People

Members
Associate members

Members

Assoc Prof Suzanne Franzway
Acting Director, RCGS

Assoc Prof Franzway has taught and researched in the areas of gender studies and sociology. Her research focus is on politics in greedy institutions and work. Projects include an ARC-funded study of women engineers, workplace culture and change, an international project on transnational labour activist networks, and a national project on care work in aged care and child care. She is the author of Sexual politics and greedy institutions: union women, commitment and conflict in public and in private (Pluto Australia, 2001). She has longstanding commitments to the South Australian Working Women's Centre, as well as other labour and women's community organisations. Her research interests include:

'greedy institutions' of work and family
labour movements
transnational labour activism networks
caring work in aged care and child care
workplace cultures
women engineers
domestic violence in the workplace.

Dr Lia Bryant

Dr Bryant is a sociologist. Her recent work has focused on questions of gender, sexuality and embodiment, and gender relations in large organisations. She has vast experience in studies on rural society. Her research interests are:

youth
rural and global labour markets
occupational health and safety
information technology
agriculture and gender relations among workers, families and community members.

Ms Elaine Butler

Central to Ms Butler's research and teaching are the dynamic inter-relationships between the changing nature, organisation and distribution of work, work-related learning, what counts as work knowledge, and why. Much of Elaine's research, consulting and academic work has investigated issues of social justice and equity, including women, work and training. Her research interests include:

post-compulsory education and training; vocational education and training (VET) policy and contexts (national/international); VET reform; VET, equity and policy
work-related learning; workplace knowledge(s)
gender, feminism and education; gender and development; approaches to gender research and analysis; inter-relationships between equity, social justice and gender
the changing nature of work; work, workers and identity/subjectivity; globalisation and work; women and work
place; approaches to place/space; knowing and doing 'place'; place making; inter-relationships between workers, work, work 'place', and work/place knowledges
qualitative research methodologies, approaches and epistemological bases; comparative cross-national research
practices of everyday life - interdisciplinary approaches
feminist, postcolonial and emergent pedagogies

Dr Donna Chung

Dr Donna Chung is the co-director of the Research and Education Unit on Gendered Violence with Dr Patrick O'Leary. She has a longstanding research interest in domestic violence, dating violence and gender inequality in heterosexual relationships. Her research has a strong applied focus, which examines how the state and the community could more effectively prevent and respond to gendered violence. In recent years, she has worked as a research consultant to the Australian Commonwealth and state governments on domestic violence policy and programs. Donna is on leave until 31 December 2009. Her research interests are:

domestic violence
homelessness
gender politics
heterosexuality and equality in relationships
sexual assault

Dr Laura Dales

Dr Laura Dales is the Acting Convenor of Japanese Studies. She lectures in the School of International Studies, here at the University of South Australia. Dr Dales' PhD research focused on feminist agency and praxis in women's groups and women's centres in Japan. Her research interests are:

gender and sexuality in contemporary Japan
feminisms in Japan and Asia
women's agency and resistance
legislative reform and gender in Japan
NGOs and activism in Asia.

Dr Jean Duruz

Dr Duruz' current research stresses the connections of food, place, identity and memory in contemporary western cultures especially as these represent engagements with meanings of 'Asia', globalisation and cosmopolitanism. Her research interests are:

cultural and feminist theory in relation to memory
identity and urban life
ethnographic approaches to documenting everyday 'lived' cultures.

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Assoc Prof Judith Gill

Judith Gill is an Associate Professor in the School of Education. After teaching high school students for ten years, she came to educational research in order to investigate gender effects and schooling. Her current research focuses on questions of power and politics as evidenced by qualitative research into young people's understandings of the world. She has maintained an interest in gender as a key dimension of social, intellectual and cultural organisation and has conducted research into the ways in which gender impacts on people's self-understanding, world vision and life choices. She is the author of Beyond the great divide: coeducation or single sex? (UNSW Press, 2004). Her research expertise includes:

gender and education; investigation of the ways in which gender continues to impact on experience and outcomes at all levels of education
women, work and lifestyles
young people and Australian citizenship.

Prof Kay Lawrence

Prof Lawrence teaches in the SA School of Art, where she supervises postgraduate students enrolled in the Master of Visual Arts and the Master of Design. Her particular interest and expertise is in the area of textiles practice and theory, especially in relation to tapestry weaving. Her research interests are:

the area of gender identity, place and representation, developed through drawing, woven tapestry and text
the position of textiles within the visual arts and craft
the development of the community tapestry movement in Australia
the development of an international network of artists writers and theorists working in the area of woven tapestry.

Dr Cassandra Loeser

Dr Cassandra Loeser works in Academic Development Research Education and is a participant in the 2009 UniSA Early Career Researcher Development Program. Dr Loeser's PhD research focused on the ways young men with hearing disabilities negotiate the everyday realms of social interaction, friendship, school, sport and recreation, and in particular how the identities of masculinity and disability are inter-related in the construction of their embodied subjectivities. Dr Loeser continues to publish from her doctoral project and is currently undertaking research on the experiences of higher degree by research students with disabilities and/or chronic illnesses. Her research interests are:

masculinities and femininities
disability and hearing disability
bodies, embodiment and affect
ethics of embodiment
post-essentialist theory
disability and higher degrees by research.

Emeritus Professor Alison Mackinnon

Prof Mackinnon is a professor of history and gender studies and also holds an honorary doctorate from the University of Umea in Sweden. She has published widely in women's history, the history of women's higher education, in historical demography and changing patterns of family formation. She is also interested in contemporary issues of family formation, fertility change, of disadvantaged girls and issues of combining work and family. Her research interests include:

women's social history
history of women's higher education
higher education and family formation
feminist and interdisciplinary perspectives on demography
feminist theory
changing relations between the sexes
academic women and restructuring
ageing in historical perspective
the changing cultures of work and responsibility in globalising societies
the politics and demography of population change and population ageing.

Dr Nicole Moulding

Dr Moulding is a qualified social worker with a background in women's health and community health. Her teaching and research interests are in the areas of gender and mental health, social exclusion and mental health and interpretive research methodology, particularly post-structural approaches. She has a particular interest in the social construction of subjectivity and the implications for mental health and well-being. Her current research interests are:

social exclusion and mental health, specifically the intersections between homelessness, gender and mental health
gender discourses structuring health care interventions for eating disorders.

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Assoc Prof Patrick O'Leary

Assoc Prof Patrick O'Leary has worked extensively with families affected by abuse and violence. Much of his work has focused on men: both men who have experienced child sexual abuse and men who use violence. His current research projects include three ARC Linkage grants, and he is also in demand outside the university, providing training, consultancy and evaluations for government and other organisations. He is the co-director of the Research and Education Unit on Gendered Violence within the School of Social Work and Social Policy. Patrick is on leave until 21 April 2010. His research focus is on:

domestic violence
men who have experienced child sexual abuse
men who use violence.

Assoc Prof Margaret Peters

Margaret Peters is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Communication, Information and New Media. Her research interests are:

socioeconomic impacts of globalisation and postmodernism on national and multinational public and private corporations
research reconceptualisations of 'Western' and 'Asian'; management paradigms, particularly knowledge management, and the impact on senior women executives
organisational communication, power, politics and ethics
sociolinguistics and cross-cultural communication
youth cultures
gender, work and organisations
work–life balance
media ethics

Professor Elspeth Probyn

Prof Probyn is Research SA Chair and Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies. Elspeth has taught media studies, sociology and literature in Canada and the US, and most recently was the Professor of Gender and Cultural Studies at the University of Sydney. As a researcher, she has specialised in the fields of gender, cultural and media studies, cultural geography and sociology. She has held visiting appointments as a Mellon Distinguished Scholar (Liberal Arts, University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign), Noted Scholar (English and Women's Studies, University of British Columbia), and invited professor (Sociology, LSE; Sociology, Goldsmiths; Geography, Edinburgh; Women's Studies, University of California, San Diego), and as a scholar at the Bellagio Rockefeller Centre. Elspeth has published several books: Sexing the self, Outside belongings, Carnal appetites, Sexy bodies and Blush: faces of shame (University of Minnesota Press, and UNSW Press, 2005) which developed an analysis of affects from a psychological and cultural perspective; and she recently co-edited Remote control, a book on media ethics, and new forms of television such as reality TV and food shows. Her forthcoming book is Taste and place (Reaktion Press, London). Her research expertise includes:

subjectivity, sexuality and bodies
ethics, the media and popular culture
cultural economics of the production and consumption of place, tourism, food and wine within a global system
youth obesity
young people and sport
the food media and girl's media cultures

Professor Rhonda Sharp

Professor Sharp's research and scholarship have straddled the interrelated areas of economics, political economy, gender studies and public policy. She has undertaken research and policy work on gender and economic issues with governments and community groups in Australia, United Kingdom, Norway, South Africa, Sri Lanka, Italy, the Basque Country, Sweden, Barbados, Samoa and the Republic of the Marshall Islands. Dr Sharp's research interests include:

gender and government budgets
gender, restructuring and globalisation
women and economic policies.

Dr Tangi Steen

Dr Steen's academic interest lies in information technology (IT) education and its uses in learning and research. Her PhD research focused on the problem solving strategies that students use when they encounter difficulties in IT. She is also interested in cultural studies of culturally and linguistically diverse people of Australia and that of the world's indigenous people. In particular, the changing social constructions of themselves as minority groups and their levels of participation in the social, political and economic processes that impact their lives. Her research interests are:

impacts of information technology on education and training of Indigenous peoples
factors that influence the use of information technology in tertiary (mainly university) learning
social diffusion of information technology and its impacts on traditional societies
representations of Indigenous knowledge in the world wide web
community radios and its role in community building

Dr Sarah Wendt

Dr Wendt is a lecturer in the School of Social Work and Social Policy. Her research expertise includes:

feminist theory and social constructivism
rural and community sociology, rurality
violence and abuse
social work theory and practice
qualitative methodologies and interpretative epistemologies.

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Associate members

Assoc Prof Dale Bagshaw

Conflict management, alternative dispute resolution (mediation, conciliation, negotiation), family mediation, managing conflict in the workplace, children and the law, child protection, children's rights, child-centred practice, domestic violence, family and child practice, social work theories and practice, gender issues, eg verbal abuse and the social construction of gender.