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.

Dr Endriana Audisho is a lecturer and Public Programs Director at the School of Architecture, University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Her research and teaching practice are deeply rooted in postcolonial and decolonial frameworks, aiming to uncover spatial and social injustices while proposing alternative architectural and urban narratives, fictions, and imaginaries. She explores decolonial approaches to architectural education, experimenting with pedagogies and practices that realign the field with its socio-political dimension.

Her scholarly journey began with her PhD titled ‘Screening Architecture: Architecture, Media and Conflict since the 1990s,’ which presented ways for architecture to critically engage with the geopolitical and aesthetic challenges emerging from a culture increasingly driven by conflict and its mediation. Part of this research was exhibited in the inaugural Chicago Architecture Biennial, 2015, through the project and installation ‘Indo-Pacific Atlas.’ Endriana has been the recipient of the NSW Architects Byera Hadley Travel Scholarship and the Canadian Centre for Architecture’s (CCA) doctorate research residency, making her the first UTS doctoral student to receive this award. Recent scholarly contributions include chapters in The Routledge Handbook of Architecture, Urban Space and Politics, and Living Politics in the City, as well as articles in academic journals such as Places and Interstices: Journal of Architecture and Related Arts.

Endriana’s teaching portfolio spans architectural design, history and theory, architectural communication, and professional practice. She has extensive experience in coordinating design studios, having led first and second-year design for the past decade as well as research and travel design studios in the Master of Architecture titled ‘Cities Under Surveillance’ and ‘The Counter-Archive.’ Endriana has also played an important role in the Professional Practice stream at UTS Architecture, having coordinated Architectural Advocacy for the past four years. The subject invites architecture and landscape architecture students to reflect on their civic, social, environmental, and ethical responsibilities as design professionals. 

From 2014-2020, Endriana served as the Interdisciplinary Electives Course Director, where she curated the electives stream for the undergraduate and graduate degrees across Architecture, Landscape Architecture, and Interior Spatial Design. In this role, Endriana launched the ‘Summer International Masterclass Series,’ inviting internationally renowned architects, academics, and scholars to run intensive workshops and seminars. Currently, as UTS Architecture’s Public Program Director, Endriana is curating a public program centred on the theme of Solidarity. Through a combination of public lectures, collaborative workshops, and teach-ins, Solidarity prompts collective learning and, in some cases, a deliberate unlearning in pursuit of a transformative, collaborative agenda to shape a more just future.

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.

Treena Clark is an Aboriginal Kokatha and Wirangu woman based in Adelaide/Kaurna Country. She is a UTS Adjunct Fellow in the Faculty of Design and Society, focusing on Indigenous Australian public relations, activism, fashion, style, cultural practice and wellbeing.

She recently completed her UTS postdoctoral research fellow project, titled, Ad(dressing) Indigeneity: identity, healing, and social change through clothing, fashion, and style. This project aimed to unpack the stories behind First Nations fashion, art, and dress, focusing on urban areas and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples’ ways of dressing in these environments. Story and research collection were achieved through an Indigenous qualitative method (interviews, visual materials, historical texts). Research outputs were delivered through academic journal articles and book chapters, conference presentations, lectures, exhibition reviews, non-academic book chapters, media articles, radio interviews, a website, and an Instagram page.

Treena completed a Bachelor of Public Relations and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) degrees from the University of South Australia and a Doctor of Philosophy degree from the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Her 2021 PhD thesis explored the field of Indigenous Australian public relations and contributed to the decolonisation of Australian public relations. Specifically, the research aimed to assert Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander ways of conducting public relations and privilege the stories, roles and contributions that Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander women have made within it.

Prior to working in research, Treena worked at Recognise as both a Media Officer and Digital Campaign Assistant in the Communications Team. Recognise was the campaign to raise awareness of the need to recognise Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples in the Constitution and deal with the racial discrimination within it. She also worked for AIME at the University of South Australia as the Program Manager. AIME’s goal is to encourage and empower Indigenous high school students to finish school and enrol in university, TAFE or gain employment.

Dr Nathan Etherington is a Lecturer in the School of Architecture at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). He is a practicing architect, registered in New South Wales and South Australia and the founder and Principal of Nathan Etherington Architect (NEA).

Nathan’s research lies at the intersection of architecture, infrastructure and territory framed both historically and through contemporary practice. His doctoral thesis, “Inscribing the Territory: The Landscape of Public works in Nineteenth-Century Sydney” considers the role of the Public Works Department in driving the colonial project through the buildings and infrastructure that reshaped the landscape of Sydney and New South Wales between 1856 and 1900.

Nathan teaches across disciplines including design, history, theory and technical subjects. His pedagogical interests are focused on the relationship of architectural design to patterns of urbanisation on the metropolitan periphery.

Dr Heather Ford is an ARC Future Fellow and Professor in the School of Communications at UTS. She is the Coordinator of the UTS Data and AI Ethics Cluster, Affiliate of the UTS Data Science Institute, and Associate of the UTS Centre for Media Transition. She was appointed to the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE) in 2023 and is currently conducting research funded by the Australian Research Council and the Wikimedia Foundation on Wikipedia bias, question and answering technologies, digital literacy and the impact of generative AI on our information environment. She has a background working for global technology corporations and non-profits in the US, UK, South Africa and Kenya. A former Google Policy Fellow at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, former Executive Director of iCommons and co-founder of Creative Commons South Africa, her research focuses on the social implications of media technologies and the ways in which they might be better designed to prevent misinformation, social exclusion, and harms as a result of algorithmic bias. 

Heather completed her DPhil (PhD) at the Oxford Internet Institute at Oxford University. She has a Masters in Information Management and Systems (MIMS) from the University of California, Berkeley iSchool and has worked as a fellow at Leeds University, Stanford University, as a Google Policy Fellow and as a researcher at the University of the Witwatersrand LINK Center. Before her postdoctoral studies, she worked for a number of non-profit technology organisations including the Association for Progressive Communications, Creative Commons, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, Privacy International and Ushahidi. She was the Executive Director of iCommons, a global non-profit organisation started by Creative Commons between 2006 and 2008. She has been on the advisory and executive boards of the Wikimedia Foundation, iCommons and The African Commons Project where she worked towards the goal of fairer, more flexible intellectual property provisions for the Internet, particularly in developing countries. She is passionate about using creative methods in the social sciences to reimagine future technologies. 

She has published in a variety of journals including Big Data and Society, New Media and Society, the International Journal of Communications, Social Studies of Science and a number of Advanced Computer Machinery (ACM) journals. She is a founder editor of ethnographymatters.net and reviews articles for a number of journals and conferences in the fields of science and technology studies, media and communication and media ethics. 

Dr Meg Foster (FRHistS) is an award-winning historian of banditry, settler colonial and public history who specialises in Australian bushranging.

Meg's current research project explores what diverse colonial bushrangers can tell us about current attitudes to crime and policing. She is an intersectional historian who has experience working across race, class and gender histories as well as imperial, colonial, ethnographic and public histories.

Meg has published widely, contributing articles to Law and History Review, Rethinking History, History Compass and Public History Review as well as History Australia and Australian Historical Studies, where her most recent piece won the Aboriginal History Award from the History Council of New South Wales. Meg has also contributed book chapters to publications by Routledge, Bloomsbury Academic and Australian Scholarly Publishing.

Meg received a prestigious ABC Top 5 Humanities Media Residency to develop her media skills with Australia's national public broadcaster, and created a podcast for ABC Radio National's Rewind program as a result. Combined with tv, radio and podcast appearances, reviews, newspaper articles, blog posts, and artistic collaborations, Meg has a breadth of experience engaging academic and public audiences, and a passion for making connections between history and the contemporary world. 

Her first book, Boundary Crossers: the hidden history of Australia's other bushrangers, was published with NewSouth (University of New South Wales Press) in 2022. This book was shortlisted for the Magarey Medal in Biography and longlisted for the British Academy Book Prize in Global Cultural Understanding and the Davitt Award in non-fiction crime writing. The following year, Meg was elected a Fellow of the Royal Historical Society (UK) in recognition of her contribution to History. 

Dr Catherine Freyne is an award-winning historian and producer of multimedia history content. At UTS, she works as Senior Producer at Impact Studios and Centre Manager at the Australian Centre for Public History. Previously, Catherine has worked as Features Producer at ABC Radio National, Historian at the City of Sydney and Curator at the State Library of NSW. For her work in radio, Catherine has received two NSW Premier’s History Awards and the Oral History Australia Media Award. In 2024, Catherine completed her PhD under the supervision of Professor Anna Clark, with a project combining history, sexuality studies and family memoir. Her thesis 'The Family As Closet: "Gay married men", their wives and their children in Sydney, 1970-2000' won the 2024 UTS FASS HDR Thesis Award. As an undergraduate, Catherine studied Australian history at UNSW earning First Class Honours for a study of non-Indigenous anxiety about belonging in Australia, titled 'Terra Alterius: Belonging, dispossession and reconciliation in contemporary Australian cultural production'. Catherine likes the poet Muriel Rukeyser’s notion that ‘the universe is made up of stories not atoms’ and has a particular penchant for the true ones. She loves birds, underdogs and primary sources.

Monica Galassi works as a Research Fellow at Jumbunna Research. She is an Italian anthropologist who has worked on several projects and initiatives to support Aboriginal self-determination and sovereignty in collecting institutions. Monica’s work and research interests focus on the importance of people having the right to access and manage their cultural heritage materials as a key driver for social justice.

In her previous roles in the Indigenous Services team at the State Library of NSW and at the Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Data Archive (ATSIDA), Monica has collaborated with several local organisations, public libraries and Australian and international institutions to facilitate access to collections related to the histories and experiences of NSW Aboriginal peoples and communities. These collaborations included the development of digital projects, physical and digital archives and the progression of best practices and guidelines to inform participatory and sustainable partnerships. Monica’s work currently focuses on supporting Aboriginal priorities in digital community archiving on Country.

Monica was awarded a UTS Research Excellence Scholarship to undertake doctoral studies in the field of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander archival records that have been misplaced in Italy. Her PhD thesis is titled ‘Archivi Aborigeni in Italia/Aboriginal Archives in Italy. The translation of knowledge at the cultural interface. 

Dr Liz Giuffre is an Associate Professor in Media for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences. She is a specialist in Australian popular music and culture. 

Liz teaches into Journalism, Music and Sound Design and the Communications Core, and her research explores popular music and popular cultures, including audience studies, genre studies and (post) broadcast radio and television. Her research practice includes music journalism, accessible cultural histories and podcasting. She is particularly passionate about Australian programs and artists in global contexts, as well as contemporary works in digital-first platforms including podcasts, streaming and online-only content. Liz was a presenter at the inaugural SXSW Sydney in 2023 and at Vivid in 2024.

Liz also works regularly in the national independent arts press as a journalist and commentator, including as regular contributing editor for Metro Magazine for over a decade, a regular contributor to Critical Studies in Television, reviewer and interview for The Music and occasional contributor for The Conversation. You can also hear her weekly new music recommendations on ABC Local Radio Sydney on Friday mornings with Craig Reucassel; monthly on Evenings with Renee Krosch and as a semi-regular part of the Critics Panel on Drive with Chris Bath. 

Liz is an associate member of the Centre for Media History and Australian Centre for Public History, she is also the former publication/web officer for IASPM Australia/New Zealand. With Gregory Ferris she was a Research Fellow at the Powerhouse Museum in 2023 for the "Spirits of the Hoey" project; and in 2024 is Visiting Scholar at the State Library of NSW for a project exploring the histories of Australian popular music and culture hidden in Sydney's Street Press.

With Dr Sarah Attfield, Liz is also the co-founding editor of the Journal of Working-Class Studies; and with Dr Shelley Brunt she is the co-producer, writer and host of Music Mothers and Others.

Liz also serves as the archivist for Sydney Community radio station 2SER (leading and producing the station's 40th anniversary celebrations), and remains committed to current and historic productions for the community and public service sectors especially.

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. 

Andrew W. Hurley is Adjunct Professor in the Faculty of Design and Society at the University of Technology, Sydney. He is currently. Head of School of the School of Social Work and Arts at Charles Sturt University.  Andrew is a former Head of School of the School of International Studies and Education at UTS.  Andrew is a core member of the Australan Centre for Public History. 

Andrew holds degrees in German and European Studies (B.A. (Hons.) and PhD (University of Melbourne) and Law (LLB, University of Melbourne), and has been admitted to practice as barrister and solicitor in the Supreme Court of Victoria.

Andrew is a cultural historian with a special interest in music, the acoustic and cultures of listening, as well as transnational history. He has written widely on interculturalities and intermediality. His latest book is Free Action: Jazz as a Catalyst in West German Arts and Culture (Routledge, 2025) explains how music catalysed developments in the sister arts as younger Germans sought to remake the cultural landscape after 1945.  He is also the author of The Return of Jazz: Joachim-Ernst Berendt and West German Cultural Change (Berghahn Books, 2009, 2011), Into The Groove: Popular Music and Contemporary German Fiction (Camden House, 2015);  Ludwig Leichhardt's Ghosts: The Strange Career of a Traveling Myth (Camden House, 2018).  Together with Lars Eckstein, he published a volume on Remembering Australian-German Colonial Entanglements (Routledge, 2020)

Andrew's work on jazz in Germany was nominated for an award for excellence in historical recorded sound research (AFRSC).  His work 

on acoustic history was shortlisted for the 2019 Pat Grimshaw prize: Australian Historical Studies best publication.

Andrew is able to supervise PhD students.

Rachel Landers, a renowned documentary filmmaker and writer with a PhD in history, is the head of Head of Media Arts & Production, Animation Production and Music and Sound Design, in the Faculty of Design and Society at UTS. Professor Landers brings her expertise from the film industry into the Creative Production disciplines at UTS. Her award-winning films have screened at numerous international festivals and been broadcast globally. 

Professor Landers was the Head of Documentary at the Australian Film, Television and Radio School (AFTRS), a position she held between 2011 -2018. During her tenure, she was responsible for relaunching the AFTRS Documentary Department with a ground-breaking, non-fiction filmmaking curriculum for students. 

In 2011 she received the NSW Premier’s History Fellowship. In 2015, she released the ABC/DVA/Screen Australia documentary Lest We Forget What? for the centenary of World War 1. She published her first non-fiction book Who Bombed the Hilton? with New South Books in 2016 which won the national Nib award for excellence in research in the creation of a literary work. Her feature film A Dog and Her Boy is in development with support from Screen Australia, Film Victoria and Screen West. In 2023 she received a Powerhouse research fellowship for her hybrid documentary work and a major cross faculty UTS research grant as chief investigator between Animation Production, Science and Engineering to produce a series of animated hybrid documentary shorts for children featuring scientists doing cutting edge science in the microscopic world. The same year she was a keynote speaker at SXSW Sydney. In 2024 she published the monograph Hybrid Documentary and Beyond with Routledge. The cross-faculty animation/science/engineering project (FASS/FoS/FEIT) was featured at a sold out VIVID 2024 with a workshop for 100s of children called The Superheroes of Science. The project became the basis of a successful 2025-2027 Australian Research Council Discovery Project application The Wonderful, Fluorescent, Massive World of Tiny, Invisible Things: Creating Transformative Science Stories for Children, with Rachel as lead chief investigator.

In 2021 Media Arts and Production and Animation Production, UTS was accepted as a full member of CILECT (Centre International de Liaison des Ecoles de Cinéma et de Télévision) the International Association of Film and Television Schools. Membership is highly competitive and there are only 6 Australian member schools. CILECT includes over 180 audio-visual and media educational institutions from 65 countries on 6 continents with 9,000+ teachers and staff that annually train 55,000+ students and communicate with an alumni network over 1,330,000+ strong. CILECT is committed to developing and promoting the highest standards of education, research and training for film, television and related media through establishing and organising global and regional forums for the exchange of artistic, pedagogical, methodological and managerial best practices for all its members. At the November 2023 CILECT World Congress in Rome, Rachel was elected to the CILECT Asia-Pacific Association (CAPA) Council - the regional association of the CILECT member schools in the Asia-Pacific Region including Australia, China, Singapore, India, Hong Kong, Japan and Vietnam. Rachel attended the CILECT congress in Beijing China 2024 leading to several potential research and teaching exchanges. This is building on the cultural teaching exchange in which 5 MAP, Animation Production academics and Media Lab professional staff were invited to give a series of masterclasses at the Hanoi Academy of Theatre and Cinema supported by the Vietnamese Ministry of culture. 

I am an architectural historian with an interest in how architecture has participated in systems of colonial governance and racial capitalism in Australia and the Pacific. My research explores the intersections of architecture with the law, political economy, finance, and extraction, particularly the spatial logics of non-government organisations and other forms of private power. I believe architectural history has an important role to play in uncovering the material legacies of empire and capital, revealing how design has shaped—and been shaped by—systems of power and dispossession.

My writing has been widely published, including in Architecture Beyond Europe, Architectural Histories, Journal of Architecture, Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Urban History, Fabrications, Geographical Research, Cloud-Cuckoo-Land and Architectural Theory Review. I am a co-Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project, Mapping the Frontiers of Private Property in Australia (DP240100395), which will document the alienation of Crown land in New South Wales. In 2023, I was the Society of Architectural Historians (US) H. Allen Brooks Fellow for a project investigating the links between Australian settler-colonialism and the Indo-Pacific phosphate industry at the turn of the twentieth century. I was Research Fellow at the Architectures of Order LOEWE Research Cluster in 2021, co-hosted by the Goethe University Frankfurt, Technical University Darmstadt, the German Architecture Museum and the Max Planck Institute for Legal History and Legal Theory. This led to my first book, A Complicated Organism: The Architecture of the Global Moravian Network, 1722-1922 (2024), published by the Centre for Critical Studies in Architecture at the Goethe University Frankfurt. My doctoral research into the role of German missionary organisations within the settler-colonial project in nineteenth-century Far North Queensland (USyd 2020) was awarded the David Saunders Founders Grant by the Society of Architectural Historians Australia and New Zealand. In 2014, my Honours thesis on the history of Sydney Park received the Royal Institute of British Architects (RIBA) President’s Dissertation Medal.

I coordinate research-led subjects in architecture and landscape architecture. These include design studios on alternative housing models, the relationship between real estate and sewerage, as well as history and theory subjects on architectural ethics and the discipline's relationship to the historic phases of capitalism. I am a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (UK) and have written and presented on architectural pedagogy in CIRCA: Journal of Architecture and Design, Architecture Bulletin and at the Conference of the Association of Architecture Educators (UK).

I have collaborated extensively with the not-for-profit research-advocacy group Healthabitat since 2014. This has involved running a design studio on the effects of heat on health in remote Indigenous housing, designing school sanitation facilities in Nepal, developing community resources for sanitation programs in South Africa and Ethiopia, and participating in Housing for Health projects in regional and remote Australia. A sanitation project I designed in rural Nepal for the Paul Pholeros Foundation in collaboration with David Donald, Harry Catterns and Shane Marshall received a Commendation Award in the 2025 ArchitectureAU Awards for Social Impact.

I am currently a General Councillor on the History Council of NSW and Associate Editor of Architectural Theory Review. At UTS, I coordinate the Australian Centre for Public History’s Histories of Land and Property Reading Group and, together with Urtzi Grau, I am editor of the UTS School of Architecture’s forthcoming publication series.

I am the primary supervisor of two PhD projects:

Anna Li

Failed Property: Land, Governance and Dispossession in Colonial New South Wales

Secondary: Prof Charles Rice

Samantha Rosner

Drawing Water: Representation, Conflict, and Hydrological Uncertainty in Australia’s Nervous Colonial Landscape of Private Property

Secondary: Prof Charles Rice

Emeritus [former Distinguished] Professor Peter McNeil FAHA is a leading international scholar in the fields of fashion studies and design history. He works across English, French, North American and Australian visual cultures from the 18th century to the present day. He is descended from English, Irish, Scottish, Bavarian and Austrian convicts, a published utopian socialist, an atheist, and free settlers. He works on Dharug and Gundungurra country.

He is Co-Editor with Dr Valerie Steele, The Museum at FIT, New York, of 'Fashion Theory', the leading journal in its field.

McNeil was elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities (AAH) and was twice Section Head for 'The Arts' AAH.

He is Past President, AAANZ, representing Art Historians in the region (3 terms).  

Following a period as Head of School, Art History + Theory, UNSW, he became full UTS professor aged 39 and was for a decade concurrent Professor of Fashion Studies at Stockholm University, where he worked to establish the field in the EU Humanities system. He was subsequently the first design academic to be awarded the most prestigious Finnish academic grant, Academy of Finland Invitational Distinguished Professor, Aalto University (2014-18) for the study of performance costume. Despite these extended periods abroad, he maintained a strong focus on Australia and its regions, working with Bathurst Regional Art Gallery on a an award-winning photomedia exhibition (2017), with Hamilton Gallery (Victoria) to interpret its design collection, and publishing histories of creativity for Paddington, Surry Hills and Darlinghurst (Sydney). 

McNeil had many important collaborations with the leading European economic historian Giorgio Riello. Their work on fashion and luxury studies helped shape the field. Their best-seller 'Shoes: A History from Sandals to Sneakers' (with Riello, 2006) was praised in 'Cultural Sociology' for 'the capacity to integrate historical enquiry, empirical investigation, hermeneutical theorizing, and a sense of delight in scholarship'. The work was translated into Italian and Modern Chinese, and McNeil’s chapter later into Hebrew. 

 'Luxury' (Oxford University Press, with Riello) was praised as 'that rare thing, a book that is at once richly informative, critically challenging and eminently readable... it wears its scholarship lightly, as light one could say as the finest silks, fragile blossoms and delicate metalwork that feature amongst a host of other luxury materials encountered in its pages' (J. Faiers, 'Luxury' journal). The work was translated into Polish (2017) and Chinese (2021).

McNeil's many other publications include the award-winning 'The Fashion History Reader: Global Perspectives', 2010 (with G. Riello - AAANZ Best Book 2011); 'Fashion: Critical and Primary Sources, Renaissance to the Present Day' (4 Vols. 2009 - AAANZ Best Book 2010); 'Fashion Writing and Criticism' and 'Fashion Journalism' (with S. Miller, 2014, 2018).

McNeil's monograph ''Pretty Gentlemen': Macaroni Men and the Eighteenth-century Fashion World' was published by Yale University Press in 2018 and was praised in 'The New York Review of Books' - ’fascinating, deeply erudite, and superbly illustrated', 'Times Literary Supplement' - every page offers an unfamiliar image, confidently described'; 'Literary Review'. 'The New Yorker',  and iconic 'World of Interiors' - ‘wry rather than dry’: Marina Warner named it a TLS 'Book of the Year'. Colin McDowall in 'Business of Fashion' called the work ‘an instant classic’: ‘Pretty Gentlemen is welcome because it is a rarity among books concerning costume. It bucks the trend so common in those written by academics in that the prose dances along effortlessly in a way that frequently almost reads as a novel by Jane Austen. And that makes it almost unique in scholarly works on any era and its dress'. 'Eighteenth-Century Studies' wrote: 'McNeil's drop-dead gorgeous... sumptuous, engaging, and infinitely teachable... beautiful history allows specialists and non-specialists alike to see the important work of dress as both a technology of the self and a technology of gender'.

In 2026-27 McNeil co-edits 'A Cultural History of Luxury: The Age of Industry', 19th century volume (Bloomsbury), with Mark Rothery.

McNeil has extensive experience writing for major world museums and auction houses: Bonhams, Farnese Aviaries, Rome (Rara Avis), Los Angeles County Museum of Art (Reigning Men), Kunsthaus Zurich (Fashion Drive), Fitzwilliam (Luxury), Textilmuseum St Gallen (Fashion and Flowers), Sydney Jewish Museum (Dressing Sydney), Museum at FIT (Queer Style), Musée de la Dentelle, Calais (Plein Les Yeux!), Modemuseum Hasselt (Embellishment), Royal Armoury Stockholm (Royal Vintage), National Museum of Australia (Glorious Days: 1913), Queensland Art Gallery (Easton Pearson), Art Gallery of New South Wales (Sydney Moderns), National Gallery of Victoria (Fashion in the Age of Jane Austen: Fashion and Flowers), Castlemaine Art Gallery (Catherine Pilgrim), Bathurst Regional Art Gallery (The Unflinching Gaze). For a decade he reviewed major dress + textile acquisitions for Royal Ontario Museum. He was consultant for A Queer History of Fashion (FIT, NY) 2013. Most recently he wrote and selected works for the major global exhibition 'The First Homosexuals'  curated by Jonathan D. Katz and J. Willis for Wrightwood659 Chicago (2024-2025; Kustmuseum Basel, 2026). 'The show’s insistence on complexity is precisely what makes it brave, provocative and unexpectedly poignant' (The Washington Post); 'erudite and sumptuous' (the NY Times).

McNeil was Associate Dean Research (2012-2015) where he worked to embed the highest quality research ambition for all academic levels and practices. He managed all Faculty higher degree across 3 schools Design, Architecture + Building for 5 years.

He was invited to launch Fashion Studies as a Masters degree for the University System of Taiwan in 2012.

He convened and co-chaired (with M Bellanta) Fashion Studies: An International Perspective 5-7 April 2018, within the aegis of the Academy’s The Arts Section. The event brought together over 40 art historians, literary theorists, Asian Studies specialists, designers, material culture anthropologists and curators from 16 different universities in Australia, Taiwan, Japan, Canada and France.

McNeil built a world-leading cohort of Design History Graduates with 40+ graduations in innovative areas of social, design and artistic research. They pioneered fields including dress and disability (one of the first such PhDs), gender, labour and deindustrialisation, emigré textile design, global circulation of 19th-century furniture; ecology and plastic chairs, dress and anti-semitism, dress and pregnancy, wearable tech in music and fashion ('Chicks on Speed'). Many won Awards including UTS Human Rights (C Tietz) and many were placed on the Chancellor's Merit List/best Annual Faculty Thesis. C Fisk was the first non- STEM applicant ever to be awarded the Tempe Mann Travelling Scholarship for women in PhD study. J Adams Stein was the first to be awarded a DECRA in the Design codes. McNeil also supervised the first Indigenous-led Post Doc project on First Nations Fashion Design (Dr T Clark),  a first on the re-Indigenisation of space (Dr D Hromek), and practice-based reseach on possum-skin cape-making/'badhang galang wilay' (former UTS PVC Indigenous Prof M McDaniel). 

McNeil believes in sharing with wide publics and is invited widely. He has given 300+ public lectures in Australia, NZ, USA, Canada, Sweden, Taiwan, Finland, Germany and Italy. McNeil convened 3 Sherman Centre for Culture and Ideas Hubs 2018-19: 'Fashioning Men'; 'Lost Vienna'; 'Jewish Fashion Stories'. In 2018 he presented a six week fashion series at Te Papa, National Museum of New Zealand, Wellington. In 2013, 2021 and 2023 (latter with T Slade) he presented the prestigious ten-week Learning Curve series for the Art Gallery of New South Wales Society. He is a regular speaker at the Johnston Trust, Melbourne. He is an ArtsNational Australian Lecturer and leads cultural tours with Academy Travel. In November 2025 he convened the 56th Annual Symposium of the AAH: 'The Humanities and Creative Practices' at UTS. He has published 21 stories in The Conversation with 400,000 reads, most popular being Marie-Antoinette at home; the Surry Hills factory fire; Carla Zampatti's obituary.

McNeil was awarded a UTS Human Rights Award in 2018 (with Dr Christine Dean). 

In May 2026 McNeil was Visiting Professor in the University System Taiwan (Host A/Prof Chia-hua Yeh, Vice-Dean, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University) for a national lecture, forum, workshop and consultation series; he also consulted at Imperial College, London.

McNeil assesses international research awards, grants, tenure track etc for the UK, USA, Canada, Denmark, Flanders (Dutch speaking Belgium), European Science Foundation, Catalonia etc.

He advises that he is not accepting any new PhD or Masters applications. 

McNeil is currently part of the UNSW-led multi university/museum and gallery Australian Research Council Linkage Grant 'Transforming Australian Design Culture through the department store 1954-75'.  This project aims to investigate the role of the department store in the transmission, diffusion and promotion of international design ideas and practices in postwar Australia. Partnering with Powerhouse and Art Gallery of New South Wales, this innovative study positions David Jones’ ground-breaking 1950s-70s international exhibitions, revealing the department store’s role as a driver of awareness and advancement of design cultures in Australia within a new narrative framework. 

Research Funding, Leadership and Post-doctoral supervision

• 2026-28 CI, ARC LP250201044 Transforming Australian Design Culture through the department store 1954-75/Lead: Assoc Prof Mark Ian Jones, UNSW, $519,832  
• 2022-2026 UTS Chancellor's Postdoctoral Indigenous Research Fellow, Dr Treena Clark, First Nations Fashion Design
• 2018 Australian Academy of the Humanities, New Areas of the Humanities Workshop Scheme: International HDR Workshop $7500
• 2015-2016 Investigator (original bid Investigator, subsequently exited), OLT Grant, Design and architecture practice research: contemporary PhD (DAP_r), $497,000 (RMIT)
• UTS CPDRF Dr Jesse Adams Stein 3D printing & Australian manufacturing: designing workplace futures
• 2014-2018 Academy of Finland, Distinguished Professor Scheme (with S Pantouvaki), Costume Methodologies, €850, 000 /AUD 1.328 million.
• 2013-2014 Leverhulme Trust International Network: 'Luxury and the Manipulation of Desire: Historical Perspectives for Contemporary Debates'. G. Riello (Warwick, lead); P.McNeil (UTS); M G Muzzarelli (Bologna); C Kovesi (Uni. Melb) £80,000.
• 2012 CI. ARC-LIEF - Design and Art Australia Online, Sustainable Data Sharing for Australian Researchers and Collections LE120100056, $240,000.
• 2012 UTS T&L grant, First Year Experience: implementing transition pedagogies in the curriculum (J Kasunic), $2000.
• 2010 PI. Peter McNeil + 5 PIs HERA/€985, 072/AUD1.54 million ‘Fashioning the Early Modern: Creativity and Innovation in Europe c1500-1800’.
• 2010 ISL-HCA Australian Academy of the Humanities. ‘Back in Fashion: A New Global History of Fashion’ $8000
• 2010 CI. Schmatte Business’: Jewish émigrés and the Sydney clothing trades, 1945 – 1990. UTS/Sydney Jewish Museum. $70,000
• 2008-9 CI, Connecting fashion products and worker’s lives in the industrial heritage of Sydney, UTS, Blueprint for Sydney, $75,000
• 2005-6 Associazione Calzaturifici Riviera del Brenta (ACRIB), with G Riello/Shoes: industrial and design history, €10,000/17,000 AUD

Awards, prizes and residencies

2026 National Science and Technology Council, Taiwan Visiting Professorship/Host National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University/ NYCU

2022 UTS Faculty of Design Award for Research - Peer Mentorship - honorable mention
2018 New South Wales Museums and Galleries IMAGine! Awards – Best Exhibition - Bathurst Regional Art Gallery, R Perram OAM, lead 
2018 UTS Human Rights Award (with Dr Christine Dean)
2018 UTS Finalist, Vice Chancellor’s Research Awards, Researcher Development
2016 Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Writer in residence, March. Food, security, culture/Lino Alvarez + KIm Deacon/ La Paloma Pottery
2014 Bathurst Regional Art Gallery Writer in residence, October. Hill End Artists/engagement with caricature
2013 Elected Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities

2012 Invited by the University System of Taiwan to launch Fashion studies as a Masters program
2011 Best Edited Book, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand
2010 Best Edited Book, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand
2008 Yale University, Lewis Walpole Library, Farmington, CT, USA, Research Fellow
1998 Veronika Gervers Fellow, Royal Ontario Museum, Toronto

Professional

Convener, 56th Annual Symposium of the Australian Academy of the Humanities, 'The Humanities and Creative Practice', UTS, Nov 2025

Interim Section Head, 'The Arts', The Australian Academy of the Humanities, 2024-2025
Co-Chair, UTS/Powerhouse Ultimo Foundation University Partner/ Research Committee 2024-2025
Co-Editor, Fashion Theory, ongoing
Book Reviews Editor, Fashion Theory, ongoing

Co-Editor, Critical Studies in Men's Fashion (concluded 2025)
Editorial Board, Zone Mode (Italy)
Advisor, Dress Cultures Board, Bloomsbury
Founding Member, Advisory Board, Australian Museum of Design (until 2025)
Member (International), The Pasold Research Fund (UK: history of textiles) 2018-present
Member, UTS Australian Centre for Public History
Fellow, Australian Academy of the Humanities (from 2013) - the citation reads: 'his work in the history of fashion founded a new field of interdisciplinary research and critical enquiry'.
Membre suppléant, Comité International d'Histoire de l'Art (CIHA) 2017-2020
Former Section Head, 'The Arts', Australian Academy of the Humanities 2017-2020
Past President, Art Association of Australia and New Zealand (Art History) 2006-2010
Member, International Editorial Committee, AURA (online journal of aesthetic sciences) 2008-2018

Former Editorial Board Member, Journal of Design History
Former Member, Centre for Fashion at the Museum of Applied Arts and Sciences (Powerhouse), Sydney
Member, Wagner Society of New South Wales

Isabel Rousset is an architectural historian and Chancellor’s Research Fellow at the University of Technology, Sydney. Her research focusses on the historical cross-sections between architecture, social politics, and development. Her book The Architecture of Social Reform: Housing, Tradition and German Modernism was published by Manchester University Press in 2022 and traced the intellectual links between housing design expertise and nineteenth-century social theory in Germany. She is currently researching the involvement of architects in community development and aided self-help programs in the postwar era. Her research has been published in the Journal of Architecture, Architectural Histories, and the Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians. In 2025 her article "Down to Earth Types: Brick Buildings and the Bounds of Propriety in Berlin and Hamburg, 1904-1914" received the Founders’ Award from the Society of Architectural Historians. She currently serves as co-editor of Fabrications: Journal of the Society of Architectural Historians, Australia and New Zealand.

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. 

Dr Jesse Adams Stein is an Associate Professor and Program Director of Design Studies at the UTS School of Design, and a leading researcher in design history and design studies. Her research investigates what happens to skill, labour processes and technical knowledge when industries are in transition, particularly in relation to creative industries, local manufacturing and vocational trades. Stein works across both historical and contemporary contexts, bringing historical depth to live policy challenges, including energy transitions, skills shortages, repair economies and the future of work. 

Over the past 15 years, Stein has pushed the discipline of design history to take more seriously the skills and experiences of craftspeople, tradespeople (and factory production in general, as part of understanding design). Key works in this vein include Stein's monographs Hot Metal: Material Culture and Tangible Labour (Manchester UP, 2016) and Industrial Craft in Australia (Palgrave, 2021). This historical work often focuses on Australia between the 1970s and the 1990s, examining how design, craft, vocational education and the creative industries were shaped by neoliberal economic restructuring and other policy shifts at the state and federal level. 

In more recent research, Stein is co-editor of two collections: Designing through Planetary Breakdown: Locating Material Knowledge and Practical Skill (Routledge 2025) and Working through Planetary Breakdown: Labour, Skill and the Changing Climate (Routledge 2026) both co-edited with Dr Chantel Carr. The latter two publications were the outcome of Stein and Carr's pioneering interdisciplinary symposium on skill, climate change the the future of work, All Hands on Deck (2023, UTS).

In current projects, Stein is collaborating with colleagues across UTS, Western Sydney University, the University of Wollongong and NSW DCCEEW on research examining the role tradespeople have in the socio-technical relations of Distributed Energy Resources (DER) in Australian energy transitions. In a separate interdisciplinary project with co-researchers from the Faculty of Design and Society, and in partnership with the Powerhouse and Transport for NSW, Stein is investigating the history and contemporary politics of high-visibility workwear (hi-vis).

Stein completed an ARC DECRA Fellowship in 2025, and a UTS Chancellor's Research Fellowship in 2021. She has led two major national oral history projects collected by the National Library of Australia, and collaborated with Museums Victoria, the Powerhouse and the State Library of NSW, among other cultural institutions. She is an active contributor to right-to-repair advocacy and industry policy discussions in Australia, and a member of the Australian Centre for Public History and the History Council of NSW.

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 and LGBTQ+ peoples (as a non-Indigenous, trans scholar). I collaborate with non-government organisations, community groups, government and scholars in Australia and internationally on research focused on policy change, 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 journalists 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 manage 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 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 the forthcoming Educational Agitations (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 experience and teacher training. 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, 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 LGBTIQ+ inclusion in collaboration with the UTS Centre for Social Justice and Inclusion. 

Luke Tipene is an architecture academic in the School of Architecture at UTS. His research is centred on the history, theory and practice of architectural drawing and questions how accuracy and uncertainty produce new knowledge in the field of architecture. 

Luke takes an interdisciplinary approach to his research through the exploration of image production in art and architecture. His work spans four key themes: the history and theory of unbuildable depictions of architecture, the effect of representation on the cross-cultural translations of architectural knowledge, experimental drawing and its impact on knowledge production in architecture, and the relationship between architectural drawing and the production of environmentally conscious design. 

Luke maintains an active practice in drawing, curation and design. His work has been exhibited nationally and internationally, and he has been involved in several artist-in-residence programs in Australia and the UK. He has published in leading architectural journals, including Fabrications, Space and Culture, The Journal of Architecture, and Places Journal. He is the Executive Editor for idea Journal and has peer reviewed for Fabrications and The Journal of Architecture. 

Luke is currently completing a PhD at UTS under the supervision of Professor Charles Rice. As a lecturer in the Bachelor of Design in Interior Architecture, Luke delivers workshop-style learning that encourages students to explore ideas through a variety of experimental drawing methods. He is active on working groups and steering committees across the university.

I am a researcher in environmental humanities and design studies, with regional expertise in Italy and Australia and a focus on urban ecologies amid the growing impact of climate change on cities. My work is organised around three main themes: investigating urban waterscapes to explore how water shapes social, cultural, and environmental processes; examining everyday practices of care and connection to the environment; Italian migration and the urban environment. Central to this work is exploring how design–broadly conceived–can amplify people's capacity to act and bring about positive change. I employ a range of place-based methodologies, including feminist, ethnographic, archival and visual approaches.

My latest book, Neighbourhood Ecologies. Creative Ethnographies of Urban Environments (Palgrave 2025, with Alexandra Crosby) foregrounds socioecological stewardship in urban spaces. It demonstrates how activities like gardening and participating in events that spark ecological learning foster a sense of place, social connections, and lively neighbourhoods.

My current projects are:

Water Stories: This project explores urban water environments to uncover how water shapes the social, cultural, and environmental narratives of places. This study, funded by the ARC DP240101955 grant, concentrates on uncovering the history of wetlands in urban renewal areas of Sydney.

Migrant environments: this research explores the environmental practices of migrant gardeners in Australia in relation to local ecologies.

In 2014, I co-founded Mapping Edges Research Studio (www.mappingedges.org) with Alexandra Crosby. Through ethnographic and archival research combined with design methods, Mapping Edges supported city residents' engagement with local ecologies and explored the intersections of agency, environment and place.

In past projects, I have written on design activism in Italy and on design, material culture, and creative practices in transcultural processes. My book, Precarious Objects: Activism and Design in Italy (UMP 2020), examines the intersection of design and visual culture with urban activism, demonstrating how design can challenge, mitigate, and reimagine the impacts of precarity. In this way, my work expands research on precarity to design studies and extends the conversation on precarity within the English-speaking world.

In 2022, I received an Australian Council for Graduate Research Special Commendation for Excellence in Supervision and won the UTS Research Excellence Award in the category of Supervisor of the Year. As a postgraduate research supervisor, I am committed to Indigenous higher education.