Centre for Post-colonial Studies people
Prof
Pal Ahluwalia
Director
Pal Ahluwalia is the Director of the Centre for
Post-Colonial Studies and also the Pro Vice Chancellor of the Division of
Education, Arts and Social Sciences.
His main teaching and research interests lie in the areas of African studies
and social and cultural theory, in particular post-colonial theory and the
processes of diaspora, exile, migration, and the complexities of identity
formation. His work is internationally renowned for breaking down
disciplinary boundaries and challenging orthodoxy. He is currently working
on a book titled Out of Africa: post-structuralism's colonial roots, to be
published by Routledge in 2007. He is the editor of three Routledge
journals: Social Identities, African Identities and Sikh Formations. He is a
Fellow of the Australian Academy of Social Sciences.
Prof Alan Mayne
Deputy Director
Alan Mayne has a Research SA Chair at the University of South
Australia, and is Professor of Social History and Social Policy in the
Hawke Research Institute for Sustainable Societies. He also
holds a Visiting Professorial Fellowship in the Centre for the Study of Law
and Governance at Jawaharlal Nehru University. His core interests revolve
around sustainable communities in urban and rural society. His publications
include Fever, squalor and vice (Brisbane, 1982), The imagined
slum (Leicester, 1993), The archaeology of urban landscapes (with
Tim Murray, Cambridge, 2001), Hill End: an historic Australian goldfields
landscape (Melbourne, 2003), Eureka: reappraising an Australian
legend (Perth, 2006), Beyond the black stump: histories of outback
Australia (Adelaide, 2008), and Building the village: a history of
Australia's Bendigo Bank (Adelaide, 2008).
Dr Danielle Every
Research Fellow
Danielle has published internationally on the language of racism, with a
focus on the ways in which discourse is managed to present oppression and
exclusion as legitimate and 'not racist'. Her doctoral thesis, The
politics of representation: a discourse analysis of refugee advocacy in the
Australian Parliament, examined discourses that challenged the
demonisation and dehumanisation of asylum seekers and refugees. The analysis
focused on constructions of the journey of asylum seekers, and constructions
of humanitarianism, racism and the Australian nation. Her thesis and later
publications investigate applications of these discourses to support refugee
advocacy and anti-racism. She is currently co-supervising an honours project
on multiculturalism, and co-writing the Australian Psychological Society's
policy statement on racism. Her methodological strengths are in critical
discourse analysis, conversation analysis and thematic qualitative analysis.
Her research interests include social inclusion, refugees and asylum
seekers, racism and anti-racism in politics, education and everyday
conversation, and multiculturalism.
Dr Lisa McDonald
Postdoctoral Research Fellow
Lisa
McDonald joins the Centre for Post-colonial Studies after recent lecturing
appointments in the Discipline of Media and the Centre for Learning and
Professional Development at the University of Adelaide. She has an enduring
association with UniSA, having spent a number of years teaching in the
School of Communication in the areas of communication studies and cultural
studies, with recent experience in the school's offshore program. Her
doctorate explored the cultural life of fertility science, an idea which has
segued into a broader interest in relations between the humanities and the
biological sciences. Current research considers recent advances in 'emergent
science', such as in the area of regenerative skin technologies, and what
these could extend in philosophies of the body. In the Centre for
Post-colonial Studies she has been engaged to consider the interplay of
multiple views and voices of ethnic communities 'online', working amid the
generative chaos of electronic infusions in everyday life. Her art practice
is situated within photo arts and digital media areas, but spillage is good.
Ian Goodwin-Smith
Affiliate
Ian Goodwin-Smith comes to the Centre for Post-colonial Studies with a long-standing belief in the utility of postcolonial theory as a political tool. For Ian, post-colonial theory offers a chance for a meaningful and progressive engagement and agency that reclaims the important political referents of structure and identity. It is through post-colonial theory that Ian thinks on the progressive Left side of the ideas debate, and it is through a progressive Left orientation that Ian thinks through post-colonial theory. Overall that thought process is one of charting new theoretical directions for progressive politics and social policy. But that's not an abstract process: as Ian says, 'if you're not talking to policy, you might as well pack up and go home'.