2012 The truth is out there

Dennis Bryant

University of Canberra

Structuring mindsets towards thwarting student failure

Intellectual mindsets are likely to make a greater contribution towards thwarting student failure than are academic mindsets. Academic mindsets are defined as university and teacher preparedness to accept gut feeling assumptions about student failure; whereas intellectual mindsets are defined as university and teacher preparedness to progress understanding of student learning failure through structured enquiry. The methodology involved designing a modest toolkit of six conceptual elements that leveraged off unit grade records that spanned outcomes from all units for one year at a teaching intensive Australian university. The conceptual elements were operationalised as structured queries which were run against databases built from unit grade data. The empirical results from the toolkit confirm that a structured enquiry approach makes possible an understanding of student learning journeys that is richer than at present. Additionally, questions were posed as to the appropriateness of considering all failure grades to be the absence of student academic merit and not the presence of student dissatisfaction with institutional factors. The structured toolkit approach, and a search for a meaningful definition of failure, should impart to universities and teachers a better than average understanding of students’ failing journeys. It is hoped that making headway in understanding student learning delivers to universities, inter alia, opportunities to turn the optimistic rhetoric of the Bradley Review into reality.

Dennis Bryant (PhD) has a passion for designing non-surrogate metrics to help immediately in the understanding of student Learning. He is a fan of Plutarch’s exhortation to fire, not fill, student minds. He would like to acquire a university role as a Student Learning Facilitator which would enable him to use his past-life analytical skills to research Learning issues, advocate for, and then co-participate with peers in enhancing student Learning excellence. As if that is not enough, he would like to indulge his second passion which is to teach English Grammar using a modern linguistic approach to all comers, extending the knowledge of both native and second language speakers.

Naomi Cooper

University of Western Sydney

Seeking A ‘True’ Approach For Directing Non-Notation Reading Choirs: A Literature Review

A wealth of literature exists (particularly from the USA) surrounding traditional Western choirs in which choristers can competently read musical notation. A range of texts designed to equip budding choral conductors with the skills required to conduct these choirs is also available. There is, however, a dearth of literature addressing choirs where the singers cannot read musical notation and how to direct such choirs. Through my experience as a choral director and my previous research, I have seen many choral directors in Sydney working with choirs where the singers do not read musical scores. It is a trend that has seen a burgeoning in the number of community choirs in Australia over recent decades, choirs whose inclusive nature allow for greater participation numbers in community music. This paper seeks, in the literature on choral direction, ways of conducting the non-notation reading choir and in doing so encounters discussions of aural transmission. This direction approach allows the conductor to truly engage with the choir, and is a concept which now underpins the practice of my research.

Naomi Cooper is a PhD candidate and sessional academic in the School of Humanities and Communication Arts at the University of Western Sydney. Having trained as a classical guitarist, throughout her Bachelor of Music (Honours) degree Naomi became interested in directing community choirs. Practice-led research has helped Naomi to develop her choral directing skills and she has now directed school, children’s, university and community choirs. Her current doctoral studies are exploring the teaching and learning practices of community choirs in Australia (in particular choirs with no auditions) and the application of these strategies to her own choral directing practice. Naomi has presented her research across Australia and overseas including Sydney (2011, 2012, 2013), Perth (2012), Hobart (2012), Canberra (2013) and Singapore (2013).

Martin Garang Aher

Curtin University

Living in Between: South Sudanese Youth in Perth and the Longing to Return

The longing for homeland is intense for ‘humanitarian entrants’ who have been forced from home and pushed into exile. Initially, the quest for a bright future in a distant country often dominates the psyche, obscuring much of what may lie ahead. For many South Sudanese migrant youth in Western Australia, the dream of finding a peaceful home in the West has come true. Yet for some, that longing to get to Australia has manifested a disturbing parallel, exemplified in the phrase “when I go back home.” The difficult circumstances of life in Australia combined with South Sudan’s ‘pull factor,’ are exerting pressure on some South Sudanese refugee youth, prompting them to consider going back home as an important obligation for themselves and their people. This situates them as ‘in-betweens’ in both the country of resettlement and the country of origin. This paper examines the concept and actuality of going back amongst South Sudanese refugee youth from Western Australia who have recently gone ‘home’ only to return again to Perth. This paper seeks to comment on the comparative experiences they narrate upon their return to Australia. Their narratives of experience allow the proposition that youth experiences are related to culture shock – dreaming of ‘home’ has itself become a comfort zone in which the feelings and frustrations of the present circumstances are countered.

Martin Garang Aher is a PhD student in the Department of Culture and Communications Studies at Curtin University. As a former young refugee of the group known as ‘Unaccompanied Minors of the Sudan,’ he shares a common background with the subjects of his study. His research explores how past experiences impact on the life of South Sudanese migrant young people in Western Australia. His thesis is entitled: ‘The Past in the Present: Culture shock, Integration and Migrant youth. Sudanese Refugee Migrants in Western Australia.’ Martin has presented his research at conferences organised by the African Studies Association of Australasia and the Pacific, University of Melbourne, and Curtin University. Martin was Event State Coordinator in the “2012 Australia Awards in Africa Students’ Welcome Function” held at Curtin University.

Carmen Harrison

Curtin University

The Old and the New: Manuscripts and Printed Works in the Late Fifteenth Century

In this chapter, I will consider the extent to which printing by movable type, as a means of mass communication, was as revolutionary a technology as it was subsequently hailed to be. Printing, rather than copying manuscripts, was a major change for all of European society, but in its first decades was it a revolution and as important to the literary community as it has so often been described? In this paper, I explore what I suggest was the delayed revolution of printing books by movable type. In its inception, printing was a markedly different technology for developing books: where for centuries scribes had copied an individual book for a customer, printers were able to print many books for a wider market, but the extent to which this new technology was accepted by the reading public, initially, is still debated. Manuscripts, not only in Latin but in the vernacular as well, were being made long after printing was developed. In fact, contemporary humanists were scouring Europe looking for lost manuscripts and having existing ones copied for their extensive libraries. Aristocratic patrons and well-to-do merchants also wanted such libraries but they did not necessarily want printed books – they wanted manuscripts. Here, I explore how printing fared in its first forty years, in comparison with the existing and extensive manuscript, and consider its relationship with the book-buying public of the time.

Carmen Harrison, after achieving a Bachelor of Arts, with Honours in Sociology, from the University of Wollongong, tutored and lectured in Sociology, at the universities of Wollongong, Newcastle, and on moving to Perth, at Curtin University. Given her deep interest in multiculturalism she then worked extensively with people from a migrant and refugee background, especially those that were in crisis and suffered from mental health problems. Recently she gained a Master’s degree in Medieval and Early Modern history from the University of Western Australia, and currently she is a PhD student at Curtin University. Her area of research is the very earliest books printed by movable type, called incunabula, which were printed from 1460 to 1500. She is focussing on those printed in Italy, and in the Italian vernacular, on the subject of medicine. Through her research she is endeavouring to clarify why printers chose to print the particular texts and ephemera that they did, on science and medicine. As Klebs (1938) says, printers were printing in statu nascendi, the very beginning of the use of innovative technological development in printing, what was printed in science and medicine at this time, to some extent sets the scene for the future in the area of publishing.

Jennifer Irving

Macquarie University

How to Fake a Moon Landing in the Second Century: A Discussion of the Truth and the Mythological Beginnings of True History by Lucian of Samosata
This paper looks at the mythological and intellectual truths behind the writing of Lucian of Samosata’s True History (2nd Century CE). Lucian presents his writings as a falsehood in an exercise of the imagination, but True History also demonstrates that even in falsehoods, there are countless truths of the human condition. This paper demonstrates that Lucian wrote in a way that coalesced fact and fiction by using mythological and ideological bases for his stories. It asks how True History relates to dreams of extra-terrestrial travel and modern science fiction, as well as considering its contemporary affiliation to the Homeric epic and genres cemented in Lucian’s context. Essentially this piece asks how and why Lucian wrote his fantastical tales of underworld adventures and claimed them to be both fiction and the essence of reality.

Jennifer Irving undertook a PhD at Macquarie University writing on female healers in Ancient Greece and Anatolia. Prior to starting her PhD she received a Bachelor of Ancient History with First Class Honours in addition to certificates in advanced ancient language studies in Classical and Koine Greek, Hieroglyphs, Linear B, and Greek Inscriptions and Papyri. She now teaches at Macquarie University in the Ancient History Department and the Macquarie School of Ancient Languages and will be moving to America next year to lecture in Greek History at the University of Nebraska. Jennifer has authored online and journal publications on the topics of Greek epigraphy and archaeology. Most recently she had published a report on the excavations and experience at the dig site of Antiochia ad Cragum where she is site epigrapher. This is the most recent excavation that she has worked on, having excavated in Turkey, Scotland, Australia and Greece since she was 17. She has previously collaborated with a number of institutions and Universities in archaeology, including Macquarie University, Sydney University, The University of the Highlands and Islands, The Ohio State University and The University of Nebraska-Lincoln among others.

Helena Kadmos

Murdoch University

The Short Story Cycle and Women’s Stories: Purple Threads by Jeanine Leane

Interest in the representations of the multiple truths about women’s ordinary lives, such as the joy and ambivalence they experience as mothers, draws me to literary forms that do not rely heavily on plot development and narrative suspense. The short story cycle assembles apparently independent stories, which are linked by one or more means, such as narrative point of view, theme or setting, to produce richer meanings for the reader when these narratives are read together. The short story cycle may prove to be an attractive form through which to explore human experiences of which the full impact unfolds over a long period, such as the complex processes by which many facets of a woman’s identity are formed.

This paper examines one use of the short story cycle to illuminate aspects of Indigenous women’s lives. Purple threads (2011), by Jeanine Leane, based on the author’s own childhood, explores issues of ethnicity and identity through the singling out of formative episodes in the narrator’s life, captured in several independent yet linked narratives. By giving voice to the women who raised her, Leane brings to light truths that have been largely ignored by mainstream society, such as women’s knowledge about the land, family and community life.

Helena Kadmos is a PhD candidate at Murdoch University undertaking feminist-based research into the short story cycle form and its potential to tell stories about women’s ordinary lives. Her thesis, which will comprise a critical exegesis and an original short story cycle, is due for completion in 2014. In 2010 she completed a Masters thesis on representations of motherhood, titled “The Cave: A Search for the Mother’s Story in Narrative Literature.” She is a qualified teacher and worked for several years in primary schools in literacy and numeracy support, gifted and talented education, and as a music specialist. She is a short story writer with several publications including stories in Westerly, Eureka Street and indigo.

Sandra Krempl

Curtin University

Is Spirituality the Essence of Sustainability?

What is spirituality? Does it have a place in contemporary life where corporate systems and material driven lifestyles dominate? It would seem that many people are not comfortable talking about spirituality in public for fear of raising controversy. That in itself suggests that rather than being insignificant, spirituality is an important element of everyday life. To explore this further, I have developed what I term a ‘Connectivity Matrix’ to enable the representation of the great diversity of opinions, interpretations, and experiences regarding spirituality in today’s world. I am currently trialling this matrix through my doctoral fieldwork. It places spirituality as one of the pillars of everyday life alongside the other pillars of community, corporate systems, and nature. This paper proposes that the commonly used concepts of the ‘Triple Bottom Line’ and the ‘Four Pillars of Sustainability’ are incomplete without a spirituality pillar. Using the Connectivity Matrix, a series of semi-structured interviews and workshops have been conducted with people involved in various areas of sustainability in Western Australia. This paper uses recent scientific findings as well as established and new theories relating to mainstream spirituality to analyse perceptions, experiences, and understandings in relation to the role of spirituality in today’s society and its impact on sustainability.

Sandra Krempl is a PhD candidate researching spirituality and environmental sustainability at the Curtin University Sustainability Policy Institute. Her doctoral thesis asks whether there is a detachment from spirituality and nature in contemporary communities. Through this research she hopes to encourage conversation on these metaphysical matters in mainstream contexts to better understand if and how these matters underpin the decisions we make and the actions we take. Sandra has presented her research at the 3rd International Conference on Heritage and Sustainable Development on Porto, Portugal (2012) and at various seminars organised by local governments, universities and not-for-profit organisations.

Julie Lunn

Curtin University

Analysing Place and Protest in the Perth CBD during the Great Depression

The Perth Central Business District (CBD) was the scene of many protests by non-union unemployed men during the Great Depression. These men were protesting against government policies that were affecting them, to keep their plight in the public eye and for a better standard of living. To do so they used three forms of protest; marches, demonstrations and meetings. All three forms of protest were influenced by the streets, public spaces and buildings where they occurred and the relationship that the unemployed protesters had with them. This included the frontage to the Treasury Buildings on St George’s Terrace, where the premier had his office, several streets of inner Perth and the Perth Esplanade. Some of these places the unemployed, to some extent at least, could claim as their own; other places became contested sites as the unemployed were prevented from using them during their protests. The focus of this paper is not on why these men were protesting. Instead the focus is on the relationship the protesters, and the police in controlling them, had with the built environment and spaces of the Perth CBD. I intend to argue that the interconnections of place with protest, is fundamental in providing a better understanding of the unemployed protests of the Great Depression.

Julie Lunn is currently a PhD candidate in the department of Social Sciences at Curtin University where she is working on her doctoral thesis entitled “The Changing Meanings of Anzac Day in Western Australia Since 1916.” She is also the Graduate Research Culture Officer in the faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. Julie has worked as a historical researcher on Municipal Heritage Inventories, Conservation Plans, commissioned histories and was the research assistant for two years on the Curtin and ARC Linkage project “Remembering the Wars: The community meanings of war memorials in Western Australia.”

Melanie McKee

Curtin University

Stitching In Place: Migration, Memory and Habitual Practices

Although struggles with isolation, language and cultural barriers are evident in most migration stories, in this paper I will consider the way plain sewing as a creative and habitual practice can be a means of physically and memorially (re)experiencing home even when a person is displaced. This paper combines with a picture narrative and discussion to explore the experience of displacement, home and belonging as observed twice over in the life of one woman, in Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe) and then Australia. This story relates to my maternal grandmother Catterina Rossetti, an Italian immigrant to both countries. From a visual-arts perspective, I investigate the way in which plain sewing sustained my grandmother through the various transitions associated with multiple migrations. To discuss displacement in the migration experience, I draw on Edward S Casey’s concept of habitual body memory. Although marginal and resistant to narrative, habitual body memory is sustaining in its nature, as habitual actions constitute everyday activities and functions central to belonging. I am interested in my memories of the farm homestead in Zimbabwe, recollected through my attention to my grandmother’s sewing, an habitual practice that she has carried over to Australia. Catterina’s ability to continue to perform these habitual actions within the home space has underpinned her sense of belonging and in addition influenced my modes of remembering home – from Italy to Zimbabwe to Australia.

Melanie McKee was born in Harare, Zimbabwe and immigrated with her family to Perth, Western Australia in 2001. She has undertaken study in the Fine Arts at Curtin University, graduating with First Class Honours in 2011. Melanie completed an international study exchange program at the École Nationale Supérieure des Beaux Arts de Paris in 2008-09. She has been heavily involved with the Perth Centre for Photography and has undertaken sessional teaching at Curtin University in 2013. Melanie has exhibited both locally and internationally, and is currently a PhD candidate at Curtin University in Western Australia.

Di Spencer-Scarr

Curtin University

A Digital Divide: The Impact of Digital Network Technology On Individuals And Society.

Digital network technology has become ubiquitous and embedded in society, enmeshing human activity and behaviour in a significant and iterative way, which appears to be influenced by an individual’s unique personality and decision-making style. This discussion will suggest the inherent nature of digital networks and human characteristics are creating an unanticipated digital divide. This is significant because individual and societal information are filtered through the complex dynamic systems of both the individual and digital networked technologies.

To understand how engagement with digital networked technology may be creating a digital divide, this paper first discusses personality and decision-making style. The complex dynamic nature of digital networks is then explained through their technological evolution. The environment in which both individuals and digital networks operate is explored with regard to time, space and memory and how this alters the human environment. It is suggested that the nature of engagement with the digital environment could cause a digital divide. The paper concludes with a discussion on engagement behaviours that may be indicative of a digital divide and is based on early results of original ongoing research.

Diane Spencer-Scarr is researching engagement with digital network technologies. The research explores the relationship between personality, decision-making and engagement with technology at both the individual and societal level. The need to understand why people engage differently increases in urgency as digital networked technology becomes ubiquitously embedded in society advancing those who successfully manage their engagement and disadvantaging others. Starting from an artistic and educational background Diane moved into IT becoming a partner in a consulting business and actively involved in various aspects of information technology including implementing information technology projects and liaising between stakeholders to deliver IT solutions. Diane’s cyber entrepreneurial activities have led to the launch of a number of online businesses. Diane has served as an editor for academic journals and authored academic papers. She has recently contributed a book chapter entitled ‘Long-tail Leadership: Understanding Collaborative or Soft Power (in Press). In 2013 Diane researched Social Engagement, exploring symbolic interactionism in real-world situations in order to identify key behaviours that promote interaction and enhance social engagement. This involved a series of events that were carefully staged and managed. Mensa NSW supported this research and preliminary results were reported at the Mensa International conferences in the USA and Europe.

Marcia van Zeller

Curtin University

Was Grace Really So Amazing? How can a writer of historical fiction ethically negotiate the divide between fact and imagination?

In 1876, at Redgate Beach off Western Australia, 16-year-old Grace Bussell and Aboriginal stockman Sam Isaacs are said to have ridden horses into pounding surf to rescue 50 passengers from the stranded Georgette steamship. Grace and Sam were hailed as heroes, even though some survivor accounts credited this rescue to the ship’s crew. To this day the riders’ celebrity has eclipsed the actions of several unsung heroes, crew and passengers who committed an astonishing act of bravery in this maritime tragedy.

Whatever transpired at Redgate Beach, the absolute truth can never be known. Such is my quandary in writing an historical novel (the creative component of my thesis), an account of the shipwreck based on extensive research and healthy scepticism. As I negotiate the divide between fact and imagination, my approach is informed by the process of writing the exegetical component, comprising an analysis of literary and historiographical discourse on the disarticulation between fact and fiction in historical novels. The exegesis also informs the writing of the novel by exploring the creative and ethical approaches of historical novelists from Canada and Australia. These nations are prolific sources of acclaimed, revisionist historical fiction that challenges Eurocentric retellings of their respective histories.

Marcia van Zeller is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Curtin University, Western Australia. She previously completed undergraduate degrees in literature and education at the University of Toronto. Marcia has had a long career in journalism and professional writing, and is now enjoying the challenge of writing in the historical fiction genre and working as a sessional tutor at Curtin. In 2012 Marcia was awarded the Wertheim Prize for Best Postgraduate Student Paper at the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Conference in Toronto, Canada.

Angela Wilson

Curtin University

Public images, private lives: Blurring truth and fantasy in the world of professional Bondage and Discipline

Public images and private lives often do not match up. Indeed, social life is premised as much on what is not shown as it is on what is revealed. Concealment, deception and the blurring of truth and fantasy are foundational for social life. Advertising of services in the Western Australian sex industry relies on appealing to a market by blurring truth and fantasy, as does advertising of many other services and products. This is even more pronounced in the realm of professional Bondage and Discipline (BD), where service providers cater for a niche market that revolves around fetish, role play and mind games. In this paper I look at the public perception of those offering BD services, with newspaper advertisements providing the most visible medium by which opinions are formed. I also examine the blurring of truth and fantasy in order to cater for a relatively small group of individuals, where competition is high and repeat business is essential to earn a living.

Angela Wilson is a PhD candidate at Curtin University, researching in the field of International Relations, following on from postgraduate studies in this area. Her doctoral thesis is titled “Human trafficking in the Australian Sex Industry: An International Relations Perspective.” Angela is interested in the way this problem is handled by a number of different agencies. She is a regular participant in the Strategic Flashlight Seminars and the Annual National Security and Strategy Workshops conducted by Curtin University’s International Relations Department. Angela taught secondary school for a number of years and is currently a tutor for one of the Humanities undergraduate courses.

Publication Editors

Julie Lunn is the Graduate Research Culture Officer in the Faculty of Humanities at Curtin University. She has worked as a historical researcher on a number of commissioned histories, Municipal Heritage Inventories and Conservation Plans, and was Research Assistant from 2008 – 2010 for the Curtin and ARC Linkage project ‘Remembering the Wars: The community meanings of war memorials in Western Australia’. Julie is also a PhD candidate in the Department of Social Sciences at Curtin where she is working on her doctoral thesis, ‘The Changing Meanings of Anzac Day in Western Australia Since 1916,’ which is due for completion in 2015.

Stephanie Bizjak worked with Julie as a Graduate Research Culture Officers in 2010 – 2013 and is currently a High School teacher at Kelmscott Senior High School Western Australia teaching home economics. She has a degree in Food Science and Technology and completed her Graduate Diploma of Education with Distinction in 2010. Stephanie has also worked as a research assistant on multiple projects at Curtin University in the areas of Education, Environmental Sustainability, Sport and Recreation, and Climate Change.

Chapter Editors

Courtney Babb is currently completing a PhD funded by an ARC Discovery Grant, CATCH: Children, active travel, connectedness and health. The focus of the PhD is the relationship between children’s mobility and the ways spatial planners evaluate built environments.  His PhD represents his research interests in the broader social processes underpinning urban spatial and transport systems and their relationship with issues of well-being; the practical tools planners use to address the quality of urban environments; and the spatial aspects of educational institutions. In addition to his doctoral work, Courtney Babb has been a research assistant on an ARC Linkage Grant Impacts of transit-led development in a new rail corridor, administering a research project analysing the land use and travel behaviour changes in three emerging Transit Oriented Developments in Perth. He has also been a researcher with Australasian Centre for Governance and Management of Urban Transport (GAMUT) investigating the barriers to the implementation of integrated land use and transport planning in Perth and Melbourne.

Michelle Barrett is a doctoral candidate in the disciplines of Anthropology and Sociology here at Curtin. Her thesis focuses on the lived experience of those in Perth who self-identify as ‘Eurasian’ and she approaches this from an interdisciplinary perspective, using various lenses for examination such as mixed race studies, critical whiteness studies, hybridity theory, and material culture. Her thesis is currently under examination. Over the last five years Michelle has also been tutoring and lecturing in various units across the Humanities, both in class and online. She is currently teaching a unit on Human Rights and Social Justice, which is one of her areas of interest.

Karen ann Donnachie is an artist, photographer and publisher. She recently relocated to Australia after two decades in Milan, Italy, where she founded the influential This is (not) a Magazine an on- and off-line curatorial art project with Andy Simionato, publishing experimental kinetic book-works of digital and networked art, as well as monographic artists’ books under the imprint Atomic Activity Books. Karen ann’s photography has been featured in numerous international publications and her algorithmic, photographic and video work has been exhibited throughout Europe and the Americas, including most recently the Triennale Design Museum, Italy and KVN (kunstverein Neuhausen) Stuttgart. She has lectured worldwide and is currently editing several books of art from in and around the Internet. Karen ann is a PhD candidate in Art under scholarship at Curtin University and her doctoral research is centered around the networked self-portrait.

Helena Kadmos is a PhD candidate at Murdoch University undertaking feminist-based research into the short story cycle form and its potential to tell stories about women’s ordinary lives. Her thesis, which will comprise a critical exegesis and an original short story cycle, is due for completion in 2014. In 2010 she completed a Masters thesis on representations of motherhood, titled “The Cave: A Search for the Mother’s Story in Narrative Literature.” She is a qualified teacher and worked for several years in primary schools in literacy and numeracy support, gifted and talented education, and as a music specialist. She is a short story writer with several publications including stories in Westerly, Eureka Street and indigo.

Kate Rice studied acting at VCA, playwriting at NIDA and writing for short film at AFTRS.  She has been commissioned by Curtin University, Deckchair Theatre Company, Agelink Theatre Company, Black Swan’s HotBed program, Barking Gecko Theatre Company, Darwin Theatre Company, Darwin High School and Corrugated Iron Youth Arts.  Her play The Dead Zone won an AWGIE in the Theatre For Young Audiences category in 2006.  Her half-hour television comedy In the Swim was produced by SBS Independent in 2001 and she wrote for the children’s television series Trapped and Trapped II – Castaway in 2008 and 2009.  Kate was Writer-in-Residence at Deckchair Theatre in 2010, and the resulting play Sweetest Things was produced in Brisbane by Vena Cava Productions in September 2012.  Kate is currently researching a PhD on the ethics of creating theatre based on real stories.

Diane Spencer-Scarr is researching engagement with digital network technologies. The research explores the relationship between personality, decision-making and engagement with technology at both the individual and societal level. The need to understand why people engage differently increases in urgency as digital networked technology becomes ubiquitously embedded in society advancing those who successfully manage their engagement and disadvantaging others. Starting from an artistic and educational background Diane moved into IT becoming a partner in a consulting business and actively involved in various aspects of information technology including implementing information technology projects and liaising between stakeholders to deliver IT solutions. Diane’s cyber entrepreneurial activities have led to the launch of a number of online businesses. Diane has served as an editor for academic journals and authored academic papers. She has recently contributed a book chapter entitled ‘Long-tail Leadership: Understanding Collaborative or Soft Power (in Press). In 2013 Diane researched Social Engagement, exploring symbolic interactionism in real-world situations in order to identify key behaviours that promote interaction and enhance social engagement. This involved a series of events that were carefully staged and managed. Mensa NSW supported this research and preliminary results were reported at the Mensa International conferences in the USA and Europe.

Erin Stark is a PhD candidate and sessional academic in the Department of Internet Studies at Curtin University, and also works as a research assistant in Communication Studies at The University of Western Australia. She is submitting her thesis, entitled ‘Re-placing the networked self: An exploration of place and identity in Perth’s social media communities,’ in November 2013. Her research focuses on narratives of self, networked identity, social media, and human geography. Erin also has first-class Honours in English from UWA for a thesis entitled ‘Skin on the Internet: Tattooing, consumption, and the Body Modification Ezine,’ and is studying part-time for a Bachelor of Computing Studies (Information Technology) online through RMIT. Post-thesis, she hopes to bring together her interests in computers and culture by working in the technology sector in New York City.

Cassandra Sturm is a visual artist and PhD Candidate in the Department of Art, Curtin University. Her practice-led Doctoral thesis examines how a personal creative practice can critically examine the idea of regional context through an analysis of the representation of place and time in visual abstraction. Her research interests centre on Western Australian landscape, native flora and contemporary painting. Cassandra has artworks in private collections and in the Curtin University Art Collection at the John Curtin Gallery.

Marcia van Zeller is completing a PhD in Creative Writing at Curtin University, Western Australia. She previously completed undergraduate degrees in literature and education at the University of Toronto. Marcia has had a long career in journalism and professional writing, and is now enjoying the challenge of writing in the historical fiction genre and working as a sessional tutor at Curtin. In 2012 Marcia was awarded the Wertheim Prize for Best Postgraduate Student Paper at the American Association of Australasian Literary Studies Conference in Toronto, Canada.