Research Training Calendar
DocFest, Graduate Research Conference 2023
Keynote Speakers, DocFest23
Keynote Speakers, 2022
Call for Posters
e-Poster Presentations
Recordings and Resources
Session Catalogue
Researcher Development Programs
IMNIS Industry Mentoring
Michelle Jamieson
Keynote title/topic: Falling apart and together again: A fresh look at wellbeing in the light of the pandemic
Dr Michelle Jamieson is a wellbeing consultant, mindfulness practitioner and research training specialist. Trained as a health sociologist at the University of New South Wales, her research is guided by an enduring fascination with the relationship between mind and body in health and illness. Her work features in prominent international journals such as Body and Society and Parallax, and she is co-editor of the book Autoimmunities (Routledge 2018).
Michelle's teaching explores how practices of mindfulness and self-awareness can help researchers to develop sustainable work habits, healthy ways of relating to themselves, and greater joy in the process. She is the creator of The Mindful Researcher Program and offers regular mindfulness meditation classes and workshops online for students and staff (www.michellejamieson.com).
Nick Hopwood
Keynote title/topic: How research can – and must – change the world.
Professor Nick Hopwood is based at University Technology Sydney, School of International Studies and Education. He researches connections between learning and agency – the means by which people change their lives and the world around them. Nick is increasingly involved in activist research, working with school teachers in Sydney to make better use of student data to enhance academic outcomes and student wellbeing, with clinicians and parents to reduce stigma and social exclusion around children who need to use a feeding tube, and with teachers in Nepal and Bhutan to develop low-and no-cost practices that enhance equity and quality in science and maths education. Nick takes inspiration from Vygotsky and contemporary scholars working in Vygotsky's rebellious, transformative tradition.
Cecile Badenhorst
Keynote title/topic: Where the writing begins: Conceptualizing research
Prof Cecile Badenhorst MA (UBC), PhD (Queen's) is a Professor in the Adult Education/Post-Secondary program, Faculty of Education, at Memorial University. She conducts research in the areas of doctoral education, doctoral writing, graduate writing, thesis/publication writing pedagogies, academic literacies and faculty writing, and engages in arts-based and post-qualitative research methodologies. She is a co-editor of Research literacies and writing pedagogies for Masters and Doctoral writers (2016) and Re-imagining doctoral writing (2021)
Ken Mahon
Keynote title/topic: Bridging the gap between academia and industry
Ken is an experienced leader working at the cutting edge digital, emerging, and deep technologies with Government, Defence and Industry. A professional with passion for developing and implementing innovative businesses and solutions for complex market-based opportunities with Public Sector a strong focus across an extensive portfolio. With a focus on innovation, Ken has delivered on strategic transformation, new venture creation, and commercialisation of technology into global markets.
Through his work with Campus Plus he is enabling University partners to achieve more from less by delivering on-demand industry engagement; strategic partnership creation; researcher commercialisation training and mentoring; technology transfer; entrepreneurship training; unique IP identification, protection, development and commercialisation.
Margaret Raven
Keynote Topic - Indigenous Protocols: understanding what can and can't be done
Dr Miri (Margaret) Raven (a Yamatji-Noongar and non-Indigenous woman from Western Australia) is a Senior Scientia Lecture (Research Only), UNSW Australia with the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC); and the Environment and Society Group in the Faculty of Arts, Design and Architecture (ADA). She previously worked as a Macquarie University Fellowship for Indigenous Researchers at Macquarie University, and a Research Fellow at the Social Policy Research Centre (SPRC), University of New South Wales, Australia.
Dr Raven is a geographer and has worked for outside of academia in the Australian Human Rights Commission, a Native Title Representative Body, and the WA Department of Aboriginal Affairs. Her research interests include Indigenous food stories and security; Indigenous protocols; the spatial analysis of policies; and the role of Indigenous knowledge(s) in biodiversity conservation.
Dr Raven's PhD, Gatekeepers, guardians and gatecrashers: the enactment of protocols to protect Indigenous knowledge, and how protocols order these practices, explored the enactment of protocols in an Australian Cooperative Research Centre (CRC). Her current research explores protocol in the context of Indigenous food security at the household level, and the implementation of biodiversity conservation. She is undertaking some of this research as a co-Chief Investigator, along with Prof Daniel Robinson (UNSW Australia), on the ARC Discovery Project (DP180100507) Indigenous knowledge futures: protecting and promoting Indigenous knowledge.
Dr Raven is also Co-Chief Investigator of an APRISE (Australian Partnership for Preparedness Research on Infectious Disease Emergencies) First Nations-led research on COVID-19 on Aboriginal Community Controlled Health Services and Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander People's Responses to the COVID-19 Pandemic. This research includes a component related to Indigenous food security.
Dr Raven is a member of the Australian Research Council College of Experts. Dr Raven has engaged in international negotiations through the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO), and the UN Convention on Biodiversity Conservation. She was a 2003/2004 PhD Fellow with the United Nations University Institute of Advanced Studies (UNU-IAS), Yokohama, Japan, and a 2009 Indigenous Fellow with the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights, Geneva, Switzerland.
Susie Miles
Keynote title/topic: Leadership TBA
Susie's career has included teaching deaf children, working for Save the Children in Southern and Eastern Africa as their Disability Advisor, and leading the Enabling Education Network, a global information sharing and learning organisation (www.eenet.org.uk).
Her research has explored innovative ways of documenting and sharing practice in inclusive education, primarily in the context of the Global South, and has included the use of photovoice. In her role as a teacher and researcher in Inclusive Education, and as Associate Dean for Equality, Diversity and Inclusion for the Faculty of Humanities at the University of Manchester, UK, she is involved in teaching, researching and enacting inclusive ways of working.
In 2021 she introduced the 'Being a Leader' course (https://beingaleader.org/) to the University of Manchester, and being mindful of the 'leaky pipeline', ensured that doctoral researchers and early career researchers were given priority in participating in this ontological course.
Dr Nicholas Merton
Nicholas Merton studied architecture at Cambridge University, and designed houses and other buildings for the UK, Nepal, and the British Virgin Islands. He became a professional artist and portrait painter in 1990 and exhibited paintings in the UK at the Royal Academy, the National Portrait Gallery, and the Royal Society of Portrait Painters.
At the same time he was head of a highly successful Art Department in a Sixth Form College in London for 20 years. He has lead transformational training seminars for thousands of people in the UK and now lives with his wife the writer and campaigner Chrissy Merton and their two children in London. He is about to take a Licentiate Level Diploma in classical piano performance and has just recorded and produced his first piano music CD to raise funds for The Hunger Project, a global transformational organisation committed to ending hunger in the world by the year 2030.
His top priority now is to make available the course "Being a Leader : An Ontological / Phenomenological Approach" (https://beingaleader.org/) in all the major universities and colleges in the UK.
Ron Adams
Key Workshop - Getting published in peer-reviewed journals
Professor Ron Adams is Manager of Graduate Research Programs at Victoria University. Widely published in the areas of cross-cultural encounters in the Pacific and post-conflict reconciliation in Bosnia-Herzegovina, he is perhaps best known for his researcher development workshops conducted throughout Australia and across the globe.
His awards include the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Award for Programs that Enhance Learning: Postgraduate Education, Victoria University Vice-Chancellor's Medal for Excellence in Research Training, and the City of Essendon Prize and the Ann Hilda Sainsbury Award for Excellence in Teaching.
Research Research support Researcher Development DocFest, Graduate Research Conference 2023 Keynote Speakers, 2022