I am a primarily qualitative researcher with experience in interviewing, observation and document analysis as well as surveys. My research focus includes creativity and cultural production, journalism, journalism education, media entrepreneurship and work-integrated-learning.

My research in these areas has been published in journals including Journalism Practice, Journalism Education, Continuum, Asia-Pacific Journalism Review, Australian Journalism Review and Review of Communication and presented at conferences both nationally and internationally including the SOU Creativity Conference (Oregon), and the annual conferences of the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia (JERAA) and Australia and New Zealand Communication Association (ANZCA).

My latest book, published with Prof Phillip McIntyre, Prof Susan Kerrigan and Dr Michael Meany, came out in early 2023, and is called Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: How Innovative Agents, Skills and Networks interact. It provides practical case studies of creatives who have forged a successful career in the creative industries.

My earlier book, written with Prof Phillip McIntyre, Dr Elizabeth Paton, A/Prof Susan Kerrigan and Dr Michael Meany, is Educating for Creativity in Higher Education, a book that provides innovative insights into how creativity can be taught within higher education and applies a systems centred learning model to teaching. I have a co-edited book with A/Prof Phillip McIntyre, Creating Space in the Fifth Estate, that resulted from our efforts in convening the ANZCA conference at UON in July 2016. The book examines the radical changes being brought about by the digital revolution and includes chapters from selected full papers submitted and presented at the conference.

Educating for Creativity in Higher Education

System centred approach to teaching

The Creative System in Action

I also have a book co-edited with A/Prof Phillip McIntyre and Dr Elizabeth Paton, The Creative System in Action: Understanding Cultural Production and Practice, which is focused on empirical studies into creativity that use the systems approach to creativity. It examines creative practice in a range of fields including music, journalism, fiction and non-fiction writing, film, documentary-making, theatre, new media, and arts and design. My latest collaborative book, Entrepreneurship in the Creative Industries: How innovative agents, skills and networks interact, is due to be published in late 2022.

Examples of my publishing and research impact include:

• Journal articles published in Q1 journals Continuum, Creative Industries Journal and Media International Australia.
• Introduction of innovative teaching model in an A1 book that was described by the series editor as “that most useful of texts which gives the reader – even if you don’t yet know it – everything you need to build your broad field knowledge about creativity in education.”
• An invitation to publish a journal article based on my media entrepreneurship research in international journal Javnost, ranked as the second most internationalised journal in the field. This journal article has been viewed over 950 times and cited by researchers who have examined freelance journalism and social media adoption by journalists.
• A chapter co-written with A/Prof Marj Kibby on Facebook, surveillance and higher education has been cited as an exemplar of ethical and appropriate research methods.
• An early conference publication on journalism and technology has been viewed more than 3,600 times and downloaded 128 times on online digital repository academia.edu. It has been discussed in the context of Zimbabwean and Bangladeshi journalism.
• A journal article in Q1 publication Creative Industries Journal has an Altmetric score of 104.

Google Scholar provides the following h-index score:

I received my PhD in 2011. The project, Making the News: Print Journalism and the Creative Process, applied creativity models to print journalism and investigated how journalists interact with cultural and social structures when they produce, or create, their work.

Handing in my PhD

Graduating

With Professor Bill Hogarth (PVC)

Research projects I have been involved in include an examination of new media producers in the Australian media landscape, WIL in journalism, and an examination of the ABC’s slow journalism initiative.