Social and Political Sciences Discipline

Lai-Ha Chan is an International Relations scholar specialising in global governance and Indo-Pacific politics. She is a Senior Lecturer in the Social and Political Sciences Program, School of Communication and Social Sciences, and a Research Associate at the Australia-China Relations Institute (ACRI), University of Technology Sydney. She was a Fung Global Fellow (2016-2017) at the Princeton Institute for International and Regional Studies, Princeton University, New Jersey; a Japan Foundation Indo-Pacific Research Fellow (2025-26); and a Senior Visiting Fellow at Ritsumeikan University (2025-2026), Kyoto and Osaka, Japan. 

Her research examines the politics of global governance, with particular interest in deep-sea mining governance, critical minerals, China-US strategic competition, and middle-power diplomacy and minilateralism in the Indo-Pacific. 

Selected Research publications (2026): 

• Lai-Ha Chan & Pak K. Lee (2026). Who Governs Deep-Sea Mining? A Battle Between Global Governance and National Governance. Cambridge Unviersity Press, Cambridge Elements in Earth System Governance. 
  • Watch the accompanying video: Who Governs Deep-Sea Mining? 
• Pak K. Lee & Lai-Ha Chan (2026). "The Limits of Autocratic Collaboration in Stabilizing Spheres of Influence: Legitimacy in the China-Pakistan Economic Corridor," Global Studies Quarterly, Vol.6, Issue 2 (Open Access) 

Policy & Public Commentary (2026)

• Lai-Ha Chan (2026). "Recalibrating Ties with the US: Australia's Autonomous Middle Power Ambitions," Italian Institute for International Political Studies Dossier, 9 July. 
• Lai-Ha Chan (2026). "In Forum USA250: The Future of the Liberal International Order in the Indo-Pacific - Middle Power in a World of 'Bullying' Great Powers," 9Dashline, 1 July. 
• Lai-Ha Chan (2026). "Beyond Hedging: Australia and Middle Power Diplomacy in the Age of Trump 2.0," Australia-China Relations Institute, 29 May. 
• Lai-Ha Chan (2026). "How Japan's Prime Minister Hijacked A Deep-Sea Rare-Earth Exploration," E-International Relations, 27 February.  

In 2026, Dr Chan led the successful application for the University of Techonlogy Sydney to obtain observer status at the International Seabed Authority (ISA). This achievement enables UTS researchers to participate in ISA Council and Assembly meetings and engage directly with international discussions on the governance of deep-sea mining. 

Dr Chan is an Executive Editor of International Relations of the Asia-Pacific (IRAP), a leading Q1 journal published by Oxford University Press. She is also the co-convenor of the Asia Pacific Research Group within the Faculty of Design and Society at UTS. 

I am a historian and public commentator based at the Australian Centre for Public History at UTS. My recent book, Making Australian History, was published by Penguin in 2022 and was longlisted for a Walkley Award and an NIB Literary Award. I'm also the creator of the successful podcast for primary schools, Hey History!

Across my career, I have written and co-edited several works of history: with Stuart Macintyre I co-wrote the History Wars in 2003, which was awarded the NSW Premier's Prize for Australian History and the Queensland Premier's Prize for Best Literary or Media Work Advancing Public Debate. My PhD thesis, Teaching the Nation, was published by Melbourne University Press in 2006 and examines debates about teaching Australian history in schools. Follow up research, History's Children: History Wars in the Classroom (New South, 2008), used interviews with 250 history teachers, students and curriculum officials from around Australia to explore Australian history teaching in school. I have also written two history books for children, Convicted! and Explored!

My book, Private Lives, Public History, used interviews with 100 Australians from around the country to consider and include their thoughts on history alongside public and political discussions about the past and was published by Melbourne University Press. And reflecting my love of fish and fishing, I have also written a history of fishing in Australia, titled The Catch: The Story of Fishing in Australia.

My teaching interests range across Australian history and historiography, including contests over the past, oral history, history education, memory studies, and public history.

Lucy Fiske is Associate Professor in Social and Political Sciences at UTS. She was previously a Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, Cosmopolitan Civil Societies, and before that held lectureships at the Centre for Human Rights Education at Curtin University in Perth and the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies at Sydney University.

Lucy comes to academia from a background of direct social work practice primarily with refugees and asylum seekers. Lucy’s practice experience continues to ground and shape her research and teaching, particularly in approaching issues of justice and rights from the perspective of people’s lived experiences and in conducting impact-oriented research.

Lucy is interested in a wide range of human rights related topics with a particular focus on refugees and asylum seekers. For the last ten years, Lucy has been working with a community of refugees in prolonged 'transit' in Indonesia, observing their strategies and practices through the vicissitudes of life without rights. These observations have lead to papers on: citizenship as a social practice, social and cultural transformations through displacement, transformation of lost time into migration capital, education and human rights, and friendship as a challenge to state power. She has also published on Australian refugee politics and policies, on immigration detention, asylum processes, human rights and community development. She is the author of Human Rights, Refugee Protest and Immigration Detention (Palgrave, 2016) and co-editor of Rethinking Transitional Gender Justice: Transformative Approaches in Post-Conflict Settings (Palgrave, 2019).

Lucy previously worked with Prof Rita Shackel (Sydney Law School) and Action Aid on an Australian Aid (ADRAS) funded project exploring women’s experiences of transitional justice following mass violence in Kenya, northern Uganda and the DRC (2013 - 2016).

Lucy is Course Coordinator (Head of Teaching and Learning) for the Social and Political Sciences major within the Bachelor of Communications degree and Research Integrity Advisor for FDS. She serves on the editorial board of Sociological Perspectives on Human Rights and Development (Anthem Press) and on the board of Cisarua Learning Ltd, a registered Australian charity supporting refugee lead initiatives in Indonesia and Thailand.

Lucy is project leader of the UTS-LBW Trust Refugee Teacher Training program, and Chief Investigator on Refugee Suicide Prevention in Indonesia: Individual and Contextual Analysis with A/Prof Mary Anne Kenny (Murdoch), A/Prof Anthea Vogl (UTS), Prof Nicholas Procter (Adelaide), Dr Realisa Massardi (Gadjah Mada) and Muzafar Ali (Cisarua Learning).

Sally is a public health academic with a strong focus on learning and teaching scholarship in Aboriginal health and wellbeing. Born in Gadi, Sydney, Sally estimates that her ancestors arrived here about six generations ago, including from England, Denmark and Ireland. This means that throughout her life Sally has benefitted directly from being a settler coloniser of these lands and waters.

Sally has worked as a lecturer and researcher in the academy for fifteen years, most recently as part of the Indigenous Studies discipline in the Faculty of Design and Society (formerly CAIK - the Centre for the Advancement of Indigenous Knowledges), where she works as Subject Coordinator of Aboriginal Sydney Now as well as contributing to the group's microcredential offering. Sally also has a continuing relationship with Girra Maa Indigenous Health Discipline in the School of Public Health, where she continues to tutor in Indigenous health, and is a co-writer of the Faculty of Health's professional development course Ngalaya Indigenous Professional Development Foundation. 

Prior to these appointments Sally held research and teaching roles with School of Public Health, UTS, and was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow with the Office of the PVC - Health, Medicine and Wellbeing, University of Newcastle. Sally has a Master of Public Health (UNSW), a Graduate Certificate in University Learning and Teaching (UNSW) and a Doctor of Public Health (UNSW). 

As a practitioner-researcher, Sally's focus has been on Indigenous health education, in particular empowerment skills development among postgraduate students of Indigenous public health electives. Her doctorate illuminated change in students who learn about Aboriginal health, and emerged from Sally's experience at part of the team at Muru Marri (UNSW), working with Aboriginal Elders, scholars and community members to educate culturally capable health and social care professionals to prepare them as leaders in shaping a health care system that is culturally safe for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. Sally has been since applied these learnings in working alongside the Girra Maa team to develop and refine their Indigenous health offering within the Bachelor of Public Health and more recently in the development of professional development coursework and the undertaking a major uplift of Aboriginal Sydney Now.

Sally's also has a deep scholarly appreciation of multi-level empowerment and healing, which she able to apply during her Postdoctoral Fellowship on a project investigating throughcare for young Aboriginal women exiting the criminal legal system. Sally's insights into trauma aware healing informed approaches are informed by her long term involvement on the committee and as President of the NSW specialist homelessness service for young women and girls, the Lillian Howell Project. 

Sally's research and teaching seeks to actively contribute to the reconfiguration of structurally embedded power relations that continue to oppress Australia's First Peoples through scholarship that illuminates the potential for students to develop their emotional skills and cultural humility through critical self-reflection. In this endeavour, Sally is now highly focussed on the opportunities afforded by the embedding of cultural safety in health professional accreditation.

In doing this work, Sally is mentored and draws strength from own relationships and reciprocal obligations to families and communities across Australia. She also draws from various leadership roles she has held in community organisations seeking treaty and social justice for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples, through which she has witnessed first hand the importance of workforce development, particularly in relation to actively and respectfully listening to and honouring the voices of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples. This has involved first hand experience delivering adult education and facilitating participatory governance approaches which have shaped Sally's overall approach. Her strong ethic of collaboration also draws from her first career in film editing and video production.

Sally is very grateful for the opportunity to contribute as part of the UTS family and to the field of Indigenous health education and Indigenous studies guided by First Nations leadership.

Mark works as a sociologist in the discipline of Social and Political Sciences, School of Communication, Faculty of Design and Society. His current research is focused upon two related areas.

The first area investigates processes of deindustrialisation, the emergence and configurations of service economies, and develops a critique of the shifting forms of managerial discipline and measure of labour.  My first book based on this research, Motivations for Refusal: Labour, Value and the Limits of Postworkerism, is published with Brill (hardcover 2025) and Haymarket (paperback in 2026). 

The second area investigates processes of deindustrialisation, working-class environmentalism, and the class composition of contemporary climate movements. The research currently focuses upon the WHS campaigns of workers in high emission industries as a mode of environmental politics, and looks to identify how 'class' and 'community' movements come together in deindustrialised regions of Australia, such as the Illawarra. 

Fran Grant is a Yuin woman, and her Aboriginal family comes from the NSW South Coast. She holds a Bachelor of Education (Early Childhood Education) and a Master of Strategic Communication. She has recently accepted a new role as a full time Lecturer at UTS – School of Communication. In the past, she has spent more than twenty-two years cumulatively working in the airline industry. Fran was previously employed at QANTAS where she was a Customer Service Agent and additionally was the Chairperson of the company’s Indigenous Working Group - Daramu. At QANTAS Fran oversaw a number of projects that were linked to First Nations Peoples perspectives and aligned with the Inclusion and Diversity Strategy of the business. She has previously been employed at Virgin Australia where she was deeply involved in developing Virgin Australia’s inaugural Reconciliation Action Plan (RAP).

She is a current, accredited, Classroom Teacher and was a targeted Indigenous Scholar during her study at Macquarie University, through the NSW Department of Education Scholarships program. Fran also works in an ongoing casual role in an undergraduate degree program at UTS and as a Cultural Consultant with Fire and Rescue NSW and other organisations. She has been instrumental in codesigning and developing an educational program with the Rona Tranby Foundation focused on Aboriginal men who went to WWI as Lighthorsemen in collaboration with the descendants of these brave warriors.

Fran is an author and has written several scholarly publications and one creative publication. She is a member of Gidget Foundation First Nations Working Group, and the Waverley College Advisory Council and RAP Working Group. In her work and life, Fran has a focus on equity and positive outcomes in the areas of First Nations Peoples Health, Education, Employment (including recruitment and retention/engagement) and Incarceration rates, particularly lowering the number for young First Nations women who are in the justice system across the nation.  With a dream of true reconciliation, and as the child of a Stolen Child, Fran continues her gentle journey with continuous effort towards a better understanding of the rich culture and history of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Peoples.

Dr Elizabeth Humphrys is a political economist of labour and work, and the Head of Discipline of Social and Political Sciences at UTS. She researches the impact of economic crisis and climate change on workers, and control within the labour process. Elizabeth takes a multidisciplinary approach, drawing also on sociology and history, to seek ways to make work safer and more equitable.

Elizabeth's current and recent projects have investigated: climate change and workers' health and safety; impacts of neoliberalism on labour; industrial and social contexts of hi vis clothing in Australia; experiences of disabled professional workers; and, the 1970 West Gate Bridge disaster. Her book, How Labour Built Neoliberalism, was described in the Sydney Review of Books as a ‘tremendously important’ contribution to understanding economic change in Australia’s recent past.

Since joining UTS in 2016 Elizabeth has designed and taught subjects on the future of work and global political economy in the School of Communication, and overseen industry placements in the final year of the Social and Political Sciences degree. She has also taught in the Bachelor of Communications core and electives curriculum, to students in many disciplines, on Australian history, digital literacies and inclusive citizenship. 

Elizabeth is an Editor of the Q1 journal Social Movement Studies, and an Associate Editor of Economic & Labour Relations Review, and an Associate of the independent policy think tank the Centre for Future Work. The UTS Research Groups she participates in are: the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC); the Australian Centre for Public History (ACPH); and, the Disability Research Network. 

Dr. Mwithia is a lecturer in the School of Communication at the University of Technology

Sydney (UTS), Australia. She holds a Ph.D. in communication from UTS. She has over 15

years’ experience teaching in institutions of higher learning and doing research. Jesica is an

avid qualitative researcher. She is adept with interpretivist, discourse analysis, and

phenomenological study approaches. She has a keen interest in participatory research

designs that emphasize the co-creation of knowledge with the study participants and

consequently amplify the voices of study participants. This includes photovoice She is a

2021 research fellow of the African Peacebuilding Network (APN) under the Social Science

Research Council (SSRC) funded by Carnegie Corporation of New York. Under this fellowship,

she used a qualitative research approach to analyze the phenomenon of othering in Kenya’s

political discourses in the run-up to the 2022 elections. Before joining academia, Mwithia

worked with non-governmental organizations. Mwithia’s research interests cut across

different sub-disciplines of strategic communication. They include communication

technologies and society, corporate communication, she has supervised 5 Ph.D.

students to completion and 10 master’s students.

Research Interests:

• Communication and Communication Technologies in Social Change
• Development Communication
• Health Communication
• Political Communication

Dr Olga Oleinikova is an Associate Professor of Migration and Director of the Global Institute of Emerging Human Mobilties (GIEHM) at the School of Communication and Social Sciences, University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. She is known internationally for her work in migration governance, forced displacement, and democracy - in particular the intersection of the three with her work on Ukrainian migration, war-driven displacement, and emerging forms of human mobility such as climate and reproductive mobility. She has been named among Forbes Top 40 Global Ukrainians and Forbes 30 Under 30 Asia, and was a finalist for the Australian Council of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences (CHASS) Future Leader Award.

Dr Oleinikova is the author of several acclaimed publications, including Refugees at University (Palgrave, 2026), New Eastern European Migration to Australia: From Ukraine, Czech Republic and Hungary (Palgrave, 2023), Achiever or Survivor? Life Strategies of Migrants from Crisis Regimes (Palgrave, 2020), and editor of Democracy, Diaspora, Territory: Europe and Cross-Border Politics (Routledge, 2019).

She earned her PhD in Sociology from the University of Sydney in 2016 and has held prestigious research fellowships at Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research, Oxford University's European Studies Centre, Charles University in Prague, and the WZB Berlin Social Science Center.

Dr Oleinikova is the founder and director of the SITAD Visiting Fellowship Program — the first Australian fellowship initiative dedicated to supporting Ukrainian early-career researchers and postgraduate students. She has secured over $3 million in funding for research and social initiatives.

A leading public intellectual, she was ranked among the top three media experts at UTS in 2024/2025, with an estimated media reach of over 9.1 million people. Her expert commentary is frequently featured in BBC News, Bloomberg, ABC News, CNA, The Conversation, Politico, SBS, and KyivPost. She has delivered more than 30 keynote and invited talks at leading institutions worldwide, including Oxford University, WZB Berlin, Nanyang Technological University of Singapore, and the University of Sydney.

Matthew is a Chancellor's Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. He is an inter-disciplinary scholar, working across environmental history, political economy and critical geography. His research is concerned with socio-natural relations across space and time, especially as they concern changing energy regimes. His current project considers the way the history of energy in Australia might inform and contribute to contemporary energy policy. 

Previously, Matthew was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in the Climate & Energy Program at the Australia Institute. He has taught at The University of Sydney, the Australian National University and the University of New England. He completed his PhD in Political Economy at The University of Sydney, and has published in Competition & Change, Review of International Political Economy and Journal of Agrarian Change. 

My research addresses the politics of Indigenous-Settler relations to lands and waters, and the resulting value conflicts over mineral extraction and waste.  An empirical focus on the civilian and militaristic applications of nuclear technology has led me to convene HASS-STEMM collaborations and employ methods and theories drawn from several interdisciplinary fields, including International Studies, Environmental Philosophy, Indigenous Studies, Science and Technology Studies, and Critical Heritage Studies.  My current project, co-designed in partnership with the First Nations-led Australian Nuclear Free Alliance, aims to evaluate and transform Australian nuclear stewardship of radioactive wastes consistent with the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, which demands “free, prior and informed consent”.  This project builds on more than two decades experience conducting impact-led research, as well as relationships formed in the early-2010s with Aṉangu atomic survivor communities subjected to British nuclear testing at Maralinga.  

Prior to joining UTS, I held several externally competitive fellowships, namely the Alfred Deakin Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at Deakin University, the Killam Memorial Postdoctoral Research Fellowship at The University of British Columbia, the John Denis Fryer Memorial Library of Australian Literature Fellowship at The University of Queensland, and the Australian Academy of the Humanities Travelling Fellowship.  I have held honorary and visiting research appointments in Australia and internationally, including at Bard College, Sciences Po, Linköping University, Roskilde University, and The New School, where I was an Australia Awards Endeavour Research Fellow.  I am currently the inaugural 2026-27 Mick Broderick Atomicalia Visiting Fellow at Murdoch University.  Since 2008 I have also coordinated and lectured sixteen subjects across nine institutions, most notably as the O'Donnell Visiting Educator at Whitman College in the United States.  

I am a Chancellor's Research Fellow/Senior Lecturer at UTS.

My work focuses on understanding and advancing the work of historically marginalised groups to transform institutions and pursue change. I explore inclusion and exclusion in schools, media and other forms of governance, especially for Indigenous, LGBTQ+ and other historically marginalised groups (as a non-Indigenous, trans scholar). I collaborate with non-government organisations, community groups, government and scholars in Australia and internationally on research projects aimed at policy change, real impact and justice. In recognition of my work, I received the 2025 Paul Bourke Award for Early Career Achievement from the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia.

Key arenas of my work include:

• the school-prison nexus, school exclusion, and community-led alternatives in Australia and internationally (supported by my Chancellor's Research Fellowship, the Australian Public Policy Institute Fellowship, and previous grants from Griffith University and University of Melbourne);
• Indigenous remodellings of schooling, media and governance to realise self-determination (supporters include the Dusseldorp Forum and community organisations, the NSW government, and the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion);
• the experiences and strategies of Indigenous, LGBTQ+, disabled and racially marginalised workers in transforming media and representation in the era of diversity, equity, inclusion and access (as co-CI on ARC Discovery 2025 and previously with Aboriginal Affairs NSW);
• the strategies of trans and gender diverse peoples to advance their interests, especially in education and media (supported by the University of Melbourne and others).

As an early career scholar, I have secured and managed over $1m in research funding, including an ARC Discovery, government tenders and major philanthropic gifts. I have been invited as a visiting scholar to multiple universities across England, Norway, the Netherlands, Canada and Aotearoa/NZ. My scholarship has influenced NSW, Victorian and national policy, parliamentary inquiries and Royal Commissions, and been included in the NSW Aboriginal Studies curriculum. I have consulted for groups including the Australian Human Rights Commission, The Guardian, and the NSW Government. My work has been translated into podcasts and featured on major media outlets. I was the recipient of the 2026 UTS Faculty of Design & Society ECR award for research impact and funding.

I am the lead co-author of Does the media fail Aboriginal Political Aspirations? (Aboriginal Studies Press, 2020), and Yipirinya: the true school of Mparntwe (2027, forthcoming), and editor of Imaginging anti-oppressive education futures (Routledge, 2026). My work is published in world-leading journals including Digital Journalism and Critical Studies in Education, and I am an Associate Editor of Australian Educational Researcher.

I design, coordinate and teach courses and subjects across education, communication and the social sciences, building on my interdisciplinary expertise, curriculum development career and training in adult literacy and inclusive education. I have collaboratively led the development of microcredentials in Indigenous research methods and ethics, and in embedding Indigenous graduate attributes. With colleagues I have redesigned whole course assessment projects, developed novel cross-subject assessments, and led work-intergrated learning programs with community partners. My educational leadership has been recognised with a 2019 UTS Vice-Chancellor’s teaching excellence award, multiple subject awards and two Faculty awards for Indigenisation. 

I am a member of the UTS Faculty of Design & Society Social Justice & Inclusion Committee, and co-founder of the UTS Staff & Student Trans & Gender Diverse Advisory Group. I work on initiatives for LGBTQ+ inclusion in collaboration with the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. 

I'm a heritage and museums practitioner, researcher and lecturer with experience in international museums and heritage work, particularly in international development contexts. I am currently Centre Manager for the Australian Centre of Public History and a Research/Engagement Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Over the last fifteen years, I have worked with communities to improve access to the arts and cultural heritage with and across national museums, universities and the private sector in three countries: Australia, the UK and Afghanistan. The thread running through my career is a commitment to helping organisations and institutions innovate and find new ways of serving, engaging with and working collaboratively with a range of audiences.

I have worked worked for a range of international museums and organisations across Australia, Afghanistan and the UK, including designing public programmes and community engagement for the British Museum and Leighton House Museum in London. In Afghanistan, I managed cultural projects for the Kabul based NGO Turquoise Mountain and worked as registrar on a project to digitise the entire collection of the National Museum of Afghanistan. I've worked as part of a team to evaluate UNESCO’s strategy to protect cultural and natural heritage in emergency scenarios.

In Sydney, I have worked at Museums of History NSW on a collaborative, co-designed project with members of Sydney’s Coastal Communities to surface First Nations insights and perspectives on the site of First Government House in order to update the National Heritage listing for the site with First Nations associations and stories. Prior to this, I project managed conservation management plans, social values assessments and worked across built heritage and archaeology projects with a focus on community engagement for GML Heritage.

My first book is out with Routledge: A New Politics of Heritage Reconstruction in Afghanistan: In the Shadow of the Buddhas (2024) and examines how politics and heritage are currently configured across a diverse range of governments, state and non-state actors, NGOs, individuals and forms of expertise – and why such intersections matter.