Faculty of Design and Society

Mona is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Architecture & Built Environment, Faculty of Design and Society, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. After completing her Master of Engineering Studies in Construction Management degree at the University of Auckland, New Zealand, she joined UTS in 2014 and has been involved in developing several subjects for the Bachelor of Construction Project Management course. Mona completed her PhD in Design Management at the University of Technology Sydney. In her PhD study, she developed a novel method for capturing interactions during design meetings in construction projects. Her research adopted a practice-based inter-organisational perspective to examine interdisciplinary collaboration in the detailed design phase of construction projects.

Mona researches circular economy approaches to fit-out construction waste, focusing on reducing waste, reusing materials, and improving collaboration across the commercial building sector. Her bushfire resilience work examines retrofitting measures for homes in rural Australia, assessing vulnerabilities to ember and smoke incursion. 

Mona is the Academic Lead for Women in Construction and Property, leading initiatives that support female students in Construction Management and Property Economics. In this role, she promotes inclusive learning environments and develops mentorship and professional development programs that empower women to pursue leadership pathways within the construction and property sectors.

Dr. Ishmael Adams' research focuses on the intersection of climate change, informal urbanisation, and sustainable built environment. He has over 18 years related industry and academic experience and holds Bachelor of Science and Master of Science degrees in urban and regional planning. He also graduated with a Doctor of Philosophy in Built Environment from UTS and holds a couple of certificates in project management. 

Ishmael's research has been published in high impact journals including Local Environment, Sustainability, Construction Economics and Building, and Climate. He also actively engages as a peer reviewer for esteemed journals including Cities, Journal of Environmental Planning and Management, Urban Ecosystems, Environmental Science & Policy, Discover Sustainability, Sustainable Communities, Discover Cities, City and Environment Interactions, Journal of Building Engineering, and Journal of Building Design and Environment, contributing to the scholarly discourse in his areas of expertise. At UTS, Ishmael has played varied roles including subject coordination, lecturing, tutoring, marking and research assistance since 2017. He has been involved in teaching or marking and or coordination of subjects such as Development Negotiation and Community Engagement, Urban Economics and Infrastructure Funding, Minor Research Project, Major Research Project and Urban Renewal in the Master of Planning course.

Annie has an extensive career in education, spanning K–12 and higher education, and now specialises in initial teacher education and postgraduate learning. Her research focuses on the intersection of technology, pedagogy, and learning design, with particular emphasis on digital agency, transdisciplinary learning, and the evolving digital ecology in education. She investigates how technological advancements shape teaching and learning, enabling new modes of connection and deeper engagement. Her work also considers the implications of digital agency for educators and students, addressing how technology fosters autonomy, critical engagement, and innovative pedagogical practices.

Dr Evangeline Aguas (she/her) is a Lecturer in Digital and Social Media at the University of Technology Sydney, Australia.

Evangeline's research explores queer theory, gender and sexuality, fan cultures and media studies. She is passionate about shedding light on and uplifting the voices of underrepresentated and marginalised groups in scholarship.

Prior to academia, Evangeline worked as a freelancer in television advertising, working on international and national campaigns for McDonald’s, Fedex, and the Australian Air Force. Her extensive production experience has led to a particular interest in how film and web media can be utilised to further disseminate research beyond the academy.

Evangeline's recent book, Queer Interruptions: Temporality in Femslash Fandom (2025, Palgrave Macmillan) was inspired by fan reactions to the death of a popular lesbian character on the television series The 100 (2014–2020). It explores the experiences of queer female and genderqueer fans through interviews and an original online documentary, 'Queer Interruptions' (queerinterruptions.com). The creative work has also been presented at several international conferences: 'Archives of Desire: Transformative Fandom and Queer Memory - Affects' Seminar Series hosted by the Rothermere American Institute, University of Oxford, UK (2022); and the Fan Studies Network North America Conference (2021).

Graham Akhurst is an Aboriginal writer and academic hailing from the Kokomini of Northern Queensland. His research sits in the discipline of Creative Writing, Australian Literature, and Australian Publishing Studies. Graham is currently the Director of Indigenous Studies and a Senior Lecturer of Indigenous Australian Studies and Creative Writing in the Faculty of Design and Society. Graham was a finalist in the 2024 NAIDOC Awards in the catagory of Creative of the Year. His debut novel Borderland was published in October 2023 by The University of Western Australia Press and recieved the following accolades:

2025 Finalist NSW Literary Awards. Glenda Adams Award for New Writing for Borderland. 

2024 Finalist for Work of State Significance QLD Literary Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist for Young Adult Book of the Year QLD Literary Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist for Best Horror Book of the Year Aurealis Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist Best YA Book of the Year Aurealis Awards for Borderland.

2024 Finalist Adaptable Program Queensland Writers Centre.

2024 Children’s Book Council of Australia ‘Notable’ book for Borderland. 

Graham's research has been published as a book chapter in Indigenous Postgraduate Education: Intercultural Perspectives, and has articles in The Australian Journal of Indigenous Education, and Artlines. He is a contributing editor at Kweli Journal, New York City. He is a board member of The Sydney Review of Books and Varuna. He has published creatively in Kweli and J Journal for fiction, Mascara Literary Review and Westerly for creative non-fiction, and the Australian Book Review, Cordite, VerityLa, Off the Coast (Maine America), Red Ink (Arizona State University Press), Australian Poetry Journal, Artlines, Meanjin, and Island Magazine for poetry. His short story ‘Staffy’ was nominated for the 2022 PEN Dau Award, Best American Short Stories, O. Henry Prize, and Pushcart Prize. He was the poet of the week for the Australian Book Review in early April 2016. Graham has been a featured reader at the Queensland Poetry Festival, Clancestry, Woodford Folk Festival, UQ Art Museum, Queensland Art Gallery, Ruckus Slam, Dark Mofo, Sydney Writers Festival, Perth Writers Festival, Byron Writers Festival, Scribblers Festival, Brisbane Writers Festival, Singapore Writers Festival and Dhaka Literary Festival and the American Australian Association Arts Gala (2019) amoung many others. He was a participant of the Australia Council for the Arts Future Leaders Program in 2018. Graham was a participant on the Aurora International Study Tour in 2015. He was valedictorian of his graduating year at The University of Queensland (2014) and completed his writing honours with a first-class result at UQ (2015). He has an MPhil in Creative Writing from UQ funded by an APA scholarship (2019), and is a current PhD candidate at The University of Sydney. Graham has previously been a faculty member at The University of Queensland, teaching Indigenous Studies. He was named the first Indigenous recipient of the Fulbright W.G Walker Award as the highest-ranked postgraduate Australian applicant. The Fulbright Award funded his studies at Hunter College, CUNY, where he was awarded an MFA in Fiction (2021). He also received the Nomad Two Worlds Foundation Indigenous Arts Scholarship from the American Australian Association and a second Australia Council of the Arts Grant for Professional Development. He is also the recipient of a Roberta Sykes Scholarship, the Ian Potter Cultural Foundation Scholarship, and a Creative Writing Scholarship from Hunter College.

Isabella Alevato is a design researcher in the Material Ecologies Design Lab at the University of Technology Sydney, specialising in next-generation alternatives to animal- and fossil-based materials. Her research integrates sustainable design practices and consumer perception to explore the development and adoption of regenerative materials. During her PhD at the University of Technology Sydney, she developed KYMERA FUR, a regenerative material designed to translate both the physical and abstract qualities of animal-based fur by combining bacterial cellulose and hemp fibre. Her research contributes to more sustainable material systems, with a focus on sustainable manufacturing and circular economy principles.

Dr Penny Allan, Professor of Landscape Architecture at UTS teaches and researches in the areas of urban and regional resilience and design. As landscape director at the NSW Government Architects office Penny designed the Master Plan for Victoria Park in Zetland in 1999, the first water sensitive urban design urban development in Australia. Her most recent research explores new paradigms for resilience and adaptation to climate change for coastal communities affected by fire and flood. She is currently investigating the potential for the Chain of Ponds landscape system to mitigate heat and flooding on the Cumberland Plain, exploring the challenges for NSW coastal ICOLLS (intermittently closed and open lakes or lagoons) faced with the impacts of urbanisation and climate change; and mapping and making stories to support a catchment-wide collaborative governance approach  to water health in the Richmond River catchment, Northern Rivers NSW.

Penny has received seven national research and planning awards, most recently the AILA National Award of Excellence for two short films, shown at the 2021 Venice Biennale, about climate change in Australia — ‘Living with Fire’ and the ‘Value of Water’. 

Karyne Ang is academically affiliated with the Faculty of Engineering and Information Technology (FEIT) and Faculty of Design, Architecture and Building (DAB) at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS), Australia. She recently moved from her role as a postdoctoral research fellow at the UTS Robotics Institute on human-robot teams through a sociotechnical systems perspective. Her core research interest areas are inter-disciplinary in nature – project portfolio management, organizational learning, stakeholder value management and decision-making in complex environments. Karyne is a multi methods researcher with a curiosity for organizational development, learning & knowledge co-creation, collaboration and decision-making practices. She complements her research with her work in facilitating industry and stakeholder engagement, and has also conducted research projects pertaining to learning experiences in higher education across multiple faculties – Science, Law, Engineering and Information Technology - about student resilience (Law), constructivism, serious games, feedback management (IS/IT) and research on the impacts of prior knowledge on students' current and expected performance (Nursing/Allied Health Sciences). In the teaching realm, Karyne teaches and mentors postgraduate students to project manage their candidatures, and dabbles in project governance and leadership education. She was the Production Manager of the PMRP journal (Project Management Research and Practice). 

Karyne has a industry background in business, marketing and research, coaching, learning and development. Through her 15 years’ experience leading high performance teams in consumer insights research and brand management in Australia, New Zealand and Malaysia, Karyne developed and directed multiple client-based research project portfolios encompassing NPD, strategic brand management, consumer behaviour and market segmentation research project portfolios. Karyne holds a Master of Education (Organization Learning) from UTS and a Bachelor of Business Administration (Marketing & IT) from RMIT in Melbourne, Australia.

Her PhD research explored multi-stakeholder perspectives of value in project portfolios. This pragmatic combination of hands-on industry and academic experiences brings an interesting contribution to her research through practical and theoretical understanding of teams, projects, management and organizational issues. Her postdoctoral research explored sociotechnical systems in human robot teams

and addressed human-robot collaboration, communication, stakeholders and sociotechnical readiness in design and development of HRT systems.

Her research about multiple perspectives of value could contribute future opportunities for optimising relevant value constructs and multi-stakeholder relationships in multi-project and portfolios environments in different sectors. Karyne Ang has been awarded the UTS Research Excellence Scholarship for her PhD studies in project portfolio management at the School of Systems, Management and Leadership at FEIT.

Karyne’s research has been presented in several conferences in Warsaw, London and Paris, and has already been published in several journals. She was also a visiting researcher at Webster University in Vienna, Austria in 2016 and has recently been involved in megaproject research with Prof. P. Eskerod (Webster University, Vienna, Austria), and Prof. Per Svejvig (Aarhus University, Denmark).

She completed her PhD with the support of the UTS: Research Excellence Scholarships. These are offered each year to selected highly ranked commencing doctoral students. This comprises an Australian Postgraduate Award (APA) plus a UTS top up.

Aletheia Araneta is a Filipino educator and researcher working at the University of the Philippines Los Baños. She is currently taking up her Phd at the University of Technology Sydney under the the supervision of Dr. Kate Delmo and Dr. Belinda Middleweek from the Faculty of Design and Society.

Paul Ashton is Adjunct Professor of Public History at UTS; was founding Co-Director of both the Australian Centre for Public History and the centre for Creative Practice and Cultural Economy; and Director of UTS Shopfront from 2002-2015, a unit that continues to work with community groups. His publications include What is Public History Globally? (Bloomsbury 2019), Making Histories (de Gruyter 2020), The Australian History Industry (ASP 2022) and editor of the bicentennial history Walking a Tightrope: Milestones and Moments in the History of NSW Treasury (NSW Treasury 2024). He is also founding co-editor of the journal Public History Review (1992-2024) and editorial chair of the university-community engagement journal Gateways. From 2022, Halstead Press began publishing his children's history book series Accidental Histories.

Professor Monica Attard OAM spent 30 years at the ABC, working across radio and television. Monica holds a Bachelor of Arts, Bachelor of Law, Order of Australia for services to journalism and is the winner of 5 Walkley Awards for excellence in journalism (including gold).

She is best-known for hosting some of the ABC's flagship programs, including PM, The World Today and Media Watch, and being a reporter and foreign correspondent for AM. A journalist for 40 years, she has also been a TV and radio reporter, including for Four Corners and Lateline, a foreign correspondent and was the foundation editor of the website, The Global Mail. 

She was the ABC’s Russia correspondent and reported on the coup against Mikhail Gorbachev, the collapse of Soviet communism, the rise of Boris Yeltsin and his brand of capitalism and democracy, the first Chechen war and she covered civil wars across the old Soviet Union. Four years of covering the revolution left her with just enough energy to pump out a book about the events – Russia, Which Way Paradise? 

Monica was recently the head of journalism at Macleay College in Sydney and Melbourne. She has been head of journalism at UTS, and is currently co director of the UTS Centre for Media Transition, a cross disciplinary research centre investigating journalism best practice, regulatory adaptation, information disorder and news media business models. Her recent publications include reports on regional news media in Australia, generative AI and its impact on public interest journalism and the Australian News Media Bargaining Code.