Dr Çemen Polat is a Lecturer in International Relations in the Faculty of Design and Society at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). Since joining UTS in 2018, she has coordinated and taught across a wide range of disciplines, including International Relations, International Studies, Education, and Communication.

Dr Polat holds a PhD in Politics and International Relations from Monash University and a Master of Teaching (HSIE) from the University of Sydney. Her research examines civic and social movements, particularly the formation and institutional frameworks of these movements in Australia and globally, with a focus on their function as social enterprises within philanthropic and civil society contexts. She has published on the transnational dimensions of these movements, exploring how they shape identity, education, and community engagement through intercultural communication and dialogue across diasporic settings. Her work also contributes to broader debates in politics and international relations, particularly in relation to civil society, global governance, and the role of non-state actors in shaping international norms and policy.

As a teaching-focused academic, Dr Polat has a strong record of interdisciplinary curriculum development and student engagement at UTS. She has coordinated and taught a wide range of undergraduate and postgraduate subjects, and consistently receives strong student feedback for her inclusive, intellectually rich, and culturally responsive approach. Prior to entering higher education, she taught in secondary schools across Sydney and Melbourne, specialising in Humanities and Social Sciences, and held leadership roles including Deputy Principal and HSIE Coordinator.

Dr Polat has published in the fields of international relations, peace studies, education, and intercultural communication. She has presented her work at international conferences, and her forthcoming book chapter examines education reform and policy success in Turkmenistan.

A/Professor Susan Oguro (PhD) is an Honorary Industry Associate in International Studies and Education at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), Australia. 
Her research and publications lie in the fields of Languages Policy and Pedagogy, International and Intercultural Education, Experiential Learning and Human Rights Education. In particular, her work engages with issues of teacher-learner interaction, multilingual identities, educational access, and reflective practices in education. Susan also has extensive experience as a teacher of languages and as a teacher educator and currently teaches Languages Curriculum at the University of Sydney.  She has supervised and examined PhD student project in the areas of intercultural pedagogy and language teaching.

Susan's current research project is 'Teachers' Language Use in Foreign Language Classrooms'  and will be published in 2027 with Cambridge University Press. Her previous co-authored book is ‘Teaching for Linguistic Diversity in Schools’ published by Cambridge University Press in 2024. 
 
Susan’s previous full-time position at UTS was as Associate Dean, International for the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences leading the Faculty's international student programs, including full-degree, articulations, pathways, study abroad and exchange programs as well as collaborations with international partner institutions. She also held positions as Head of School and membership of senior boards. 

I am a Senior Lecturer in International Studies in the School of Communication and Social Sciences at the University of Technology Sydney. 
I am a modern philologist by training and have published extensively in the fields of comparative literary studies, cultural studies, feminist studies, contemporary poetry, and migration literature. My research focuses on translingual and multilingual literature, and particularly on works by migrant authors who write in a language other than their first or across multiple languages. I am the author of a book on translingual poetry, the first monograph in English to examine translingual writing by migrant poets in contemporary Italy.

My broader research interests include contemporary poetry and life writing by migrant women in Australia, Italy, and other contexts. I am particularly interested in the intersections between history and literature (in the twentieth century and beyond), working-class literature, writings by non-professional authors, informal autobiographical and biographical writings, and other forms of grassroots writing that challenge established models of authorship.

I am a passionate teacher and have developed expertise in leading teaching and learning portfolios at course and school level. At UTS, I have served as Degree Coordinator, Teaching and Learning Coordinator (equiv. to Associate Head of School Teaching and Learning) and Deputy Head of School in the School of International Studies and Education. I believe in the mindful, meaningful, and accessible use of technology to support learning and research, and to advance collaborative knowledge practices. I am committed to inclusive and socially just academic practices and particularly welcome opportunities to mentor and support research students from diverse and underrepresented backgrounds and firsts-in-the- family. My approach is informed by my own first-in-the-family educational trajectory and migration experience.

Lesley Harbon is an Emeritus Professor in the Faculty of Design and Society. She comes to this position after a varied teaching and research career, teaching Indonesian and German at primary, secondary and tertiary level, and more recently teaching in language teacher preparation programs. 
Lesley has been involved in languages education in Australian schools and universities since the early 1970s. Lesley learned Indonesian during her high school years, then studied German alongside Indonesian at the University of Sydney in the late 1970s and early 1980s. She taught Indonesian and German at Tennant Creek High School in the early 1980s then taught Indonesian at the University of Southern Queenland in the mid-1980s. During the 1990s she was sessional Lecturer in Indonesian at Charles Sturt University, Bathurst, concurrently teaching primary level Indonesian at Parkes Public School. Lesley then moved to be Lecturer in Languages Other Than English (LOTE) Education at the University of Tasmania in the mid 1990s, later completing her PhD in 2001. After Lesley's move to the University of Sydney in 2002 she continued her teaching and research in language teacher education, became further involved in internationalisation of higher education, first as the Director of Study Abroad, Exchange and Short Term Study Abroad in the Faculty of Education and Social Work from 2006, then as Associate Dean International from 2009 to 2014. At UTS Lesley has served as Head of School in the UTS School of International Studies between 2015 and 2018, and between 2018 and 2021, Lesley headed the merged UTS School of International Studies and Education. 
In 2009 and 2010 Lesley was President of the Australian Federation of Modern Language Teachers' Associations (AFMLTA), the national peak body for language teachers in Australia. 
She has sole-authored and joint-authored/edited numerous book publications, book chapters and refereed journal articles since 1990. Lesley has delivered keynote presentations and sole-authored and joint-authored conference papers at language teachers' conferences (including applied linguistics and TESOL) in Australia and overseas. She has reviewed papers for a number of national and international languages education journals.
Lesley has supervised numerous doctoral, masters and honours projects to completion. She has consulted on languages education to schooling systems and government agencies, and has designed and taught many language teacher professional development workshops and programs.
Over her career, Lesley has participated in beginner language classes in Tetum, Amharic, Dutch and Japanese.

Dr Jess Gifkins is interested in how international relations are enacted on a day-to-day basis. Her research centres around two different themes. Her first theme is on decision-making within the United Nations, focused on the UN Security Council and the broader UN Secretariat. Within this strand she has published research on legitimation practices, penholding, agenda setting, peacekeeping, the relationship with the International Criminal Court, and early warning mechanisms. Her second theme is on the implementation of the ‘responsibility to protect’ (or ‘R2P’, as it is known) where she has published research on language, case studies on conflicts in Darfur, Libya, and Syria, and the relationship between the persecution of LGBTQI+ people, hate crimes, and atrocity crimes.

Dr Jess Gifkins and Professor Jason Ralph were awarded a prize for ‘Best article in the European Journal of International Relations’ in 2017 for their article ‘The Purpose of United Nations Security Council Practice‘. Her research on the UN and on R2P has been published in the European Journal of International Relations, Cooperation and Conflict, Global Responsibility to Protect, the Australian Journal of International Affairs, Global Governance, Global Change, Peace & Conflict, and International Peacekeeping, as well as chapters in books on R2P, the United Nations and Genocide, and Civilian Protection.

The project she instigated and led on Queering Atrocity Prevention has been discussed in the UN Security Council and cited by the UK government and the UN General Assembly. Dr Gifkins, and her team of collaborators – principally Dr Dean Cooper-Cunningham and Protection Approaches – have produced a wide range of outputs for this project, including a journal article in International Affairs, a report with Protection Approaches, a podcast with the Global Centre for the Responsibility to Protect in New York, a magazine article in Foreign Policy, a blog with Australian Outlook, and a blog with International Affairs.

Her project on Brexit and the reputation of the UK in the United Nations was funded by the British Academy (2018-2019) where she and her coauthors published articles in International Affairs, and the British Journal of Politics and International Relations, as well as a report, led by Dr Gifkins, published by the United Nations Association of the UK titled ‘Global Britain in the United Nations‘. This project was a collaboration with Professor Jason Ralph and Dr Samuel Jarvis.

Dr Jess Gifkins’ current research projects are on:
1. Legitimation practices in UN Security Council decision-making. She has written a monograph titled ‘Inside the UN Security Council: Legitimation Practices and Darfur’ which was published by Oxford University Press in November 2023, and an article published in Global Governance. She is working on an article summarising the argument of her book.
2. Queering the Responsibility to Protect. This project is a collaboration with Protection Approaches in London and Dr Dean Cooper-Cunningham at the University of Copenhagen. Jess is the Queering Atrocity Prevention Research Fellow with Protection Approaches and has recently published a co-authored report titled ‘Queering Atrocity Prevention‘. This research has been cited in a UK House of Commons Select Committee report and in a UN General Assembly report published by the UN Independent Expert on sexual orientation and gender identity, Victor Madrigal-Borloz
3. Early Warning of mass atrocities in the UN Secretariat. This project was funded by the British Academy (2022-2023) and is a collaboration with Dr Stephen McLoughlin at Coventry University. The first article from this project, in collaboration with Professor Alex Bellamy, has recently been published in International Peacekeeping, and another article is in development.

Jess was founding the Associate Editor of Critical Military Studies from 2013 until 2020, and she has been on the Editorial Board for the Global Responsibility to Protect journal since 2020. She was Co-convener of the British International Studies Association Working Group on Intervention and the Responsibility to Protect (2016-2018), and Co-Chair of EISA Section ‘A Palace of Hope? The Prospects, Fragilities and Legitimacy of the United Nations‘ in 2018.

She did her PhD within the Asia-Pacific Centre for the Responsibility to Protect at the University of Queensland.
Jess has previously worked at the University of Manchester, Leeds Beckett University, the University of Exeter, the University of Queensland, and the University of New South Wales.

She is open to PhD supervision on the UN Security Council, diplomatic practices, or on queering atrocity prevention.

Ana Filipa Vrdoljak is Professor of Law and the UNESCO Chair in International Law and Cultural Heritage. She is co-coordinator of the UNESCO-UNITWIN Network on Culture in Emergencies. She is the author of International Law, Museums and the Return of Cultural Objects (Cambridge University Press, 2006 and 2008, forthcoming 2e) and editor of Oxford Handbook on International Cultural Heritage Law with the late Francesco Francioni (Oxford University Press 2020), The Cultural Dimension of Human Rights (Oxford University Press, 2013) and International Law for Common Goods: Normative Perspectives in Human Rights, Culture and Nature with Federico Lenzerini (Hart Publishing, 2014), and Oxford Commentary on the 1970 UNESCO and 1995 UNIDROIT Conventions with Andrzej Jakubowski and Alessandro Chechi (Oxford University Press, 2024).

Professor Vrdoljak is a General Editor of the Oxford Commentaries on International Cultural Heritage Law (Oxford University Press) and book series entitled Cultural Heritage Law and Policy (Oxford University Press). She is immediate past President and currently on the Board of Directors of the International Cultural Property Society (U.S.) and Management Committee, International Journal of Cultural Property (Cambridge University Press). She has been Fernand Braudel Senior Fellow, Marie Curie Fellow and Jean Monnet Fellow, Law Department European University Institute, Florence, and visiting scholar at the Lauterpacht Centre for International Law, University of Cambridge and Global Law School, New York University. She holds a Doctor of Philosophy (in Law) from the University of Sydney.

Sara Dehm teaches and researches in the areas of public international law, legal history, international migration and refugee law, and the law of international organisations. Her research addresses questions of international authority, border control, knowledge production and migrant resistance in the context of European empires, settler colonialism and struggles for decolonisation. Her first book, Administering Migration: International Law and the Global Ordering of People, explores how international law and international organisations have regulated human mobility over the course of the 20th century, and is under contract with Cambridge University Press. 

She is a Chief Investigator on a collaborative ARC-funded project investigating the journeys, contributions and legacies of European emigre jurists, including Jewish refugee jurists, to Australian law, the legal profession and academia, together with Professors Katherine Biber and Ana Vrdoljak. Her journal article on the admission to Australian legal practice struggles of two Jewish refugee lawyers in the mid-20th century ('Legal Exclusions', published in Federal Law Review in 2021) won the Law and Society Association of Australia and New Zealand/Aotearoa ECR article publication prize in 2022.

Sara's expertise in international refugee law centres on issues of state responsibility, externalisation and refugee claim-making. She is involved in a range of collaborations detailing how the provision or denial of healthcare to refugees in Australia’s extraterritorial detention regime constitute new forms of border control and state responsibility externalisation towards refugees and asylum seekers, including a focus on the gendered harms of immigration detention. Her expertise is cited in media articles examining the gendered harms and privatisation of Australia's immigration prisons, the legal limbo of temporary refugee protection, the denial of refugee students' right to education and the impacts of COVID-19 on refugees, migrants and undocumented people in Australia. 

Sara joined UTS Law in January 2017. She holds a BA/LLB (Hons) and PhD in International Law from the University of Melbourne. Prior to joining UTS Law, Sara was a Senior Fellow at the Melbourne Law School, where she taught in the Melbourne Law Masters program. She was also a Junior Faculty member of the Institute for Global Law and Policy, Harvard Law School's Doha Workshop in 2015. She has been a Visiting Fellow at UNSW Faculty of Law (2014), and an Associate at the Australian Human Rights Centre, UNSW (2015-2018). Sara is currently an External Affilitate and Visiting Scholar at (B)OrderS: Centre for the Legal Study of Borders, Migration and Displacement at the Queen Mary School of Law, University of London; an Associate Member of the Institute for International Law and the Humanities, Melbourne Law School; and a member of the Emerging Scholars Network of the Kaldor Centre for International Refugee Law, UNSW. She is also a co-convener of the advocacy network Academics for Refugees.

Kathryn joined UTS Law as a lecturer in June 2019. She holds a BA in Jurisprudence from the University of Oxford and an LLM in Public International Law from the University of Kent. Kathryn was awarded her PhD, entitled 'The History and Legacy of State Responsibility for Rebels 1839-1930: Protecting Trade and Investment against Revolution in the Decolonised World', from the University of Amsterdam in May 2019. Prior to joining UTS, Kathryn was a junior researcher at the Amsterdam Center for International Law at the University of Amsterdam, where she taught in the Masters program, and a Kathleen Fitzpatrick Visiting Doctoral Fellow with the ARC Laureate Program in International Law and a fellow at Melbourne Law School, where she taught in the JD.

Kathryn's research is interested in the interrelation between the economic and the humanitarian in international law. Her work touches upon state responsibility, international investment law and international humanitarian and human rights law. More widely, Kathryn is interested in the relationship between international law and imperialism, critical international legal history, and feminist and postcolonial approaches to international law. Her work has been published in the Leiden Journal of International Law, the International Journal of Refugee Law and the Nordic Journal of International Law. Her first monograph, State Responsibility for Rebels: The History and Legacy of Protecting Investment Against Revolution, was published by Cambridge University Press in 2021.

Professor Kate Barclay is a social scientist researching the social aspects of fisheries, at a time when industry and government are increasingly recognising the importance of human dimensions in sustainable fisheries. She is Director of the Climate, Society and Environment Research Centre (C-SERC). She teaches in the Bachelor of Sustainability and Environment and also teaches doctoral students working on the social aspects of fisheries, aquaculture and marine conservation. 

Since the late 1990s, Kate has researched the sustainable development of tuna resources in the island Pacific in the context of changing governance systems and globalisation.

Recent projects include developing social and economic monitoring frameworks for fisheries, multidisciplinary work to evaluate the social and economic contributions fisheries and aquaculture make to coastal communities, and fisheries governance analysis.

She has also worked with the Pacific Community and other organisations to produce Handbooks on gender equity, social inclusion and human rights in coastal fisheries, aquaculture and tuna industries. These Handbooks target Pacific Island government staff working in fisheries and aquaculture, to help them address the social dimensions of their work, focussing on the responsibilities of Pacific Island governments to help promote sustainable development outcomes for people who rely on coastal fisheries and aquaculture.

Kate has also been commissioned to do fisheries research for organisations such as WWF, Greenpeace, the UN Development Program, the European Parliament, the Pacific Islands Forum Fisheries Agency, the World Bank, the David and Lucile Packard Foundation and the Pacific Community.

She was a member of the NSW Government Marine Estate Expert Knowledge Panel from 2017 to 2021. Since 2013, she has been a member of the Scientific and Technical Advisory Committee of the International Pole and Line Foundation, which promotes the development of socially and ecologically responsible tuna fisheries. In 2022 she joined the Advisory Board of the Conservation Alliance for Seafood Solutions, which promotes social responsibility in seafood industries.

Kate is also on the editorial boards of journals Conservation and Society, and Journal México y la Cuenca del Pacífico.

She supervises higher degree research students on a wide range of topics, including the international relations of fisheries, globalization and governance in seafood value chains, fisheries and aquaculture in international development and community development, and gender analysis in seafood industries. See the Learning & Teaching tab for further details.

Dr Elena Sheldon is a Senior Lecturer in the School of International Studies and Education within the Faculty of Design and Society at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She coordinates the ICS Spain Major, the Latin American Studies Major, and the Spanish Language and Culture program.

She holds a Master of Applied Linguistics (Second Language Teaching) from the University of Sydney, and an MA (Research) and PhD from UNSW. Her work as a teacher educator and researcher is grounded in the belief that education is transformative, enabling individuals to think critically, act ethically, and engage interculturally in a multilingual world.

Dr Sheldon has led the development of the Spanish Language and Culture program within the Bachelor of International Studies (BIS) into a nationally and internationally recognised model of language education. The program integrates language, culture, and disciplinary knowledge, fostering intercultural competence, global perspectives, and multiliteracy through an innovative pedagogy informed by Genre-Based Pedagogy (GBP).

She supervises students undertaking in-country studies in Spain, mentoring them through academic writing and research projects, including essays, fieldwork-based studies, and Honours theses. Her teaching and leadership contribute to the development of globally minded graduates with advanced language proficiency and strong intercultural and analytical skills.

A key achievement has been the establishment of partnerships with ten leading Spanish universities, including the University of Zaragoza and the Autonomous University of Madrid, supporting an intercultural engagement model that connects students prior to and during mobility.

Dr Sheldon is well known for her research in applied linguistics, English for Academic Purposes, and second language literacy development. In recent years, she has focused on academic writing for publication. Her book, Knowledge Construction in Academia: A Challenge for Multilingual Scholars (Peter Lang, 2018), alongside several journal articles, critically examines the dominance of English in academic publishing and the pressures faced by scholars in Hispanic contexts to publish in elite English-language journals.

Dr Paola Eiras is an educator and scholar in Intercultural Studies, with a PhD in Sociology (UK), a postdoctoral fellowship in Educational Anthropology (Denmark), a Master’s degree by research in Linguistics (Brazil), and a research background in the medical sciences. This multidisciplinary trajectory enables her to engage with complex, interdisciplinary, and ethically sensitive research contexts across the social and health sciences. Her scholarship focuses on cultural identities, intercultural positioning, interculturalisation of education, and the dynamics of multicultural spaces as microcosms of globalised societies, drawing on spatial theory, human geography, sociology, and hermeneutics.

Paola is a fellow of the Higher Education Academy (FHEA) and a Lecturer in the School of Communication and Social Sciences and at the Institute of Education, where she designed and coordinates the postgraduate subject Intercultural and International Communication, delivered across three Master’s programs: International Relations, Strategic Communication, and Education. She also developed the module Qualitative Research Methods and contributes to curriculum design. Her teaching extends to the sociology and psychology of education within the Master of Education program (Teaching for Complexity and Diversity). 

In her role as Global and Professional Experiences Coordinator, Paola oversees the Global Exchange program for the Bachelor of Arts in International Studies, supporting students in developing meaningful international and intercultural learning experiences. Her work is grounded in student-centred approaches that advance culturally responsive, globally engaged, and socially impactful teaching and research practices.

Paola’s transcultural journey began as an international student in the United Kingdom in 1995, where she later completed her doctoral studies. She has since lived and worked in China, Denmark, and Australia. Her research is underpinned by strong expertise in qualitative methodologies, and she collaborates across interdisciplinary teams, contributing to diverse research agendas and perspectives.

Professor Jessie Hohmann is recognised for her innovative and thoughtful scholarship across the fields of human rights and international law.  She is particularly known for her expertise on the human right to housing, her contributions to the relationship between international law and Indigenous Peoples, and her use of innovative methodologies in understanding and conveying international law's impact on everyday life. Her committment to international law and human rights as tools for more just futures ties together her resaerch interests and propels her work.

Her research excellence has been acknowledged by the award of a 2024 Australian Legal Research Award in the category of Non-traditional Research Output (for an exhibtion showcasing the marketing materials and souvenirs of international law's institutions, curated with colleagues from the University of Sydney and University of New South Wales and underpinned by her groundbreaking work on international law's objects and material culture).  Her 2013 monograph The Right to Housing: Law, Concepts, Possibilities, published by Hart, was shortlisted for the UK's Society of Legal Scholars Peter Birks' Prize for Outstanding Legal Scholarship, and remains a major refererence point in the field.  She is also the editor of a major Oxford reference work on the United Nations Declaration on the Rights of Indigenous Peoples, and has been commissioned by Edward Elgar to author a flagship title in its new Principles of Human Rights Series, Housing and Human Rights (to be published in 2026).  Her numerous journal articles, book chapters and reports are listed under research outputs.  

The impact of Jessie's work is illustrated by collaborations with Non-Governmental Organisations including in the UK and Australia, and contributions to public policy debates such as submissions to government enquiries in her research field.  For example, she authored a recent report for the Human Rights Law Centre on the right to housing for Australia, and sits on the City of Sydney's Housing Advisory Panel.  Internationally, she makes submissions to United Nations human rights treaty bodies and Special Rapporteurs to support individual and civil society engagement with and impact on international law. 

Before joining UTS Jessie was Senior Lecturer in Law at Queen Mary, University of London (2012-2019), and held a prestigious British Academy Post-Doctoral Fellowship at the University of Cambridge (2009-2012), where she also obtained her PhD. She was awarded a highly competitive Independent Social Research Foundation Early Career Fellowship, pursuing research on the materiality and objects of international law in 2017-18.  She holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge, a LLM from the University of Sydney, a LLB from Osgoode Hall Law School (York University) and a BA from the University of Guelph.

Jessie is available to supervise PhD and Masters by Research candidates whose projects fall within her research expertise.

My specializing discipline is media and cultural studies, and my research focuses on various issues of diversity and multicultural inclusion, media and cultural globalization, and cross-border connections and dialogue in the contemporary Japanese context and in terms of Japan’s relations to other Asian countries.

I have been publishing more than 150 academic books and articles both in English and Japanese.  My English publications have been widely cited and much used as part of assigned readings for undergraduate courses of Japanese Studies as well as media and cultural studies in many universities around the world. I was listed among the top100,000 scientists by c-score (with and without self-citations) or a percentile rank of 2% orabove in the sub-field of Literary Studies in a publicly available database of top-cited scientists that was created by Stanford University which provides standardized informationon citations, h-index, co-authorship adjusted hm-index, citations to papers in differentauthorship positions and a composite indicator (c-score). (as for the latest version, please see "August 2024 data-update for"Updated science-wide author databases of standardized citation indicators") 

I have also been invited to give keynote lectures at various international conferences of Japanese Studies including European Association of Japanese Studies in countries such as the UK, France, Germany, Denmark, Slovenia, US, South Korea, Singapore, China, Malaysia, Australia, and New Zealand.

I worked at Monash University in Melbourne as well as Japanese universities renowned for international education such as International Christian University and Waseda University, in which I have taught courses on Japanese society and culture in English as well as in Japanese to students with diverse backgrounds including study-abroad students. I have also taught intensive undergraduate and postgraduate courses and gave special lectures on Japanese society and culture as (distinguished) visiting professor at prestigious universities such as Duke University, Birkbeck University of London, Oslo University, University of Bologna, EU Institute, University of Melbourne, University of Hawaii, Manoa, National University of Singapore and Yonsei University in South Korea.

Darren coordinates private international law at the University of Technology Sydney.  He is an Honorary Associate Professor at the Australian National University, where he teaches international commercial arbitration.

Darren has been practising law in Asia for over 25 years.  He has held senior positions in international law firms.  In 2012 he founded FitzGerald Lawyers Hong Kong, followed by FitzGerald Lawyers Australia in 2015.

FitzGerald Lawyers Hong Kong is on the panel of firms published by Australian Department of Foreign Affairs for Mainland China/Hong Kong.

Darren specialises in commercial, corporate and regulatory litigation and international arbitration.

He serves on the Alternative Dispute Resolution Committee of the Law Society of New South Wales and as member of the Rules Committee of the Australian Commercial International Commercial Arbitration Centre.

Darren is admitted to practice in Australia, Hong Kong and England & Wales.

He holds first class honours degrees in Arts (French and German literature) and Laws from the Australian National University and a Master of Law from Cambridge (first class intellectual property thesis) where he was a Chevening Scholar.

Dr. Tingting Liu serves as a Chancellor's Research Fellow and senior lecturer at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS). She used to work as a Principal Investigator (PI) on the Australian Research Council (ARC) Project titled 'New Consumer Cultures in the Global South' (DP190100727) at Western Sydney University. Additionally, between 2019 and 2024, she worked as an Associate Professor at the School of Journalism and Communication at Jinan University in Guangzhou, China.

Recognized as a leading early-career researcher in contemporary Chinese digital media and platforms, the sociology of labor, and cross-cultural communication studies, Dr. Tingting Liu's research adeptly blends cultural studies, media studies, and business studies, underpinned by rigorous ethnographic and qualitative methodologies. Her significant contributions are reflected in a consistent output of influential journal articles. As of January 2025, Liu has authored 25 Q1 articles, all indexed in either the Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI) or Arts & Humanities Citation Index (AHCI) of Web of Science, underscoring her prominent academic influence.

In addition to her individual work, Dr. Liu is actively involved in multiple high-profile national-level funding projects. In addition to the ARC Discovery Project, she leads two projects funded by the National Social Science Fund of China, focusing on the Cultural Production of Live Streaming E-Commerce in the Context of Chinese Rural Revitalization, further demonstrating her substantial role in this research field. Liu’s participation as a Partner Investigator in the ‘Moving Data Moving People’ project, funded by The Independent Research Fund in Denmark (the Danish equivalent of ARC), adds to her impressive portfolio of research engagements.

Dr. Liu boasts a diverse and dynamic engagement with both Australian and international academia. She used to work as an ARC Postdoctoral Research Fellow at The Institute for Culture and Society at Western Sydney University, Australia, and teach in the Media and Communications Department within the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences at the University of Sydney.

Beyond her academic endeavours, Liu embodies a blend of cultural diversities. She is fluent in English, Mandarin (with a hint of Taiwanese accent), Cantonese (enriching her understanding of Hong Kong popular culture), and Hakka (a skill that opened doors to anthropology by allowing her to serve as an on-site ethnographic research assistant for Professor Anne-Christine Tremon at the Université de Lausanne back in 2012). Her global engagement with digital culture and anthropology frequently positions her as an esteemed guest for international talks, podcasts, and seminars.

Her academic journey is propelled by three central goals: firstly, the commitment to documenting the lively stories of real human beings; secondly, feeding her cats, and ensuring their care through her hard work and affectionately placing them in the Acknowledgements Section of her publications; and thirdly, the aspiration to create deep, soulful friendships through engaging co-authorship on compelling and thought-provoking topics.

Nice to meet you!

Dr Caitlin Biddolph is an award-winning researcher and Lecturer in International Relations at the University of Technology Sydney (UTS), and the Course Coordinator for the UTS Master of International Relations program. Prior to this role, she was a Postdoctoral Research Fellow in Gender and Global Governance at the University of Sydney. Caitlin completed her PhD in International Relations at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), Australia, and was formerly a Research Associate with the Australian Human Rights Institute. Caitlin is an Honorary Associate with the Centre for International Security Studies at the University of Sydney, and an Associate Fellow of AdvanceHE (AFHEA).

Caitlin's primary research focuses on queering governance, international law, and transitional justice. Her doctoral research explored discourses and logics of gender, sexuality, civilisation, and violence at the International Criminal Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia (ICTY). She's currently researching transitional justice through queer decolonial perspectives. More broadly, Caitlin is interested in queer, feminist, postcolonial, and decolonial approaches to global politics.

Carolyn Cartier is Professor of Human Geography and China Studies in International Studies at the University of Technology Sydney where she teaches 'Contemporary China' and has convened the Asia Pacific Research Group. A specialist in urban China and geographical thought, she is a Founding Member of the UTS China Research Centre (2009-14) and a Founding Fellow of the Centre for China in the World at the Australian National University. As a geographer with teaching specialties in nature-socieity relations, she also teaches 'Planetary Decarbonization' for the Sustainability and Environment program.

The core of Cartier's current research concentrates in fields of human geography, cities, and China Studies. Her research funded by the Australian Research Council focuses on how China changes subnational territory to establish and transform cities through changes to the administrative divisions, establishing the concept of territorial urbanization. She received the Association of American Geographer’s China Geography Specialty Group Outstanding Service Award 2022 in recognition of this work and for ‘significantly advancing China research in and beyond the discipline through highly impactful scholarship'.

The larger ambit of Cartier's research program concerns debates in the history of urban theory, contemporary socialism in China, and the conjunctures of spatial thought and political economy. She maintains research interests in comparative Asian studies including the urban landscape and built environment, the political economy of cities and regions, and representations of the city in contemporary alternative art.

Cartier has a trans-Pacific career path in the Australia and the US. She holds the AB, MA, and PhD from the University of California, Berkeley, and continued study of Mandarin at National Taiwan University. She taught at Vassar College and the University of Oregon and was tenured in the Department of Geography at the University of Southern California. Among national service roles in the US, she served as member and co-chair of the U.S. Social Sciences Research Council International Dissertation Research Fellowship Final Decision-making Committee, supporting new and emerging research design for international doctoral research. She is a Fulbright Scholar, having held the fellowship in Hong Kong (2005-06), and maintains research interests in Hong Kong.

Committed to the priority of research design based on new ideas that advance the scholarship in combination with sustained local fieldwork, Cartier's general approach to research in Asia is theoretically-informed comparative international area studies. She supervises doctoral research on topics concerning cities, regions, territory, urban political economy, and comparative urbanization. Her advising approach supports students to pursue originality and critical significance.