Confronting sexism: building gender equality through performance-based pedagogy

Achieving gender equality remains a difficult, ongoing and necessary process for contemporary societies. Eliminating the tenacious sexism and sexual harassment that underpins gender inequalities is challenging. One essential avenue for changing gender norms is to educate young people and children in schools. But how are those lessons best achieved?

The PhD candidate will address this significant problem by working closely with young women in South Australian high schools to investigate how performance and dramaturgical techniques might enhance lessons around sex and sexism. The candidate will assist students to conceptualise, write and direct a performance piece with the aim of exploring student strategies of resistance and transformation within a broader analysis of the possibilities of performance-based pedagogy.

Come to Flinders and join Dr Monique Mulholland and Dr Sarah Peters. Dr Mulholland has extensive experience in social research with community partners and a vibrant research program that explores young people’s experiences of gender, sex and sexuality norms. Dr Peters has expertise in community engagement through the development of practice-based research and verbatim plays that enable communities to share their stories with broader audiences. The candidate will benefit from the broad range of research and community expertise in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Areas of Interest: Sociology; History; Women’s and Gender Studies; Creative and Performing Arts; Education; Cultural Studies
Supervisory Team: Dr Monique Mulholland monique.mulholland@flinders.edu.au  (Primary supervisor)
Dr Sarah Peters
 

A transnational history of abortion: Australia and the United States, 1980s – 2010s

Abortion is routine yet still controversial in contemporary Australia. Although the Australian public is overwhelmingly prochoice, public and political debates over abortion decriminalisation remain charged, and barriers to access exist in most states. How can abortion be both routine and controversial in modern Australia?

We invite prospective PhD candidates interested in investigating the politics, history and provision of abortion in Australia in a transnational context. This project is directed specifically towards how American abortion discourses and rhetoric flowed into, and were adapted for, Australia. The project is open to prospective candidates from a range of disciplinary areas who have an interest in histories of bodies and medicine, sexual and reproductive health care, transnationalism, social movements, feminism, or gender and politics.

Come to Flinders and join Dr Prudence Flowers and Associate Professor Barbara Baird. Dr Flowers is a leading historian of women’s health in Australia and the United States, and Associate Professor Barbara Baird is a leading academic in cultural politics and histories of sexuality and reproduction, abortion and feminism in Australia. The candidate will join a large and dynamic group of scholars in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences working in the areas of Women’s and Gender Studies and History.

Areas of interest: Sociology; History; Women’s and Gender Studies; Cultural Studies; Political Science; Public Health; Policy Studies; Media Studies; Law and Socio-legal Studies
Supervisory Team: Dr Prudence Flowers prudence.flowers@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor)
Associate Professor Barbara Baird

Financial abuse in Australia since 1975

Financial abuse, also known as economic abuse, is a troubling and frequent part of domestic and family violence in Australia. The recognition of financial abuse as one of many dimensions in domestic and family violence has increased in scholarship since the 1990s. However, its history as a concept and a lived experience remains underexplored.

We invite prospective PhD candidates interested in exploring the history of financial abuse. Drawing on and contributing to the expanding history of domestic violence in Australia, this project will trace the explicit development of the term and excavate the connotations and assumptions embedded within its many definitions and responses. In doing so, candidates might explore how the emergence of understandings of financial abuse relate to the history of ideas about families, intimate relationships, gendered autonomy and financial dependence. Potential methodologies include oral histories and testimony analysis or deep policy histories and analyses.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor Catherine Kevin, a leading Australian historian tackling significant and pressing questions surrounding the history of domestic violence. Kevin is part of a large and dynamic group of scholars in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences working in the areas of Women’s and Gender Studies and History.

Areas of interest: Sociology; History; Women’s and Gender Studies; Cultural Studies; Social Work; Policy Studies; Law and Socio-legal Studies
Supervisory Team: Associate Professor Catherine Kevin catherine.kevin@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor)
Associate Professor Kristin Natalier

More-than-human knowledge and Aboriginal walking trails

Aboriginal Walking Trails are cultural technologies for intergenerational knowledge transfer. They allow learning while walking. When History, Literary Studies, or Philosophy become field studies (like Anthropology and Archaeology) and go on Country, writing can take new shapes, informed by the new field of the Posthumanities.

The PhD candidate will investigate the intersections of Indigenous and colonial place-making with the new decolonising methodology of experiential knowledge that moves through different Countries. The Living Kaurna Cultural Centre at Warriparinga, close to Flinders, is a good place to start such an inquiry, extending into coastal trails following the Kaurna’s Tjilbruke Dreaming. Trails also follow trade routes that underpin collaborative networks in South Australia crossing the Countries of the Kaurna, the Ngarrindjeri, the Peramangk, the Ngadjuri and Adnyamathanha among many others. With due permission, place names might be restored, tracks rediscovered and layers of history described.

Come to Flinders and work with leading scholars of Indigenous Australia. The PhD candidate will join Professor Stephen Muecke, an eminent ethnographer and pioneer of posthuman methodologies; Professor Penny Edmonds, an internationally recognised historian of Australia and the Pacific World, and settler colonialism; Dr Natalie Harkin, an award-winning Indigenous poet and historian; and Dr Chris Wilson, an emerging leader in Australian Archaeology and the first Indigenous Australian to be awarded a PhD in Archaeology.

Areas of Interest: Indigenous Studies; Posthumanities; Environmental Humanities; Spatial History; Cultural Studies; Postcolonial Studies; Archaeology; Creative Writing; Philosophy
Supervisory Team:  Professor Penny Edmonds penny.edmonds@flinders.edu.au
Dr Natalie Harkin 

Streaming services, new media and post-cinema

Streaming video services such as YouTube, Netflix and Amazon Prime have introduced dramatic change to the screen media industries. Sharing platforms provide new possibilities for user-creators to bypass the conventional ‘gatekeepers’ of distribution. Industrial power is consolidated around a shrinking number of horizontally-integrated conglomerates, and vertically-integrated subscription video on-demand services. Legislation struggles to keep pace.

We invite prospective PhD candidates to investigate what this means for media production, distribution and exhibition in the twenty-first century. Areas of investigation may include digital aesthetics, algorithms and viewer behaviour, and the reconstitution of transnational media industries in the wake of technological change.

Come to Flinders and join Dr Nicholas Godfrey, Dr Tully Barnett and Associate Professor Julia Erhart, leading researchers in the fields of screen, 
media and digital studies, with expertise in American, Australian and Asian cinema, film aesthetics, and the history of film distribution. They are part of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders, and the large, internationally recognised Creative and Performing Arts research and teaching programs in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, with deep ties to industry.

Supervisory Team: Dr Nicholas Godfrey nicholas.godfrey@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor)
Dr Tully Barnett
Associate Professor Julia Erhart

More-than-human Aesthetics

Aesthetics embraces sensitivities to other beings and other possible ways of being. In the new field of the posthumanities, aesthetics also recognises that humans have always thought with the help of things (Galileo’s telescope, Haraway’s cyborg), and that we have also create with them. Creativity is about assembling the right elements for the creative act to take place, not just materials and tools, but other living things (a landscape, an animal); other imagined things, and even divine creatures like the poet’s muse. Creativity seeks to seed the possible, and to transform. More-than-human Aesthetics accepts the complexity of creativity, and turns towards the posthuman, searching for new ways of understanding, and of being.

Faced with the enormous challenges of the Anthropocene, writers and artists have the task of inventing the kinds of characters who can respond to these challenges with new concepts and feelings. And it is not just a question of doing this in and for human societies. We are in the process of including non-human beings in our earthly societies, for our survival depends upon our continued co-existence with other species. Writers and artists thus also have the task of imagining new forms of collective life.

The field of more-than-human aesthetics is open to exciting new forms of critical, historical and philosophical work to appreciate what has been achieved so far, and what else could be done.

Come to Flinders to work with our writers, historians and philosophers to achieve your potential with a hybrid (creative + critical) project, or a standard MA or PhD.

Work with Professor Stephen Muecke, an eminent cultural studies scholar and pioneer of posthuman methodologies; Dr Tully Barnett, a leader in the digital humanities, Dr Amy Mathews award-winning creative writer and Dr Tom Cochrane a leading philosopher of emotions and aesthetics.

Projects in this area might, for example, address:

• the writing of climate fiction and ecocriticism;
• the digital humanities, cyborg subjectivities and VR in conjunction with the Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts;
• collaborations with the Flinders University Museum of Art;
• investigations into moral and ethical issues to do with the aesthetics of representation and curatorship.

Principal Supervisor: Professor Stephen Muecke stephen.muecke@flinders.edu.au

Associate Supervisors: Dr Tully Barnett, Dr Amy Mathews, Dr Tom Cochrane

Environmental Humanities

This new interdisciplinary field in the humanities deals with matters of concern arising from climate change and other environmental problems. The anthropocene, extinctions, political differences, human-animal relations, science and technology studies, environmental anthropology, field philosophy, climate fiction, the posthumanities; all are examples of areas creating new work in this fertile field.

We seek prospective PhD students who are motivated to explore these urgent environmental issues and address today’s ‘wicked problems’ through humanistic questions about meaning, culture, values, ethics, and responsibilities. The environmental humanities aim to help bridge traditional divides between the sciences and the humanities, as well as between Western, Eastern, and Indigenous ways of relating to the natural world and the place of humans within it. The field breaks down the traditional divide between ‘nature’ and ‘culture,’ showing how many environmental issues have always been entangled in human questions of justice, labour, and politics. Environmental humanities is a way of synthesizing methods from different fields to create new ways of thinking through environmental problems.

Come to Flinders to work with environmental historian Dr Alessandro Antonello, Professor Stephen Muecke, an Indigenous Studies and Environmental Humanities scholar, and Dr Ian Ravenscroft, philosopher of climate change. Collaborations with Archaeology, including Maritime Archaeology, and the Biological Sciences are encouraged.

Projects could include (but are not limited to):

• specific studies of human-animal relations or extinctions;
• the application of Actor Network Theory to environmental issues;
• relations of belonging in Indigenous Countries;
• activist movements and the political ecology of climate change.

Principal Supervisor: Dr Alessandro Antonello: alessandro.antonello@flinders.edu.au

Associate Supervisors: Dr Ian Ravenscroft

Global Cultures of Climate Change: Cultural Frameworks of Resilience and Adaptation

Climate change is, and will continue to be, one of the most difficult challenges that societies and cultures globally will face into the future. While the earth sciences seek to diagnose the physical problems, there are significant ethical and political dimensions to adapting to and mitigating climate change. How to adapt, who should adapt and when to adapt are all political questions situated in specific cultural frameworks.

We invite prospective PhD candidates in Geography, Development Studies or related humanities disciplines who are interested in understanding place-based identification and/or construction of solutions to address environmental strain and collapse. By understanding the cultural frameworks within which diverse people respond and adapt to climate change, this project will help to identify and strengthen resilience for future challenges.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor Beverley Clarke, Dr Peter Tangney and Associate Professor Liam Brady, internationally recognised scholars working across Australian Geography and Archaeology. The candidate will benefit from their world-leading expertise in collaborative research with Indigenous communities and ethnographic and archaeological fieldwork, and join a larger community of scholars in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders who work on fundamental questions of climate and environmental knowledge and cultures.

Principal Supervisor: Associate Professor Beverley Clark Bev.Clark@flinders.edu.au 

Associate Supervisors: Associate Professor Liam Brady

The Future of Indigenous Cultural Heritage in a Social Justice Framework

The recent destruction of a 46,000-year-old archaeological site in Western Australia’s Pilbara region by a major mining company triggered outcry and protest by Aboriginal Traditional Owners, archaeologists and cultural heritage managers, among many others. This event has continued to highlight the precarious state of Indigenous cultural heritage places in the face of economic development.

The PhD candidate will undertake a project engaging with cultural heritage using a social justice framework to evaluate the nature of heritage legislation and so-called protection, and its applicability to Indigenous cultural heritage in a variety of geographical settings. The project will seek to identify new understandings of the cultural heritage–social justice relationship and aim to develop new ways of promoting cultural heritage as social justice.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor Liam Brady and Professor Claire Smith, internationally renowned archaeologists working with Indigenous history and communities across the globe. Flinders is home to a dynamic community of scholars working on material culture and cultural heritage in Australia and around the world. Contribute to vital contemporary discussions and research by undertaking a PhD in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences.

Areas of interest: Cultural Heritage; Archaeology; Intangible Cultural Heritage; Indigenous Heritage; Social Justice; Law.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Liam Brady Liam.Brady@flinders.edu.au, Professor Claire Smith Claire.Smith@flinders.edu.au

Southern Coasts: Histories Marine Communities and Cultures across the Southern Hemisphere

Saltwater runs through the memories and cultures of communities across the globe. The ocean and its animal communities have been central to human development across history, yet today the ocean is under grave threat from over-fishing, pollution and climate change, among other issues. Behind these contemporary changes and challenges are deep histories that connect people and oceans.

The PhD candidate will investigate connections and comparisons between marine communities across the Southern Hemisphere. The project will concentrate on historical research but will also actively engage with the Environmental Humanities and Posthumanities to assess change and continuity of human–ocean relations from the late eighteenth century to the present. Oceans and coasts are vibrant areas of historical research, yet marine cultures in Australia, southern Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, and Antarctica remain understudied compared with the North Atlantic.

Come to Flinders and join Dr Alessandro Antonello and Professor Penny Edmonds, leading historians of marine and maritime cultures in Australia, Antarctica and globally across the modern era. The College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University is home to a dynamic group of scholars working on marine and maritime themes, including our world-leading maritime archaeology program.

Supervisors: Dr Alessandro Antonello alessandro.antonello@flinders.edu.au

Primary supervisor: Professor Penny Edmonds

Performance, Culture and Australia in Asia and the Pacific

How has the modern Australian nation been made through creative and performing arts? How has performance connected Australia to the world, especially to Asia and the Pacific? This project seeks to develop a richer and more inclusive understanding of creative and performing arts practices in Australia. It is particularly interested in how artistic practices emerge in cross-cultural contexts across the Asia–Pacific region.

Come to Flinders and work closely with Professor Maryrose Casey, a pioneering and world-leading scholar of nineteenth – and twentieth-century Indigenous Australian performance in cross-cultural contexts. The PhD candidate will also work with the significant AusStage database of live performance, the largest of its kind in the world, hosted by Flinders (www.ausstage.edu.au). The project intends to take advantage of this rich database, including its geo-mapping functions, to allow for sophisticated understandings of regional cultural flows and the cross-cultural dimensions of artistic practices in the Asia-Pacific region. We invite applications from prospective candidates from a wide range of disciplines who are interested in diverse methodological approaches, spanning practice-led investigations and use of VR (virtual reality) technologies, Cultural Studies and History.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Julia Erhart julia.erhart@flinders.edu.au 

Women and Australian Contemporary Screen Culture since 2000

Women’s participation in the Australian screen industry remains stubbornly lower than men’s participation. Screen Australia figures show that women directed only 17 per cent of Australian feature dramas shot between 2011 and 2018 and were only 6 per cent of accredited cinematographers. Barriers to women’s employment and flourishing in the sector are entrenched and often compounded by embedded sexism and gendered attitudes about women’s capacity.

We invite prospective PhD candidates interested in investigating the place of women across the contemporary Australian screen production industry. This project will analyse the workplace experiences of women through a range of possible methodologies and analytic approaches, which may include interviews and oral histories; transnational comparison between national film industries; or a close study of women in film production. This project will link into a larger research program at Flinders on the history of women’s screen practice.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor Julia Erhart and Dr Nicholas Godfrey, leading scholars in Film Studies with longstanding expertise in the study of the film industry. Professor Erhart and Dr Godfrey are leading members of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders, and the large, internationally recognised Creative and Performing Arts research and teaching programs in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, with deep ties to industry.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Julia Erhart julia.erhart@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor), Dr Nicholas Godfrey

Recreating Australia’s Lost Cinematic Past in Virtual Reality and Motion Capture

It is estimated that 90% of Australian silent films have been lost. Perishable film stocks, improper storage conditions, and general neglect mean that the vast majority of Australian films made prior to 1930 are gone. However, fragments of these films remain, in the form of screenplays, production notes, still photographs, newspaper reviews, and other ephemera. By scouring the archives for these clues, new technologies offer us the chance to revive the lost films of yesteryear.

The College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Flinders University has a strong track record for research exploring digitisation, preservation, and cultural heritage management. The University’s state-of-the-art motion capture and virtual reality production facility is producing cutting-edge, practice-led research in screen production, performance studies, and visual effects. Flinders University invites prospective PhD students to undertake archival research on the material traces of Australia’s cinematic past, and lead creative collaborations with academic staff and undergraduate students, recreating lost films in VR and motion capture.

Join film studies researchers Dr Nicholas Godfrey and Associate Professor Julia Erhart, and digitisation expert Dr Tully Barnett at Flinders University, and explore the intersections of cinema’s past and future by working with immersive virtual production technologies.

Supervisors: Dr Nicholas Godfrey nicholas.godfrey@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor), Associate Professor Julia Erhart, Dr Tully Barnett

Objects of Empire and Home: New Histories of Colonial Australia

In the nineteenth century, Australian colonists were building not only their local communities but the British Empire at large. People, ideas, commodities and objects flowed through all parts of the empire, and many objects, grand and small, came to live in Australian homes. These objects are rich embodiments of the local and global stories of Australian colonists.

The PhD candidate will investigate the mate­rial culture of Australia’s nineteenth-century stately homes to illuminate local and global histories. Using object biographies and inter­disciplinary methodologies, this project aims to tell new local and regional stories that will help to generate new understandings of empire, colonisation, slavery, blackbirding and domestic work. Through its public his­tory focus, this project aims also to speak to decolonisation and the building of cosmo­politan futures.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor Jane Haggis and Professor Penny Edmonds, scholars of the histories and cultures of imperialism, colonialism and race. The PhD candidate will benefit from their expertise and the community of scholars in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences working in these areas.

Areas of Interest: Colonial Studies; History; Critical Heritage; Creative Writing; Digital Humanities; Indigenous Studies; Material Cultures; Public History.

Supervisors: Associate Professor Jane Haggis jane.haggis@flinders.edu.au, Professor Penny Edmonds

Cultural Performance in Australian–Asian Communities

Australia is home to a diverse range of Asian migrant communities. In Australia, these communities continue to practise and maintain their cultures, often through vibrant performance traditions and community-based performing arts groups. Dance, dance-drama, and folk theatre and ceremony all have deep cultural, historical and ritual connections to migrants’ home countries and play a significant role in migrants’ lives. These performances are also crucial for maintaining meaning and community across generations.

We invite prospective PhD candidates interested in how Asian migrant communities in Australia use cultural performance to express and form their personal and group identities. This project is open to various disciplinary and methodological approaches. For example, candidates who are themselves migrants or who have experience in these performance cultures may wish to undertake practice-led creative research. This project will also take advantage of Flinders University’s advanced motion capture technology in its VR/MoCap Lab to work with migrant communities to document and preserve their performance practices.

Come to Flinders and join an exceptional team of researchers: Associate Professor William Peterson, an internationally recognised authority on community-based performance in Asia; Professor Maryrose Casey, a pioneering and world-leading scholar of nineteenth- and twentieth-century Indigenous Australian performance; and Dr Priyambudi Sulistiyanto a dynamic scholar of Indonesia politics. They are leading members of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders.

Supervisors:

Associate Professor William Peterson william.peterson@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor), Professor Maryrose Casey, Dr Priyambudi Sulistiyanto

Indigenous collectivity as activism and praxis

The all Aboriginal academic/artist research group, Unbound Collective, is seeking Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander PhD students who are interested in examining institutions of knowledge production and collections through the frameworks of Indigenous decolonising methodologies and the intersection of collective decolonial praxis, Indigenous activism, black feminist theories and critical creative arts from Indigenous standpoints.

Students can focus on one or more topics in the following areas:

• Indigenous collectivity as activism and praxis;
• Indigenous curated response to institutions of knowledge production and collections;
• Indigenous ways of knowing, being and doing and critical creative responses;
• Performance and creative-arts as Indigenous activism;
• Cultural landscapes;
• Sites of memorialisation;
• Indigenous creative-arts praxis and research methodologies.

Supervisors: Dr Ali Gumillya Baker Ali.Baker@Flinders.edu.au, Senior Lecturer Faye Rosas Blanch, Dr Natalie Harkin, Associate Professor Simone Ulalka Tur

Archival-poetics as praxis for decolonising colonial archives

The all Aboriginal academic/artist research group, Unbound Collective, is seeking PhD students who are interested in examining colonial archives and records held within state, national and international archival records where collections of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people are held and reproduced.

Students can draw on decolonising frameworks such Archival-poetics, archival protocols, critical and creative critique, to produce new insights into the practices and processes involved in decolonising archives.

Students can focus on topics in the following areas:

• Archival-poetics as praxis for decolonising colonial archives;
• Indigenous creative-arts praxis and decolonising institutions of memory and power;
• Frameworks for decolonising archives from Indigenous standpoints.

We especially welcome applications from Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander.

Supervisors: Dr Ali Gumillya Baker Ali.Baker@Flinders.edu.au, Senior Lecturer Faye Rosas Blanch, Dr Natalie Harkin, Associate Professor Simone Ulalka Tur

Motion Capture, Embodiment and Digital Capture in Performance

The arts of dance and performance have long experimented with the relationship between the human and digital worlds. The human body is central to this project both through its integration with digital components in live performance and replication in the creation of digital avatars for film or games. The ways in which the trained body – particularly the dancer and the actor – remain necessary in digital production suggests that the human need to feel connected through the embodied presence of other humans will continue to play a key role in emerging forms of digital performance.

PhD students at Flinders are currently investigating motion capture acting, both in terms of actor training and its ethical dimensions, as well as how motion capture technology may be used to recreate historical modes of movement and expression. We welcome applications from prospective PhD candidates with practice-led projects that extend and investigate the body in digital and virtual environments, and that can take advantage of Flinders University’s advanced motion capture technology in its VR/MoCap Lab.

Come to Flinders and join Associate Professor William Peterson, an internationally recognised authority on affect and emotion in mass performance and installation spaces, and Professor Garry Stewart, Artistic Director of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders and Artistic Director of the internationally renowned Australian Dance Theatre.

Supervisors: Associate Professor William Peterson william.peterson@flinders.edu.au, Professor Garry Stewart

Theorising Popular Genres in Fiction

Things need not have happened to be true. Tales and dreams are the shadow-truths that will endure when mere facts are dust and ashes, and forgot. — Neil Gaiman

The most significant works of popular genre fiction capture the zeitgeist of a cultural moment. Written for the page, screen or stage, these stories imagine and re-imagine contemporary concerns, examine cultural values, and engage in complex and dynamic conversations between artist, audience, industry and history. Popular genres are commercial by nature, consumed en masse, and capable of shifting cultural needles. They entertain even as they challenge the status quo. As such they can be significant social barometers and agents of change.

We invite prospective PhD candidates interested in using popular genres of writing – particularly historical fiction, science fiction, fantasy, romance, weird fiction and horror – as lenses through which to examine and analyse issues of public and/or personal interest. Proposed projects might blend fiction and non-fiction; present new stories in familiar frames (novels, short stories, stage plays, screenplays); connect and/or challenge traditional modes of writing; or creatively combine forms in exciting experimental pieces. All creative projects will be compelling in their storytelling, reflect contemporary concerns and be grounded in thorough exegetical research.

Come to Flinders and join four award-winning genre specialists: Dr Lisa Bennett, Dr Amy Matthews, Dr Alex Vickery-Howe and Dr Sean Williams. With more than sixty books published in international markets between them, over 180 short stories, three acclaimed stage plays, and many high-ranking journal articles, these writers are at the forefront of this critical and creative field. All are leading members of Assemblage Centre for Creative Arts at Flinders. They look forward to welcoming new voices into a dynamic community of creative artists and research practitioners at Flinders.

Areas of Interest: Popular Fiction; Popular Genres; Creative Writing; Creative Arts; Fiction Writing; Writing for Performance; Writing for the Screen; Romance Fiction; Horror Fiction; Science Fiction; Speculative Fiction; Historical Fiction; Fantasy Fiction; Cultural Studies; Literary Studies; Screen Studies; Activism and Art; Exegetical Writing

Supervisors: Dr Lisa Bennett lisa.bennett@flinders.edu.au (Primary supervisor), Dr Amy Matthews, Dr Alex Vickery-Howe, Dr Sean Williams

New Methodologies in Archiving Australian Contemporary Dance

Australian Dance Theatre is a lauded contemporary dance company in international and national spheres. Under the Artistic Directorship of Garry Stewart the company has built a reputation for ambitious collaborations and projects touching on a wide range of disciplines including robotics, virtual reality, architecture, neuroscience and posthumanities.

This research project represents a unique opportunity to work with the objects, concepts, people and ephemera of a creative career to develop a curated multidimensional archive and articles of interpretation to form a major contribution to the cultural sector, its memory and its future. The project would include archiving the body of artistic work created by Stewart over his 22 years with this company mapping and documenting extensive international touring. These projects include major stage productions, film, performance installations for galleries and public spaces, photography, community work as well as the works of a range of commissioned dance artists engaged by Stewart.

We invite prospective PhD candidates who are passionate about methodologies of collecting and storing cultural memory using a range of techniques to create a multi-modal, and innovative archive which can be effectively accessed and researched by future generations of artists, academics and members of the wider public.

We invite you to Flinders to join Professor Garry Stewart and Dr Tully Barnett to delve deep into manifesting a meaningful and comprehensive total archive of one of our major Australian dance artists and one of our most important national arts organisations.

Principal Supervisor: Dr Tully Barnett Tully.Barnett@flinders.edu.au