Professor Dan Woodman: President

Dan is TR Ashworth Professor of Sociology in the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne and Assistant Dean (Advancement and Engagement) in the Faculty of Arts. He was previously a Research Fellow in the Research School of Social Science at the Aus tralian National University (2009-2011) and a Research Fellow at the University of Melbourne’s Youth Research Centre (2005-2009).

Prior to his academic career Dan spent a number of years as an intellectual disability support worker and did a short stint in the Victorian Public Service. Dan is the current immediate past President of the The Australian Sociological Association (TASA) and was the founding convener of the Sociology of Youth Thematic Group within the Association. He is also Vice President for Australia, New Zealand and Oceania of the Research Committee on the Sociology of Youth (RC34) within the International Sociological Association (ISA). He is co-Editor-in-Chief of the Journal of Youth Studies and on the Boards of the Journal of Sociology, Journal of Applied Youth Studies and Youth and Globalization. He is the Founding Chair of Social Sciences Week, Australia and Chair of the Local Organising Committee for the upcoming 20th World Congress of Sociology, Melbourne 2022.

Dan gives regular presentations to teacher and student groups, business, government and community sector organizations and often appears in the print media and on radio, in Australia and around the world. His work has been used in submissions by various community organizations to numerous government bodies and inquiries, including Productivity Commission and Fair Work Commission reviews.

Dr Helen Sykes AM: Vice President & Treasurer

Helen is the Director of Future Leaders, President of the Trust for Young Australians, Chair of The Australian Collaboration, Associate of Melbourne Sustainable Society Institute, Member of the Future Justice Executive and Summit Governor of the Hillary Institute. She has published and edited many books.

Alec Coles OBE

Alec has been CEO of the Western Australian Museum since 2010: the State’s museum with branches in Perth, Fremantle, Geraldton, Kalgoorlie and Albany. He was previously Director of Tyne & Wear Archives & Museums in North East England for eight years. Prior to that, he was CEO of the Northumberland Wildlife Trust, a wildlife conservation charity in North East England. He is an Adjunct Associate Professor in the School of Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia, an Executive Member of the Council for Australasian Museum Directors, a Board member of The University of Western Australia’s Institute of Advanced Studies, and Chair of International Council of Museums (ICOM) Australia. He is committed to developing and demonstrating the public value of museums. He is currently driving Western Australia’s initiative of a new State Museum and aspires to create a museum that is owned and valued by all West Australians and admired by the world. In 2010, he was awarded an OBE for Services to Museums. In March 2017, he was awarded Honorary Doctor of Letters from The University of Western Australia in recognition of his contribution to the Arts.

Professor Barbara de la Harpe: Secretary

Barbara is Executive Dean for the Faculty of Business, Education, Law and Arts at the University of Southern Queensland. For twenty years she has been involved in teaching and academic professional development in higher education. Her background is in science education and educational psychology, and her fields of expertise include learning; generic skill development; university change management; and teacher professional development. Her PhD study was on student learning and she is widely published in learning and teaching.

Professor Julian Meyrick

Julian is a Professor in the School of Humanities, Languages and Social Science at Griffith University. He is a theatre historian and cultural policy analyst, as well as an award-winning theatre director. Previously he was Associate Director and Literary Advisor at Melbourne Theatre Company, where he was responsible for establishing Hard Lines, a new play development programme.

He has published widely on the Australian theatre, culture, and cultural policy. He is currently Chief Investigator on two ARC Linkage Projects: AusStage Phase 5 (LE140100024) and Laboratory Adelaide: Accounting for Culture’s Value in the Arts, Cultural Organisations and Events (LP140100802).

Julian is Artistic Counsel for the State Theatre Company of South Australia and a member of the Currency House editorial board. The Retreat of Our National Drama, his second Currency House Platform Paper, was published in 2014.

Professor Ilana Mushin is a linguist whose research interests include: interactions between discourse, cognition and grammar, pragmatics, perspective-taking in discourse, Conversation Analysis, typology, narrative structure, language shift and language maintenance, Australian First Nations Languages. Ilana is currently a Chief Investigator on the ARC Discovery Project 'Conversational interaction in Aboriginal and Remote Australia' (CIARA - https://www.ciaraproject.com). She is also currently President of the Australian Linguistic Society and Conference Chair of the International Society for Conversation Analysis conference (ICCA23).


Ilana is a UQ Expert for media in the following fields:

Australian Aboriginal languages, Aboriginal languages, Languages - Aboriginal, Sociolinguistics, Discourse analysis, Pragmatics, Linguistic typology

They are happy to lend their expertise to your articles or broadcasts and share their research discoveries and insights with the community via media channels.

For additional assistance with story ideas, general advice and information or help with seeking further experts, please email the UQ Media Team or telephone (07) 3365 1120.

Dr Matthew Champion is a Senior Lecturer in History in the School of Historical and Philosophical Studies at the University of Melbourne. Prior to his return to Australia in 2020, he was a tenured Lecturer in Medieval History at Birkbeck, University of London, and a Junior Research Fellow at St Catharine’s College, Cambridge. He has held visiting fellowships at the Warburg Institute, London, the ARC Centre of Excellence for the History of Emotions, and at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Matthew’s research spans the history of temporality, emotions, gender, sound and music, visual and material culture, and religious reform and heresy. His 2017 monograph The Fullness of Time: Temporalities of the Fifteenth-Century Low Countries (Chicago UP) was the winner of the 2018 Gladstone Prize from the Royal Historical Society. He is currently working towards a global and material history of time and sound, supported by an ARC Discovery Early Career Researcher Award ‘The Sounds of Time’ and a collaborative Discovery Project with colleagues at the Universities of Melbourne, Manchester and Heidelberg on Albrecht Dürer’s material worlds.

Matthew is an editor of the series Genders and Sexualities in History for Palgrave, a member of the international advisory board of the Journal of Ecclesiastical History, and a current elected committee member of the Australian and New Zealand Association for Medieval and Early Medieval Studies.

Professor Sandra Gattenhof is Director of Research Training in Creative Industries, Education and Social Justice Faculty at QUT situated on Turrbul and Yugara lands in Meanjin (Brisbane). Sandra is internationally recognised as expert in the field of arts and cultural evaluation and worked as a researcher with major arts organisations and arts funding bodies in Australia, New Zealand, Fiji, United Kingdom and Norway. Sandra has an outstanding publications record. Sandra is chief investigator for ARC Linkage Project The Role of the Creative Arts in Regional Australia (2019-2022), Social Impact Strategy for the Puuya Foundation (2021-2023), and led Valuing the Arts Australia and New Zealand (2020). Sandra has been a lead consultant for Australian Curriculum: The Arts, Education Queensland’s Arts curriculum and syllabuses, Queensland Ballet, Out of the Box children’s festival and Brisbane Festival. Sandra’s outstanding service record includes past president of Drama Australia and Drama Queensland, chair of the Dead Puppet Society, and board member of National Advocates for Arts Education. Sandra has received QUT Vice- Chancellor’s Performance Award (2014; 2007), QUT Award for Excellence in Leadership (2014), and Creative Industries Faculty Dean’s Award for Excellence in Research and Innovation (2011). Sandra received Drama Australia President’s Award in 2021.

Dr Lara McKenzie

I am a Research Fellow in Social Sciences at The University of Western Australia, and have been a fixed term and casual academic since I received my PhD in anthropology and sociology in 2013. My research has focused on Australia, particularly age, love, and kinship. I am currently completing a study on precarious academics’ experiences of looking for stable academic work, as well as working as part of a large project on Covid-19 and vaccination.

I have served on a number of committees over the past decade. I was a Committee member for the UWA Branch of the National Tertiary Education Union (2018-20); an Ordinary Director of the Australian Anthropological Society (AAS) (2016); and a Secretary of the AAS’ student association, ANSA (2012-14), where I worked to improve opportunities for early career researchers and postgraduates.

I also worked as a Research Officer for the postgraduate peak body, the Council of Australian Postgraduate Associations (CAPA), from 2017 to 2020. During my time there, I undertook research on universities and wrote regular policy submissions centred on higher education, student equity, and casualisation. If elected, I would focus on issues like academic working conditions, precarious work, and government higher education funding and policy.