People

Staff

Professor John Polesel
03 8344 8293
jpolesel@unimelb.edu.au
Professor John Polesel is Co-Director of the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy and Director of International Centre for Classroom Research, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
John’s research interests include the relationship between schools and vocational training, models of education and training, VET in schools and youth transitions from upper secondary schooling in Australia and internationally.
He has played a leading role in winning and conducting over seventy major educational research grants and consultancies, focusing on young people, education and VET, including: the ACACA national longitudinal VET in Schools study tracking Year 12 students’ development of career and life skills across time (2018-2020), the Careers Guidance: defining and measuring quality project for NSW DEC (2014), the NSW BVET Destinations and Expectations Survey for the Office of BoS and NSW BVET (2013), and the Evaluation of the Senior Secondary School Pilots for DEECD Victoria (2012).
He has written journal articles, book chapters and commissioned reports, including in some of the most prestigious international journals such as Oxford Review of Education, Comparative Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Journal of Education Policy, Australian Journal of Education, and European Journal of Vocational Training. And chapters in major publishers, including Springer and Oxford University Press.
Associate Professor Shelley Gillis
03 9035 4925
shelley.gillis@unimelb.edu.au
Associate Professor Shelley Gillis is Assistant Dean (Graduate Research) and Co-Director of the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Shelley is a leading expert in competency assessment, psychometric testing, large scale assessment design and analysis, as well as standards development.
She has provided advice to national and international agencies on educational assessment and measurement, competency and performance assessment, standards referenced frameworks, qualification frameworks and quality assurance frameworks within educational settings.
She has led numerous high-profile national studies examining quality related issues in vocational education and training and has made major contributions to the development of evidence-based government policy in Australia.
Shelley is currently working on or has recently completed research and consultancy projects with NSW Board of Vocational Education and Training, Board of Studies NSW, NSW Skills Board, NSW Business Council, NSW Department of Education and Communities, Victorian Department of Education and Training, NCVER and the Malaysian Ministry of Education, providing over 60 research reports for governments and non-government organisations.
Her research interests include competence assessment, standard referenced frameworks, qualification frameworks and quality assurance.
Dr Mary Leahy
mary.leahy@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Mary Leahy is Program Coordinator (Graduate Coursework) and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Mary has extensive experience in research and policy and has made significant contributions to the development of evidence-based government policy in Australia through commissioned research reports she has written or co-written for governments and non-government organisations. Her work draws on comparative education; theories on gender; Nussbaum and Sen’s capabilities approach; and theories on choice and preference formation.
Recent research projects have examined transitions within education and between education and employment; the nature of vocational education; young people’s decisions about tertiary education; vocational education funding and quality vocational teaching.
Mary’s research interests include vocational education; pathways; the interface between education sectors; transitions within education and between education and employment; gender; education policy; Nussbaum and Sen’s capabilities approach; and theories on choice, preference formation and decision making.
Dr Gosia Klatt
03 9035 4975
klattm@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Gosia Klatt is Coordinator, Executive Education and Senior Lecturer in the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Gosia has a political science background but her current academic interest lie in education reforms in post-communist systems, youth transitions and inter-governmental relations. Most of her research involves a high degree of engagement with Government departments as well as community partners.
She has written two books, one co-authored book, and over 20 research articles, book chapters and commissioned reports.
She is a Chief Investigator of the Australian component of the Horizon 2020 research project developed with a consortium of nine European universities led by the University of Nottingham entitled 'Encouraging Lifelong Learning for an Inclusive & Vibrant Europe (ENLIVEN)'.
Dr Anne Suryani
anne.suryani@unimelb.edu.au

Dr Anne Suryani is Research Fellow in the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Anne holds a PhD in Educational Psychology from Monash University with a Mollie Holman Medal for the most outstanding doctoral research in education in 2014. She has strong quantitative skills and experience in large-scale survey design and analysis.
Prior to joining MGSE, she worked with Australian Council for Educational Research for national projects funded by the Asian Development Bank supporting national assessment and curriculum reform in Indonesia. Before this position, she was involved in two Australian Research Council (ARC) funded longitudinal studies at Monash University investigating secondary student transitions and education pathways, and teacher motivation in Australian contexts.
Her research interests include teacher motivation, teacher education and professional development, vocational education, assessment, and curriculum.
Anne has presented her research at twenty-five national and international conferences, published two scholarly book chapters and five refereed journal articles. She has also received a numerous awards, scholarships and grants from international institutions for her studies, research, publications, and professional developments.
Dr Stanley Koh
03 834 43633
hak.koh@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Stanley Koh is Research Fellow at the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy (CVEP). Stanley joined CVEP from Victoria University (VU) where he facilitated learning pathways and articulation within VU and managed research and teaching programs at The Victoria Institute of Education, Diversity and Lifelong Learning.
Stanley has a background in teaching and school leadership and is a VIT registered teacher. His research interests include school leadership, school effectiveness and improvement, comparative education policy and high-performing school systems in East Asia (particularly in what makes these school systems perform). As an early career researcher, he has been involved in research projects that reviewed senior school certificates, vocational education and training, Victorian Certificate of Applied Learning and pre-accredited programs in Australia. Stanley's teaching focus is on education policy and reforms and has coordinated transnational professional learning programs for educators from China, Saudi Arabia and Singapore. Stanley is currently the Associate Editor of the Routledge journal, International Journal of Inclusive Education (Scimargo Q1) and a member of Australasian Research Management Society; and was previously an Adjunct Fellow at College of Arts and Education, Victoria University (2015 to 2018).
Dr Alice Garner
03 8344 4603
agarner1@unimelb.edu.au
Dr Alice Garner brings strong archival research, oral history and digital communication skills to CVEP, where she is contributing to an ARC Linkage-funded history of trade union training in Australia. Alice has a doctorate in history as well as secondary school teaching qualifications, specialising in humanities, Revolutions and French in the Victorian secondary school and IB systems as well as LOTE curriculum coordination. She has published books in transnational educational and French history, including A Shifting Shore (Cornell University Press), which was shortlisted for the NSW General History Prize in 2005. Her most recent publication was a study, co-authored with Diane Kirkby, of the Australian-US Fulbright exchange program (Manchester University Press, 2019), which arose out of an ARC Linkage postdoctoral fellowship at La Trobe University (2009-12). Alice is also known for her work as an actor in film, television, theatre and radio, best known for her roles in the original SeaChange (ABC-TV) and the award-winning film Love and Other Catastrophes, shot on the University of Melbourne campus. She has also worked as a documentary presenter, appearing most recently on History Channel's Coast Australia television series.

Associates and Affiliates

Professor Richard Desjardins
University of California, Los Angeles, USA
Professor Iciar Elexpuru
University of Deusto, Spain
Adult Learning/Erasmus Mundus
Professor Bente Elkjaer
Aarhus University, Denmark
Adult/workplace learning/Erasmus Mundus
Professor David Guile
UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
Youth transitions
Professor John Haisken-Denew
03 9035 3811
johnhd@unimelb.edu.au
Prof. Dr. John P. Haisken-DeNew is Deputy Director Research at the Melbourne Institute of Applied Economic and Social Research in Melbourne, Australia. He has also been Adjunct Professor of the Department of Economics at McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada since July 2008.
His research interest focuses on education, health, competition policy, applied labor economics, applied micro econometrics, wage structure, migration, welfare and income inequality. He was previously a fully tenured W3 Professor of Economics and holder of the Chair “Economic Policy: Competition Theory and Policy” at the Ruhr University Bochum, Germany, from March 2009 to June 2013. He received his doctorate in economics at the University of Munich in 1995 under Prof. Dr. Klaus F. Zimmermann, with his dissertation on “Migration and Inter-Industry Wage Structure in Germany”. He received his MA in Economics at the University of Toronto, Canada in 1988 and his BA Honours in Economics at Carelton University, Ottawa, Canada.
Professor Yufeng Liu
Central Institute for Vocational and Technical Education, Beijing
TVET China
Professor Paul Morris
UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
Comparative education/Erasmus Mundus
Professor Emer Smyth
The Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland
Schools to work transitions
Professor Josu Solabarrieta
University of Deusto, Spain
Professor Tristram Hooley
University of Derby, United Kingdom
Professor Leesa Wheelahan
University of Toronto, Canada
Knowledge and VET
Professor Michael Young

UCL Institute of Education, United Kingdom
Knowledge, sociology
Associate Professor Pia Cort
Aarhus University, Denmark
VET
Associate Professor Ida Juul
Aarhus University, Denmark
VET in Europe
Professor Marcella Milana
University of Verona, Italy
Dr Irma Mooi-Reci
03 9035 4809
irma.mooi@unimelb.edu.au
Irma Mooi-Reci is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Social Policy at the School of Social and Political Sciences (SSPS) at the University of Melbourne, Australia. Previously she worked as Assistant Professor and Programme Director of the VU-Graduate School of Social Sciences (VU-GSSS) at the VU University in Amsterdam.
Irma researches employment instability and its implications for individual careers, wage opportunities and public policy. Her research agenda encompasses three main areas: (1) the socioeconomic consequences of disruptive events such as unemployment, joblessness and casual employment; (2) the intergenerational consequences of joblessness; (3) application and innovation of quantitative methods for panel data. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Madison Wisconsin in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and she is currently a visiting professor at Nuffield College, Oxford University. Irma has published in various journals including Social Science Research, European Sociological Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations and Social Forces.
Assistant Professor Eva Kyndt
University of Leuven, Belgium
Dr Elish Kelly
The Economic and Social Research Institute, Ireland
Labour Economics
Dr Carolina Cuellar
Education Foundation, Chile
Education in Chile
Dr Frank Musekamp
Universitat Bremen, Germany
Large Scale VET Assessment
Dr Lu Hong
Chongqing College of Electronic Engineering, China
VET, Chinese education and training

People

Staff

Honorary

Associates and Affiliates