Jessica Balanzategui is Associate Professor in Media and Cinema in the School of Media and Communication. She is an Australian Research Council (ARC) Industry Fellow researching young people's streaming media cultures and industries, and she leads an ARC Discovery Project on how children and young people engage with 'gamble-play' media. Jessica is founding lead of the RMIT-based, multi-institutional Streaming Industries and Genres Network (SIGN). She is Founding and Chief Editor of Amsterdam University Press's book series, Horror and Gothic Media Cultures.

Jessica's research on the interface between technological and industrial transformation and entertainment cultures has been widely published in the leading international journals in her field, including New Media and Society, Convergence, The Journal of Visual Culture, Television and New Media, Celebrity Studies, International Journal of Cultural Studies, and The Journal of Cinema and Media Studies.

Jessica's speciality is the intersection between screen cultures and technological and industrial transformation, currently focusing on streaming media and platforms. A longstanding focus of Jessica's research is screen genres for and about children - particularly those that trouble expectations and definitions of "child appropriateness" - and challenging or controversial genres like horror, crime, and the Gothic. As part of these areas of specialty, her research illuminates how genre, storytelling, and aesthetics operate in digital cultures, such as video sharing platforms like YouTube and TikTok, subscription video on demand services like Netflix and other streaming video services, and online scary storytelling cultures. In tandem, Jessica researches the impacts of technological, industrial, and cultural change on screen genres and their audiences, including child audiences.

Her research has contributed to Parliamentary Inquiries and other policy consultations, and the industry strategies of national arts, culture and media organisations. She often curates and leads public events in partnership with organisations such as the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art and the Australian Centre for the Moving Image.

Her ARC Fellowship project, "Enhancing Discoverability of Australian Children's TV in the Streaming Era", examines how children and young people use streaming video platforms to access entertainment content. The research is designed to inform new industry, policy and cultural solutions to improve young people's access to quality, local and age-appropriate screen content in the streaming era. The work is conducted in partnership with the Australian Children's Television Foundation and the Australian Centre of the Moving Image.

Her ARC Discovery project, "Understanding Children’s Mobile Gamble-Play Cultures: Gateways to Gambling", aims to minimize the harms involved in children's access to gambling by developing an understanding of how Australian children use mobile phones to engage in "gamble-play". It will generate a new evidence base to inform evolving regulation around children and gambling, and to improve child and parent literacies about the ways mobile media content introduces children to gambling-like play behaviours.

Jessica is the author or co-editor of 5 books, including: 

-Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres and Intergenerational Viewing: Family Watch Together TV (with Baker and Sandars, Routledge 2023)

-Monstrous Beings and Media Cultures: Folk Monsters, Im/materiality and Regionality (with Craven, Amsterdam UP, 2023)

-The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema: Ghosts of Futurity at the Turn of the Twenty-first Century (Amsterdam University Press, 2018): freely available online via OAPEN after being selected for open-access publication by the "Knowledge Unlatched Select" scheme.

Jessica's other grant-supported interdisciplinary projects include:

- a partnership with the Australian Centre for Contemporary Art to cultivate new public understandings of and experiences with the horror genre by staging an experimental multi-site public program

- a project on the futures of cinema exhibition with Village Roadshow that considered the rise of the immersive entertainment experience and entertainment destination

- an examination of how digital technologies are reshaping how children play combining perspectives from media and child development studies.

Jessica welcomes applications from prospective PhD students in cinema and screen, digital cultures, and childhood studies.

Industry Experience:

Lead Organiser/Chief Investigator with ACCA - "Screams on Screen" multi-site public programs (2024) 
Chief Investigator - Australian Children's Television Cultures (funded by ACTF, 2021-24)
Chief Investigator - Scene Hunter and Film Language, New Technology (funded by Village Roadshow)
Regular popular culture critic and film/TV reviewer - ABC
Lead Organiser - Mapping Global Horror: Australia, Japan & beyond, ACMI 

Research awards include:

The Australian Film Institute Research Collection Fellowship, 2020 

Outstanding Researcher (Early Career), Swinburne University of Technology, 2019

Dean's Award for Emerging Researcher, Swinburne University of Technology, 2018

OAPEN/Knowledge Unlatched Select Open Access Publication Award for The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema, 2018

Teaching awards include:

Australian Awards for University Teaching Excellence Citation, Australian Awards for University Teaching (2021)

Adobe Teaching Innovation Grant, "Making Media that Thinks", RMIT University (2023)

Adobe Teaching Innovation Grant: Learning By Doing,Digital Paratexts, Swinburne Univeristy of Technology (2022)

Vice-Chancellor's Award for Teaching Excellence, Swinburne University of Technology (2021)

Faculty of Health, Arts, and Design Teaching Excellence Award, Swinburne University of Technology (2020)

Dr Daniel Binns is a tinkerer-theorist exploring creative technologies’ impact on storytelling and media cultures. A leading scholar on digital creativity and media practices, Daniel has published on Netflix documentary style, drones and game engines in filmmaking, and the evolution of media genres including the war film and superhero media; his two monographs to date are The Hollywood War Film (2017) and Material Media-Making in the Digital Age (2021). Daniel's creative practice background includes screenwriting, directing, and producing for Seven Network, TV2, Fox Sports and National Geographic, and his work has featured in over 20 international festivals and streaming platforms.

Daniel served as Program Director and Studios Coordinator for the Bachelor of Communication (Media) between 2017 and 2023.

Shelley is an Associate Professor.

She is the Program Manager for the BA (Music Industry) degree, and the 'Approaches to Popular Culture' minor.

As a popular music ethnomusicologist, Shelley focuses on ethnographic approaches to examining music cultures in Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Many of her academic publications can be found in RMIT's Research Repository, including the books Made in Australia and Aotearoa/New Zealand: Studies in Popular Music (with G.Stahl Routledge, 2018), and Popular Music and Parenting (with L.Giuffre Routledge, 2023), which concerns the shared experiences of listening, media engagement, and music participation between caregivers and young children. She speaks about this latter topic in her podcast "Music Mothers and Others" co-hosted with Liz Giuffre (University of Technology Sydney) and broadcast on Sydney's 2SERfm and musicmothersandothers.com. Her show was a finalist in the 2021 CBAA Community Radio Awards in the category 'Excellence in Innovative Programming and Content', which recognises innovative programming or content initiatives that gives a platform to music, ideas, or concepts not normally addressed by traditional media outlets and connects deeply with its audience.

Shelley's creative musical practice is varied. She is a retired cellist and chorister, and performed as a guitarist, keyboardist and singer in bands during the 1990s–2000s, before performing Javanese gamelan (‘Puspawarna Gamelan’) and Japanese taiko ('ODaiko') from 2008–2012 in New Zealand. Shelley now plays regularly in Australia as a member of the Balinese Gamelan ensemble Gamelan DanAnda.

Shelley recently completed The Encore Project with Catherine Strong and Fabian Canizzo. Encore is an Australian research and industry intervention initiative, funded by the Australian Government's National Careers Institute, and conducted in partnership with the Victorian Music Development Office (VMDO), the Australasian Performing Right Association and the Australasian Mechanical Copyright Owners Society (APRA AMCOS), and the Australian Music Centre. Encore aims to help women and gender non-conforming music industry workers restart their careers after a career break. Through focus groups and interviews with music industry workers from Victoria, Australia, the project team developed the Encore Training Package and delivered a pilot trial of the training. The Package has been made freely available to the Australian music industry through its industry partners, helping women and gender non-conforming people to plan their career breaks with confidence and community support.

One of Shelley's principal research interests is Japan’s popular music world. She continues to work on a long-running project that examines identity, community and nationalism in the annual NHK Red and White Song Contest (Kōhaku Utagassen) – a live television program that can be loosely described as “Japan’s Eurovision Song Contest”. Shelley has conducted fieldwork at the rehearsals in Tokyo on numerous occasions since 2000, including 2013-14 and 2019-2020 as a two-time recipient of the Japan Foundation 'Japanese Studies Fellowship', and other competitive research grants. One of Shelley's representative publications about the contest can be found in the book Made in Japan: Studies in Japanese Popular Music (Routledge, Mitsui, 2015). Her Bloomsbury 33 1/3 Japan book, "Kōhaku Utagassen: The Red and White Song Contest", is currently under review.

Shelley is an experienced public speaker on Japanese popular music topics for English language media commentary. In addition to song contests, she examines holographic televised song performances as well as ‘posthumous duets’ (where a living singer is paired with a deceased singer generated by digital means). She has presented talks in Japan at Tokyo University of the Arts, Kyoto Seika University, Hosei University Research Centre for Intercultural Studies in Tokyo, and Kansai University in Osaka, among others. More locally, she has presented a seminars for The Japan Foundation, Sydney. Her research about Japanese popular music has been quoted in international media outlets and she was profiled on NHK Japanese TV in a special programme about the 60th edition of the Red and White Song Contest ("Kōhaku A to Z").

Rob Cover is Professor of Digital Communication and Director of the RMIT Digital Ethnography Research Centre. 

He leads a number of major funded research projects on digital harms, young people and wellbeing, and gender/sexuality diversity in screen contexts. The author of around one hundred journal articles and chapters, he publishes widely on topics related to digital cultures in the context of social identities, young people, suicide prevention and resilience. 

His recent books include:

• Queer Youth Suicide, Culture and Identity: Unliveable Lives? (Routledge 2012)
• Vulnerability and Exposure: Footballer Scandals, Masculinity and Ethics (UWAP Scholarly 2015)
• Digital Identities: Creating and Communicating the Online Self (Elsevier 2016)
• Emergent Identities: New Sexualities, Gender and Relationships in a Digital Era (Routledge, 2019)
• Flirting in the Era of #MeToo: Negotiating Intimacies (with A Bartlett and K Clarke; Palgrave 2019)
• Population, Mobility and Belonging: Understanding Population Concepts in Media, Culture and Society (Routledge 2020),
• Fake News in Digital Cultures (with A Haw and JD Thompson, Emerald 2022)
• Identity and Digital Communication: Concepts, Theories, Practices (Routledge 2023)
• Identity in the COVID-19 Years: Communication, Crisis, and Ethics (Bloomsbury 2024)
• Queer Memory and Storytelling: Gender and Sexually-Diverse Identities and Trans-Media Narrative (with R Prosser, Routledge 2024). 
• Australian Queer Screens: Diversity and Social Change in Film and TV (with W Monaghan, S Richards, S McKinnon, T Pym, Bloomsbury 2026).

He is a co-editor of the following anthologies and encylopedias:

• Youth, Sexuality and Sexual Citizenship (Routledge 2019),
• Queer Studies and Education: An International Reader (Oxford University Press, 2024)
• The Routledge Handbook of Sexuality, Gender, Health and Rights (Routledge 2024).
• The Elgar Encyclopedia of Queer Studies (Elgar 2025).
  
  His industry experience includes as a Communication strategist for the Queensland Government (2006-2007), regular consultancy work with the Western Australian, Victorian and Commonwealth Governments in Australia, and with the Hong Kong Council of Social Services, among others.
  
  

Dr Katrin (Kate) Gerber is an end-of-life researcher with a PhD in Psychology with over a decade of experience in working at the intersection of creative methods, mental health and end-of-life research. She is a first generation migrant, LGBT advocate, feminist, and environmentalist. 

As an international scholarship recipient, she completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne on end-of-life decision making. She has since researched and taught topics related to ageing, end-of-life care and mental health at the University of Melbourne, the University of Tasmania, Queensland University of Technology and the National Ageing Research Institute before joining RMIT University in 2024. She is now exploring the role of digital media and AI on grief and end-of-life legacy making. In acknowledgement of her work, she was nominated for a National Palliative Care Award as an emerging researcher in 2019. She received a 2021 Robert Helme Award for Achievement of Excellence in Research and 2025 Research Innovation Award from the School of Media and Communication. Her passion for death studies stems from her work as a hospice volunteer and her personal experience as an end-of-life family caregiver.

Catherine Gomes is a Professor in RMIT's School of Media and Communication. Catherine is an ethnographer who is internationally known for her work in three interrelated areas: 

a) communication, culture and identity

b) international student wellbeing

c) transient migrant(ions)

Catherine is a specialist on the Asia-Pacific with Australia and Singapore being significant fieldwork sites. Her current work on Singapore covers food heritage and platform economies. Catherine has also written about gender and audience reception in Chinese cinemas, and multiculturalism in Singapore cinema.

Catherine is a recipient of an Australian Research Council Discovery Early Career Researcher (DECRA) in 2013-2016. She is the 2021 recipient of the A Noam Chomsky Global Connections Shining Star Research Achievement Award for her book Parallel Societies of International Students in Australia: Connections, Connections and Disconnections (Routledge, 2022).

Catherine has held Visiting Research Fellowships at the Singapore Management University, Nanyang Technological University and Universiti Brunei Darussalam. She has received funding from the Australian Research Council, Australian Digital Health Agency, Study Melbourne, National Foundation for Australia-China Relations (NFACR), Universities Australia, Nanyang Technological University ( CoHASS Incentive Grant Scheme), Singapore's Ministry of Education AcRF Tier 1 grant), just to name a few. 

Industry Experience:
Professional interests-
Co-Convener, Mobilities, Migrations and Diverse Communities research group
National Scientific Convener and Member, ISANA: International Education Association
Member, National Academy of International Education, Institute of International Education (New York)
Member, International Education Association of Australia
International Affiliate, International and Comparative Education, Universiti Brunei Darussalam
Founding Editor, Migration, Culture and Communication in Migrant Societies (Amsterdam University Press)

-Journal contributions
(Founding Editor) Transitions: Journal of Transient Migration
(Advisory and Editorial boards) Journal of Sociology, Journal of International Students, International Journal of Bias, Identity and Diversities in Education

-Past
Ethnicity and Race in a Changing World: A Review Journal, University of Manchester
Aedificamus: The Queen's Journal, Queen's College, University of Melbourne

Advisory boards
Meld Magazine
International Education Task Force, Morgan State University
Study Abroad and International Students SIG, Comparative & International Education Society

-Accomplishments / achievements / awards

DSC Award for Research Excellence in Graduate Research Leadership (2024)
Dean's Award for Engagement and Impact (2022)
A. Noam Chomsky Global Connections Shining Star Research Achievement Award (2021)

Visiting Professor, Universiti Brunei Darussalam (2020)
Visiting CLASS Scholar (Nanyang Technological University, 2018)
Australian Research Council DECRA Research Fellow, 2013-2016
Visiting Research Fellow (Singapore Management University)
RMIT Teaching Award for teaching a diverse student body, 2012
College of Design and Social Context Teaching Excellence Award for Teaching Large Classes, 2011

Professor Daniel X. Harris is a leading international scholar in creativity, diversity and social change.

They were most recently an Australian Research Council Future Fellow (2017-2023), RMIT Vice Chancellor's Primary Research Fellow (2017-2022), ARC DECRA Fellow (2014-2016), and the recipient of 4 other ARC DPs and LPs. The are currently Professor in the School of Education and founder and Director of Creative Agency research lab: https://www.rmit.edu.au/about/schools-colleges/education/research/creative-agency and at: www.creativeresearchhub.com.

Harris is editor of the book series Creativity, Education and the Arts (Palgrave), and has authored over 140 academic articles/book chapters and 22 books, as well as plays, films and spoken word performances.

Their research focuses on creativity at both practice and policy levels; on cultural, sexual and gender diversities; and on performance and activism. They are committed to the power of collaborative creative practice and social justice research to inform social change. Harris is most widely known for their scholarship in creativity studies, affect theory and autoethnography.

Dan has over 25 years of experience in education (both secondary and tertiary), as well as 35 years of professional creative industries experience in playwriting, performance, multimedia production, dramaturgy and theatre company management, highlighting their history of interdisciplinarity and skills in translating between the academy and industry.

Professor Nicola Henry is Deputy Director of the Social Equity Research Centre at RMIT University. She is a socio-legal scholar with over 25 years research experience in the gender-based violence field. Her research, focusing on the prevalence, nature and impacts of online and offline sexual abuse, has had a significant impact on law, policy and educational reform in Australia and internationally. Nicola is a member of the Australian Office of the eSafety Commissioner’s Expert Advisory Group. She regularly provides advice to technology companies to help shape their policies and practices around sexual violence and harmful online content. She was Expert Advisor on the development of the eSafety Office’s image-based abuse portal as well as the award-winning eSafety Women: Online Training for Frontline Workers.

Nicola's ARC Future Fellowship project (2021-25) examined the role of digital tools, services and platforms for detecting, preventing and responding to image-based sexual abuse. She is leading two Google-funded projects, including one involving a survey on image-based sexual abuse in ten different countries, and the other investigating the prevalence, nature and harms of AI-generated image-based sexual abuse (also known as “deepfake pornography”). She was also a Chief Investigator on several projects on alternative reporting options for sexual assault survivors (led by Prof. Georgina Heydon, RMIT), and is working in collaboration with La Trobe University on a sexual violence prevention project (led by Prof. Leesa Hooker, LTU).

Nicola's books include: War and Rape: Law, Memory and Justice (2011: Routledge); Preventing Sexual Violence: Interdisciplinary Approaches to Overcoming a Rape Culture (2014: Palgrave Macmillan; co-edited with A. Powell); Rape Justice: Beyond the Criminal Law (2015: Palgrave Macmillan; co-edited with A. Powell & A. Flynn); Sexual Violence in a Digital Age (2017: Palgrave Macmillan; co-authored with A. Powell); Image-Based Sexual Abuse: A Study of the Causes and Consequences of Non-Consensual Nude or Sexual Imagery (2021: Routledge; co-authored with C. McGlynn, A. Flynn, K. Johnson, A. Powell & A. Scott); and The Emerald Handbook on Technology-Facilitated Violence and Abuse (2021: Emerald; co-edited with J. Bailey & A. Flynn). She has published peer-reviewed articles in journals such as Computers in Human Behavior, Violence Against Women, Trauma, Violence, and Abuse, Gender & Society, and The Journal of Interpersonal Violence.

Nicola completed her PhD at the University of Melbourne in Criminology in 2005; a Masters of Arts in Political Science in 2000; and a Bachelor of Arts (First Class Hons) in 1997.

Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth is a digital ethnographer, socially-engaged artist and Australian Research Council (ARC) Future Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University. Hjorth has two decades experience leading mobile media projects to explore innovative methods around intergenerational connection, intimacy, games, play, ageing, loss and death in the Asia-Pacific region (Japan, South Korea, China and Australia). Hjorth’s Future Fellowship explores mobile media mourning rituals. She is an advisory board member for the international death online research network, DORS, and CI on the SSHRC (Social Science and Humanities Research Council, Canada) international network, Aging in Data (hosted by Concordia).

Hjorth has a strong track record in research leadership and has received over $8 million in grants in Australia and internationally. She has worked with many industry partners including Intel and Australian Centre for Moving Image (ACMI), and has successfully been CI on seven Australian Research Council (ARC) grants (3DPs, 1FT and 3LP), Young and Well CRC, CoE Cultural and Creative Industries (CCI), as well as numerous arts funding and fellowships including Australian Council for the Arts New Media fellowship, Japan Foundation, Brain Korea fellowship, Asialink arts residency and Australia Council Tokyo studio.

Hjorth has extensive experience in research leadership positions. From 2017-2022, Hjorth was the director of the university-wide Design & Creative Practice ECP Platform. From 2013-2015 she was Deputy Dean of Research & Innovation in the School of Media & Communication, RMIT University. With Prof Heather Horst she established the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (DERC) in 2011.

Edward Hurcombe is a Senior Lecturer and ARC DECRA Fellow in the School of Media and Communication, RMIT. Edward researches how news and journalistic practice are transforming in relation to the technologies, economies, and user cultures of social media platforms. He is interested in both the challenges and possibilities emerging from these transformations: from tackling malicious actors on platforms, to locating new kinds of socially-positive digital journalism. 

His ARC DECRA project (DE250100115) investigates how journalist influencers are reshaping news to reach and build trust with young adult audiences.

Seth Keen is an academic and media professional with decades of experience in film, video screen production, and digital media. As a Lecturer and Internship Coordinator in the RMIT Media Program, he connects students with industry opportunities and helps organisations use media technologies to tell visual stories. Seth's professional work includes documentaries, short films, experimental videos, interactive media, and software development. His projects consistently aim to share knowledge and create connections between research, communities, and audiences.

View Full Portfolio on LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/sethkeen/

Professor - Creative Practice / Education

Linda Knight specialises in critical and speculative arts and draws on 40 years of scholarship and art practice to create transdisciplinary projects concerned with social and critical futures in the urban context. Current projects explore more-than-human citizenships, urban play, and the potential of art practice to contribute to contemporary critical concerns.
Using drawing and critical stitching, Linda devised Inefficient Mapping to explore the possibilities of experimental cartographies as a reparative practice via projects that examine mainstream counter-narratives of colonial histories. Linda’s expertise is evidenced by an international profile as an award-winning, exhibiting artist and theorist, with 92 exhibitions and creative works and over 50 scholarly publications.

Linda is the Founder and Director of the RMIT Mapping Future Imaginaries research network, a global community of researchers, industry specialists, educators, and Postgraduate students working in futures-focused spaces and interested in the future possibilities of our world. Activities and outputs include the Making Connection: Mapping Creative Encounters festival, a collective exhibition and resource, and an interactive framework for fostering community connection.

Linda is a lead researcher on two ARC Discovery projects worth AU$1.4M, both of which involve tangible embodied interface design to enable play and intergenerational connection.



Linda was a co-founding member of Guerrilla Knowledge Unit, a transdisciplinary education plug-in that critically explores the conventions of Artificial Intelligence, coding, and algorithmic diversity to develop curated installations that enable young children to experiment with emergent technologies, AI, and coding.

Linda was also a co-founder of #FEAS Feminist Educators Against Sexism, an arts activist collective that uses irreverence, comedy, and arts interventions to challenge and call out sexism in academia.

Tania Lewis is an RMIT Professor in the School of Media and Communication and Social Change Symposium Chair for the College of Design and Social Context.

Formerly the Director of the Digital Ethnography Research Centre (2018-2022) at RMIT, she has a background in cultural studies, sociology and American studies, and was a medical doctor in a former life.

Over the past couple of decades, her research has been concerned with the politics of lifestyle, sustainability and consumption, including a growing focus on everyday social practices and digital devices, platforms and media. She has conducted a wide range of empirical research including video ethnographic studies of sustainability and cafés, household hard waste upcycling, backyard permaculture and digital ethnographic research on lifestyle migration and remote work from home.

Tania has published over 100 journal articles, book chapters and reports while her most recent book, Digital Food: From Paddock to Platform (Bloomsbury 2020), was the first monograph to engage with the politics and culture of everyday digital food practices, from culinary livestreaming to automated and digitised food labour.

Tania has written and co-authored a number of other books including Digital Ethnography: Principles and Practices (Sage); Smart Living: Lifestyle Media and Popular Expertise (Peter Lang), and Telemodernities: Television and Transforming Lives in Asia (Duke University Press), and has edited collections on Ethical Consumption, Green Asia, Lifestyle Media in Asia and TV Transformations.

She is on the editorial and advisory boards of: Cultural Studies, Media International Australia, Food and Society: New Directions, (Book Series, Bristol University Press), Media, Culture and Social Change in Asia (Book Series, Routledge) and Continuum: Journal of Media & Cultural Studies

Tania has worked as a doctor in New Zealand and has held five competitive national and international Fellowships. She has taught and conducted research in a range of disciplinary contexts including media and communication studies, sociology, cultural studies, public health, education, and American Studies.

Her previous positions include:

• Senior Vice Chancellor's Fellow, School of Media and Communication, RMIT University
• Charles La Trobe Research Fellow, School of Humanities and Social Sciences, La Trobe University, Melbourne.
• R. D. Wright Fellow, Faculty of Medicine, University of Melbourne.
• Visiting Fellow, Institute for Advanced Studies of the Humanities, University of Edinburgh.
• Postdoctoral Research Fellow, Faculty of Education, Monash University.
• Visiting Scholar, Institute for Comparative Culture, Sophia University, Tokyo.
• Lecturer, Media and Communications Program, University of Melbourne.
• Doctor working in medicine, surgery and psychiatry in NZ (1990-1994)
  
  

I am a digital sociologist interested in how devices and apps are embedded in everyday life. I ask critical questions about our interactions with digital media, and the corporate and institutional interests served by these interactions. I also take these concerns into my teaching. From 2025, I am teaching digital communication courses where I focus on giving undergraduates critical and practical tools to communicate in unstable digital environments.

My background is in self-tracking technologies (Fitbits and similar devices): the history and use of which were the focus of my PhD (awarded 2020, Monash University). Since then, I have worked with young people and government departments to untangle practices (some digital) of engaging with public services, and have expanded this into a wider interest in youth civic engagement. I have also examined how digital technologies and automation have impacted the construction industry, and explored digital communities related to digital health (reddit groups, e-pharmacy).

I will be available as an Associate Supervisor for higher degree by research projects in late 2025.

Prior to my appointment at RMIT worked at Monash University (2017-2024), where I also completed my PhD (Sociology) in 2020. My undergraduate and honours studies (2012-2015) were undertaken at the University of Tasmania.

Dr Caitlin McGrane is Research Fellow in the School of Media & Communication at RMIT University. She is currently Research Fellow on two collaborative ARC-funded projects led by Distinguished Professor Larissa Hjorth and Professor Ingrid Richardson. The Museum Digital Social Futures project is a Linkage partnership between RMIT, ACMI and AMaGA that investigates digital-social co-creation between museums and their audiences. The Ageing in and through Data project is a Discovery study that investigates how older adults are incorporating technology into their ageing-in-place practices. Dr McGrane also sits on the board of the charity Digital Rights Watch, an organisation that works to ensure fairness, freedoms and fundamental rights for all people who engage in the digital world.

Dr McGrane's research explores gender, identity, technology and everyday life. She is particularly interested in how gender-based digital harms are experienced and resisted in quotidian ways. She has previously worked in the not-for-profit sector as a gendered online harassment prevention practitioner and researcher. 

James studies how media institutions adapt to digital infrastructures, with a focus on personalisation, recommendation, and the public value of news. He works at the intersection of media and telecommunications policy and journalism studies, combining conceptual development with empirical research on news recommendation, regulatory reform, and digital infrastructure.

James holds an ARC Future Fellowship investigating the implications of personalised news distribution. James has published over 45 journal articles, book chapters and reports on the above topics and continues to regularly publish work in leading media and communication journals. His most recent book is Digital Platforms and the Press (Intellect). His research has been supported by the Australian Research Council, Meta, the International Association of Privacy Professionals, and the Australian Communications Consumer Action Network.

Dr Postill is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Media and Communication