenship by foregrounding plural, situated, and student-defined understandings.

 

Conceptually, the project moves the debate from discourse to practice by examining global citizenship as praxis; how it is performed, negotiated, or resisted within specific cultural, institutional, and geopolitical contexts. It also adopts a critical lens to uncover the structural conditions shaping students’ experiences, including mobility privilege, linguistic capital, institutional gatekeeping, and practices of inclusion and exclusion that complicate celebratory narratives of internationalisation. Through critical discourse analysis, the project offers an original contribution to scholarship on student mobility, identity, and citizenship, while providing evidence-based insights to inform more equitable, student-centred approaches to global learning in higher education.

 

Identifiers:  Internationalisation of higher education (HE); Sociology of HE; Transcultural spaces and communication; Interdisciplinary methodological approaches; Identities.

 

Updates: preliminary findings presented in the 2nd Global Conference on Qualitative Research, 07 Sept 2026

Manuscript under review Journal of Studies in International Education

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3) School of Communication and Social Sciences - Online teaching and learning presence - student experiences

Role: Chief Investigator:  (Jun-2025 to Dec- 2026) (ethical approval: ETH25-11329)

 

 

This research investigates the question: How does online teaching presence affect student experiences of self-paced online learning? Responding to the rapid expansion of digital education, the project addresses a significant gap in the literature by centring the experiences of postgraduate and adult learners; cohorts that are increasingly represented in self-paced online programs yet remain underexplored in research. The study aims to generate insights that are directly relevant to higher education leaders, instructional designers, and academics seeking to design rigorous, supportive, and sustainable online learning environments that promote both academic success and learner wellbeing.

 

Conceptually, the project reframes teaching presence as a multidimensional construct encompassing affective, cognitive, and relational dimensions, rather than viewing it as a purely transactional feature of online instruction. By doing so, it advances a more empathetic and student-centred understanding of online pedagogy, particularly in asynchronous contexts where real-time interaction is limited. This approach challenges narrow interpretations of presence as instructor visibility or availability and instead foregrounds how presence is felt, perceived, and interpreted by learners. By adopting a constructivist–interpretivist tradition, primary data will be drawn from anonymous qualitative responses collected through Student Feedback Surveys (SFS) administered in fully online postgraduate subjects across three consecutive study periods and interviews to provide rich, reflective accounts of students’ learning experiences, perceptions of teaching presence, and the forms of support and guidance encountered in a self-paced format. Findings will be interpreted through teaching presence theory (Garrison et al., 2000) and the notion of “being there” in virtual environments (Lehman et al., 2010). Overall, this research makes an original contribution by deepening theoretical and practical understandings of teaching presence in self-paced online learning and informing more human-centred approaches to online education.

 

 

Identifiers:  Online pedagody; diverse student; epistemologies of T&L; student learning experiences

 

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Interdisciplinary research and Community Engagement

 

With strong foundations in biomedical terminology and clinical research protocols, I collaborate on projects with health professionals that incorporate qualitative research approaches (e.g., semi-structured interviews, focus groups, discourse and thematic analysis, phenomenology, and ethnographic methods) and patient-facing communications in intercultural settings.

 

I have experience working with culturally diverse and potentially vulnerable populations, including groups defined by gender, sexuality, disability, socioeconomic status, health conditions, disaster-related contexts, and religious, ethnic, and linguistic backgrounds. 

 

 

AllClear - Garvan Institute of Medical Research (2025 -2030 - NBCF Collaborative Accelerator Grant)

Role: Patient Advocacy and Advisory Group Member (PAAG)

 

AllClear is an ambitious research program, led by Garvan, which focuses on the cells that cause breast cancer relapse. Its long-term goal is to prevent relapse and reduce deaths from this disease and aims to give breast cancer patients the ‘all clear’ that their cancer will not return.

 

My role includes advising on the development of strategic and operational plans; guiding the expansion of the program to include regional, rural, remote, and culturally diverse populations (including Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities) (inclusion and diversity); reviewing study protocols, patient information, and consent forms to ensure language is respectful, culturally sensitive, and clear (protocol review); advising on the ethical implications of research, particularly regarding Aboriginal health and AHMRC approvals (research ethics); and acting as a bridge to consumer networks to promote education, recruitment, and information sharing (community engagement).