Humanities, Languages and Social Science research students
The School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science supports a vibrant and productive research culture. Our research students are at the heart of this, working in a diverse range of specialist fields from rock art to cultural sociology and producing high-impact research that makes a difference to people and communities. Explore some of their projects and research interests below.
PhD students
Hannah Adler
Hannah’s research project is interdisciplinary across health communication and health sociology, focusing on the mediatisation of medicinal cannabis in Australia and the impact this has on both the medical community and patients. To do this, Hannah is adopting a mixed-method approach for her thesis and will be investigating the patient perspective and medical community perspective separately, through a narrative lens. Her study also draws on traditional and emerging media theories through a media content analysis. She is supervised by Dr. Monique Lewis and Professor Barbara Pini. Hannah is interested in health communication more broadly and the role media plays in shaping public perception and political action for healthcare related issues.
Research/teaching interests
Media Studies; Public Relations; Health Sociology; Communications.
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Carl Anacin
Carl is PhD candidate on the Gold Coast campus, researching Filipino musicians’ translocality in Australia. His qualitative research explores how Filipino musicians negotiate their identity and their situatedness as migrants in the multicultural and creative Australia. Research interests include music, globalization, migration, social media and interdisciplinary studies. Recent publications include ‘Beyond Hedonism: Clubbing and Millennials’ in Rethinking Filipino Millennials: Alternative Perspectives on a Misunderstood Generation (edited by Jayeel Cornelio, UST Press, 2020), 'Mimicking the Mimics: Problematizing Cover Performance of Filipino Local Music on Social Media' (with David Baker and Andy Bennett, Media, Culture & Society, 2021), and 'I lost a gig ‘pero ok lang’: Filipino Migrant Musicians in Australia during the COVID-19 Pandemic' (Perfect Beat, 2021). Carl is also a practicing musician and a community radio host in Queensland.
Research/teaching interests
Research Methods; Sociology; Cultural Studies; Philippine History; Geography; Social Science.
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Megan Anning
Megan's research interests focus on postmodern (or post postmodern) writing techniques in the realm of life writing. She enjoys playing with intertextuality as she weaves her own life stories into history using palimpsest, pastiche and other experimental approaches to create stories which exist at the intersection of truth and fiction. Furthermore, she draws upon the vast seam of literature in the Bohemian tradition, beginning in 1800s Paris, as well as French feminist perspectives, to create her textual tapestry. With a keen interest in literature that deals with art and artists' lives, and a focus on West End in the mid-2000s, Megan's writing-as-research project constitutes an exploration of the boundaries between art, life and text.
Research/teaching interests
Creative Writing; Life writing; Bohemianism; Ecriture feminine; Automatic Writing; Intertextuality.
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Rafael de Azeredo
Rafael's current research project is concerned with how temporally restrictive migration regimes influence the experiences and daily lives of contemporary migrants in Australia. As part of this project, he is conducting ethnographic research with Brazilian immigrants in Southeast Queensland to uncover their stories of (im)permanence in Australia. Rafael is a member of the coordinating committee of AILASA - Association of Iberian and Latin American Studies of Australasia - and a sessional lecturer and researcher at Griffith University.
Research/teaching interests
Sociology of migration; Cultural studies; Brazilian diaspora; International Relations.
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Alexandra Block
Alexandra's current research project canvases the multiple roles that music plays in regional migrant’ resettlement in Australia: in migrant' inclusion in regional communities, economy, migrant' management of cultural belonging and well-being. Alexandra’s interests include migration and art policies, migrant cultural capital and creative economies, popular music and regional development. Alexandra is a member of the Regional Music Research Group.
Research/teaching interests
Popular Music and Social Changes; Music and Migration.
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Clare Burnett
Clare is an award-winning journalist, predominantly working at independent industry publications during her 10-year career. Her PhD research explores nineteenth-century Australian newspapers and the publishing and literary networks which circulated fiction and news content throughout the globe during this period. Her interdisciplinary study is located at the intersection between cultural studies, the Gothic mode within literature and publishing history. Her research aims to reassess the role of British publishing houses in Australian literary history, explore editorial decision making and further digital methodologies within the humanities.
Research/teaching interests
Literary Studies; Publishing History; Cultural Studies; Digital Humanities.
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Salvador Cantellano
Salvador's project 'Documentary filmmaking in an age of crisis: climate change, communication and the potential of community-engaged practice', delivers an exegesis and a creative product in the form of an original documentary film project. The research focuses primarily on Salvador's personal filmmaking process, experimenting with different collaboration models and evaluates their application in the storytelling process to help co-design new narratives. The objective of this research is to gain new insights that will help storytellers to create engaging original content that supports action on climate change.
Research/teaching interests
Digital Content Production; Design; Communications; Digital Storytelling.
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Lauren Chalk
Lauren is a PhD candidate. Her project 'Representing Reggaeton' explores cultural heritage stakeholders and practices related to the Afro-Caribbean popular music genre, reggaeton. Her interests include unpacking the role that museums, archives and galleries play in the delivery of cultural and social justice outcomes.
Research/teaching interests
Social Science; Cultural Studies.
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Tonia Chalk
Tonia Chalk is a Budjari woman from Southwest Queensland. She is a Griffith University PhD candidate in the School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Science. Her PhD examines eleven inquests of death files of Aboriginal females that occurred during the late 19th and early 20th centuries in Queensland, through the lens of the file’s discursive practices and colonial references. Her research also provides a new way of thinking about inquests in Queensland, and about the archival record in Aboriginal family stories, including her own family.
Research/teaching interests
Archives, Queensland Aboriginal History and laws, Inquests, Aboriginal women, coronial investigations, settler colonialism
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Thom Combe
Thom is a PhD candidate on the Gold Coast campus. Thom's thesis is an intellectual history project, which traces the influence of technology on political thought during the European Enlightenment.
Research/teaching interests
History; Social Science; Sociology.
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Miriam Deprez
Miriam’s research looks at critical approaches to photojournalism and the visual politics of conflict. Miriam’s work draws on her background in journalism which focused on human rights, (post)conflict zones and geopolitics. Miriam has reported from Europe, Russia, South East Asia, Pacific Islands, regional Australia and the Middle East where she worked as an editor and freelancer. Her current research and practice centres on collaborative and rights-based journalism approaches that promote co-creative storytelling practices. Her co-supervisors are Dr Kasun Ubayasiri and Dr Samid Suliman.
Research/teaching interests
Visual politics; Photography; Journalism; Security; Human rights.
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Ida Stevia Diget
Ida is a PhD candidate based at the Nathan campus. Her research investigates accessibility and cross-translatability in polysemiotic public health communication about COVID-19 and influenza. Ida has a background in linguistics and cognitive semiotics. She has experience with sessional teaching, running the tutorials for 3403LHS in 2020 and 2021.
Research/teaching interests
Translation; Speech pathology; Neurolinguistics; L1 acquisition; Gender theory; Queer theory.
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Tiehong Feng
Tiehong is a PhD candidate. His research is situated in the cross-disciplinary space of History and Critical Heritage Studies. His project is to research the history of a World Heritage Site (Lushan National Park) in China, specifically, one town (Kuling) within it, and the ways in which people in that town use that space. And it focuses on the interaction between Chinese and Western cultures that occurred in Kuling about a century ago and reflects on the contemporary value of this World Heritage Site.
Research/teaching interests
Architecture; History; Cultural Heritage; Social Science.
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Kai Grant
Kai is researching the concepts of free speech and academic freedom in the context of higher education institutions in Australia. Within this, examining how those two concepts are discursively constructed in order to understand their impacts on higher education institutions, their students, their staff, and the public. As a result of this approach, also examining the validity of the claim – and its ongoing discussion – that there is a 'free speech crisis' in Australian higher education. Kai's research interests lie broadly in the political science field, and how language is used as a constructive force in international relations.
Research/teaching interests
Security studies; Discourse analysis; International relations; Political science; Academic writing.
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Hana Hamilton
Hana's research project is evaluating an experimental approach to language revitalisation to create community-centred Indigenous language learning materials. To do this she is working collaboratively with an Australian Indigenous language community and is supervised by Dr Susana Eisenchlas and Dr Sam Rarrick. Her interests include the ethics and quality of endangered language research, as well as sociolinguistics more generally.
Research/teaching interests
Sociolinguistics; General Linguistics; Intercultural Communications.
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Indyana Horobin
Indyana is an HDR candidate with a focus on modern history and creative writing, including familial oral histories told in memoir. Major themes include war, family trauma, and generational storytelling. Indyana has published in Talent Implied (2019 and 2020), Drunken Boat’s 2020 anthology Meridian, and contributed as a librettist in the New Opera Workshop 2019, the opera performance dedicated to the late Stan Lee.
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Rose Hunter
Rose Hunter is the author of various books of poetry, most recently the memoir in verse, Body Shell Girl (Spinifex Press, 2022). As part of her creative industries PhD, “Writing Alcoholism Recovery: Towards a Theory of the Memoir in Verse,” she will complete a memoir-in-verse manuscript about her own recovery from alcoholism. Her main research interests are the verse memoir form and alcoholism and addiction recovery modalities, including twelve-step groups. Supervisors: Dr Stuart Cooke (principal), and Dr Sally Breen (associate).
Research/teaching interests
Creative writing; Autobiographical writing; Memoir; Poetry; Alcoholism and addiction recovery; Twelve-step groups.
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Elise Imray Papineau
Elise is an ethnographer whose work is profoundly enmeshed in activist praxis. Her current research focuses on women engaged in grassroots activism in Australia, Indonesia, and the Philippines, exploring gendered community politics, creative strategies of resilience and the role of DIY. She completed her M.Sc. in Anthropology at the University of Montreal having researched Muslim Punk in Indonesia. She is a strong for advocate for radical pedagogy and contributes to local social justice causes through DIY projects. She is supervised by Professor Andy Bennett and Dr Christine Feldman-Barrett.
Research/teaching interests
Social Anthropology; Cultural Studies.
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Maryline Kassab
Mia Kassab is a PhD candidate in screen studies specialising in feminist action cinema, with a background in epic film and ancient history (Mphil, QUT, B.A. Hons UQ). Alongside her research project on the feminist underpinnings of superhero screen texts, she also writes and researches about the development of James Bond women throughout the Brosnan and Craig eras (article forthcoming). Trained in feminist phenomenology, she remains interested in exploring embodied history in epic films and the complex nature of female representation.
Research/teaching interests
Film Theory, James Bond Studies, Hollywood History, History on Film, Pop Culture Studies, 60s Cinema.
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Nat Kassel
Nat is a PhD candidate at the Gold Coast campus. His research is on the topic of millennial precarity, with a specific focus on how millennials are adapting to the housing affordability crisis, insecure work and climate change. Nat is a freelance journalist and his PhD is composed of a long form work of literary journalism and an accompanying exegesis. He has worked as a sessional tutor and had been published by The Conversation, ABC, News.com.au, VICE, Monster Children, Huck and others. He is supervised by Dr Bridget Backhaus and Dr Kasun Ubayasiri.
Research/teaching interests
Journalism; Literary Journalism; Literary Studies; Media Studies; Precarity; Millennials.
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Alena Kazmaly
Alena Kazmaly (MEdSt, Griffith University, Australia; Diploma of Philologist, MSU, Russian Federation) Alena is a linguist and English As A Second Language (ESL) Teacher from Russia. Her primary research interest is lexical semantics and cross-linguistic study of meaning construction. In her PhD project, Alena investigates personality lexicon in English and Russian. By using Natural Semantic Metalanguage approach (NSM), she registers cross-linguistic differences in personality construction. Alena is specifically interested in the problems of ethnocentrism and qualitative validity in questionnaire construction (e.g. personality, emotion, second language acquisition (SLA) questionnaires) and other language-based research/assessment tools. Alena is passionate about cross-disciplinary collaborations, metatheory studies and culturally responsive research.
Research/teaching interests
Second Language Acquisition and Teaching (SLA, TESOL); Language; Communication; Culture/Linguistics.
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Pip Mcculloch
Pip is a public relations and communications specialist who has worked in far north Queensland for almost 30 years. Her research project extends Bachelor of Communications (Honours) studies with a focus on local news in Queensland's northernmost region that takes in both Cape York and the Torres Strait Islands and specifically how it has shifted and adapted to a changing media landscape. The study will look at how the decline of rural and regional journalism is impacting news consumptions and the implications thereof, including sense of community, connectedness and civic accountability. It will also look at the impact of COVID-19 and subsequent changes to news gathering.
Research/teaching interests
Local news; Regional journalism; Sense of community.
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Jade McGarry
Exploring how Sky News Australia frames security. The multidisciplinary project examines three case studies: Islam, asylum seekers and domestic violence, in order to understand how the politics of grieveability and the politics of Othering skew news coverage in Australia.
Research/teaching interests
Journalism; Islam-West Relations; Media Studies.
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Russell McMullan
Russell's research aims to understand how designers influence safety in transport infrastructure. Specifically, how transport infrastructure project decisions are made and the role that safety plays in those decisions. This research is multi-disciplinary across safety science, organisational theory, decision theory, and engineering management.
Research/teaching interests
Decision-making; Safety science; Organisations; Ethnography.
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Garry McSweeney
Garry's research is concerned with the religious experience of the Australian Witchcraft community through qualitative data analysis of interviewees, and how those experiences may, or may not relate to James' The Varieties of Religious Experience.
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Kayla Mildren
Kayla's research investigates the body politics of school uniform policies and practices. Her work involves a thorough analysis of high-school uniform policies, paired with intensive surveying and interviewing of recent school leavers. She aims to examine how policy is deployed as a tool for institutional identity management and how youth negotiate this on a individual level.
Research/teaching interests
Sociology; Youth; Identity; Education; Governmentality.
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Emily Miller
Emily's work focusses on working with Indigenous Communities to explore the connections between material culture depicted in rock art and the objects found in museum collections. Her research area is in Western Arnhem Land and Kakadu National Park where she has spent the past 4 years working with Traditional Owners and Senior Community members.
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Afifah Muharikah
Afifah Muharikah, an International HDR student from Indonesia, is currently pursuing her doctoral degree in the School of Humanities, Languages, and Social Sciences, Griffith University. Her doctoral project investigates second language communication in an inclusive English classroom involving college students with autism.
Research/teaching interests
English as an additional language teaching; Inclusive education in Indonesia; Autism studies; Communication strategies; Conversation analysis; L2 communication.
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Adhi Oktaviana
Adhi works as a researcher at the National Research Centre of Archaeology, Ministry Education, Culture, Research and Technology, Republic of Indonesia. Adhi's research focus on prehistory and rock art in Indonesia with a focus on prehistoric human migration in Indonesia based on rock art evidence. It seeks to fill the crucial blanks in our knowledge of the island-hopping colonisation route taken by the earliest Homo sapiens in Southeast Asia. The project investigates the stylistic changing and dating in Pleistocene and Holocene rock art through the northern route from Sunda to Sahul.
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Narissa Phelps
Narissa's PhD research analyses memorials written in the Australian settlements before 1811. A memorial is a formal letter written by or on behalf of an individual to a person of authority. Memorials, which illuminate the political, economic and social issues that triggered concern and conflict in a rapidly-evolving penal colony, provide a deep understanding of societal issues in the earliest years of the colony. Her thesis explores the value of memorials as instruments of political engagement, the hardship experienced by colonists who were forcibly evicted from Norfolk Island's first settlement, the nature of women's acculturation as they adapted to life in the nascent settlement, and the effect that hardship had on colonists. Narissa is supervised by Dr. Mike Davis and Dr. Bruce Buchan. She is a qualified genealogist who grounds her research in the lives of individuals.
Research/teaching interests
Early Australian history, 1788-1810, including patterns of occupation and land-ownership; Home-making; Colonisation; Dispossession; Frontier conflict.
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Giulio Pitroso
Giulio Pitroso is a PhD candidate studying gaming communities in Australia and in Italy: he is supervised by Professor Andy Bennett and Dr John Ferguson. His doctoral research project is focused on the way stereotypes tied to Italians and organised crime are articulated among video games players. He is also interested in digital communities, ethnic identities on the Internet, media representations, and cultural and social aspects related to Italian criminal organisations.
Research/teaching interests
Cultural Sociology; Games Studies; Media Studies; Mafia.
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Alex Ressel
Alex's research project, 'Marking Time, Contemporary Rock Art in Western Arnhem Land, Australia', explores contemporary rock art painting in western Arnhem Land, and is informed by collaborative filmmaking with Kunwinjku people. Heritage is not a universally applicable concept, instead there are many different ways of understanding the concept. The heritage of rock art in western Arnhem Land is indicative of many of them. Alex's research project explores how contemporary Indigenous people in western Arnhem Land care for their rock art heritage, which is one of the world's oldest enduring creative traditions. This research is supported by the ARC funded project: Art at a crossroads: Aboriginal responses to contact in northern Australia.
Research/teaching interests
Rock art; Heritage; Museums; Film making; Indigenous art; Ethnography.
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Kit Vane Tempest
Kit Vane Tempest is a doctoral candidate researching fictional minds and the cognitive affordance conferred by literature with a focus on Theory-Fiction. Kit applies philosophical hermeneutics to engage with philosophy, critical theory, and literary studies.
Research/teaching interests
Theory-Fiction; Fictional Minds; Modernist Literature; Literary Theory.
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Xuefeng Zhao
Xuefeng Zhao's work situates at the convergence of feminist film studies, queer studies and intersectionality research, using an interdisciplinary approach to investigate lesbian cinematic representations in a given period. Despite the widespread availability of lesbian-themed films and lesbian-identified characters in the past three decades, a series of anachronistic threats arose. This project tries to understand the scope of lesbian visibility in film.
Research/teaching interests
Feminism, Queer Theory, Cinema Studies