Social Transformation and Education Research Hub

People

• 
   Professor Julie McLeod
  

   8344 3455
  

  Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Capability) University of Melbourne; Professor, Curriculum, Equity and Social Change, Melbourne Graduate School of Education.

  Julie McLeod is Professor in Curriculum, Equity and Social Change at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research Capability) at The University of Melbourne.

  Julie researches in the history and sociology of education, with a focus on youth, gender and social change. She was an editor of the journal Gender and Education (2011-2016). She held an Australian Research Council Future Fellowship (2012-2016) and is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences Australia.

• 
   Professor Lyn Yates
  

   9035 8166
  

   l.yates@unimelb.edu.au
  

  Redmond Barry Distinguished Professor, Foundation Professor of Curriculum

  Lyn Yates is one of Australia's foremost educationists. She has written extensively on gender and education, what makes good education research, and on curriculum in a changing world.

  Lyn is a fellow of the Academy of Social Science, a past president and honorary life member of the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE) and has previously been Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research) at the University of Melbourne. Her recent and current research is about knowledge, reform, and governance issues across schools and universities.

• 
   Professor Fazal Rizvi
  

   90358095
  

   frizvi@unimelb.edu.au
  

  Professor of Global Studies in Education

  Fazal Rizvi is a Professor of Global Studies in Education at the University of Melbourne, as well as an Emeritus Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. He has written extensively on issues of identity in transnational contexts, globalisation and education policy.

  Between 1998 and 2001, Fazal served as Pro Vice Chancellor (International) at RMIT University, and in 1996 established and directed Monash Center for Research in International Education. Fazal's book, Globalizing Education Policy (Routledge 2010) has been widely used in courses around the world. A collection of his essays is published in Encountering Education in the Global: Selected Writings of Fazal Rizvi (Routledge 2014). Fazal is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Social Sciences and a past Editor of the journal, Discourse: Studies in Cultural Politics of Education, and past President of the Australian Association of Research in Education. In 2016, Fazal published a major report for the Australian Council of Learned Academies on Australia's Asian Diaspora Advantage. He has also been a member of an international research team on a large ARC funded project on elite schools, which led to the production of a jointly authored book, Class Choreographies: elite schools and globalization (Palgrave 2017). He is currently working in three research areas: Transnationalism and Diaspora Formations; Higher Education policy in India and Southeast Asia; and Rethinking Cosmopolitanism and Learning in Transnational Spaces.

• 
   Dr Jessica Gerrard
  

   90357696
  

   jessica.gerrard@unimelb.edu.au
  

  Senior Lecturer in Education, Equity and Politics

  Jessica works across the disciplines of sociology and history with particular research interest on the relationship of education to social change and politics, shifting - but persistent - experiences of inequality, and critical theories and methodologies.

  Jessica is Senior Lecturer in Education, Equity and Politics. She coordinates Melbourne Graduate School of Education's Masters of Education specialisation Equity, Diversity and Social Change. Jessica was a McKenzie Postdoctoral Fellow, 2012-2015, and has won a number of awards in recognition of her research, including an Early Career Researcher Commendation from The Academy of Social Sciences in Australia in 2015. She publishes widely, and her most recent monograph, Precarious Enterprise: Work, Poverty and Homelessness on the Margins, was published by Palgrave Macmillan.

• 
   Dr. Ligia (Licho) López López
  

   ligia.lopez@unimelb.edu.au
  

  McKenzie Post Doctoral Fellow

  Dr. Ligia (Licho) López is a McKenzie Fellow at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Her scholarly interests include “diversity,” youth popular and visual cultures as curriculum, migrations, and post-foundational avenues in educational inquiry.

  Licho Lopez's current research turns to young people as curricular experts and asks: if schools are for and by young people, how come schools refuse young people’s cultures in the classrooms? How is another curriculum possible? Dr. López’s work has appeared in peer-reviewed journals in Latin America, Australia, the US, and Europe. Her dissertation received AERA’s 2017 Division B Outstanding Dissertation Recognition Award in Curriculum Studies.

• 
   Associate Professor John Quay
  

   83448533
  

   jquay@unimelb.edu.au
  

  Associate Professor Health, Outdoor and Physical Education and Philosophy of Education

  John Quay has a school teaching background in outdoor environmental education and physical education. His research interests include these areas of teaching as well as teaching more generally, extended by a passion for history and philosophy of education as this informs understanding of curriculum and pedagogy.

  John Quay’s research interests revolve around the notion of praxis, particularly the contributions of phenomenological and pragmatic philosophical theories (Dewey, Heidegger, Peirce) applied in experiential learning, outdoor and environmental education, physical education and broader areas of teachers’ work. Central to his ideas are ontological perspectives in education. His most recent book is Understanding Life in School published by Palgrave Macmillan. Recent journal papers include “From human–nature to cultureplace in education via an exploration of unity and relation in the work of Peirce and Dewey” published in advanced online form with Studies in Philosophy and Education.

• 
   Peter Woelert
  

   03 8344 8732
  

  Senior Lecturer

  Peter is a Senior Lecturer at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education, with research interests in higher education policy and governance, the sociology of organizations, and the philosophy of technology.

  Peter Woelert has a background in philosophy (PhD, University of New South wales) and sociology (MA, University of Frankfurt, Germany). His research focuses on exploring governance and organizational dynamics in the university sector. He has researched and published on issues such as universities’ internal responses to national funding settings, the politics of research performance measurement, universities’ organizational autonomy, and the unintended effects of large-scale policy and governance reform on institutional diversity.

• 
   Dr Sophie Rudolph
  

   03 8344 9672
  

  Sophie’s research and teaching interests centre on questions of educational justice and equity. Her work seeks to understand political struggles (historically and presently) over educational provision, curriculum, pedagogy and identity.

  As a non-Indigenous Australian, Sophie Rudolph has had a long-standing interest in exploring issues of social justice, diversity and equity in education and, in particular, the impact that colonial history has on present day inequalities in Australia. These interests frame her teaching and research practices. Her research includes sociological and historical examinations of education and investigates issues of curriculum, pedagogy and politics in education, policy and practice. Her work is informed by critical and post-structuralist theories and aims to offer opportunities for working towards social change.

• 
   Dr Aristidis (Harry) Galatis
  

   +61 3 8344 7282
  

  Lecturer in Philosophy of Education and Coordinator of the Master Of Teaching (Primary) course

  Dr Harry Galatis coordinates the Master of Teaching (Primary) course at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. He holds a PhD in Moral Philosophy and lectures in Philosophy of Education. He has taught in both IB and other inquiry-based programs across the primary and secondary sectors. His research interests include Ethics, Critical and Creative Thinking Capabilities in the Australian and Victorian Curriculums, dialogic instruction and Community of Inquiry pedagogies. He is the Deputy Chair of the Victorian Association of Philosophy in Schools and is especially interested in promoting Philosophy for Children programs. His book, Thoughtworks: Teaching Critical Thinking to Middle Years Students (Hawker Brownlow Education) was published in 2016.

  Harry is currently working with Professor John Munro (Faculty of Education and Arts, ACU) on co-editing a book on questioning in dialogue.

• 
   Associate Professor Kylie Smith
  

   8344 4084

  Kylie Smith is an Associate Professor at the Melbourne Graduate School of Education and has worked in early childhood services for over 30 years. Her research explores young children’s performances of identity and Kylie is currently exploring how respectful relationships programs might look in the early childhood space. Kylie has also begun a research project on creating participatory research methodologies with young children from migrant and refugee backgrounds.

  She is currently working on a project concerning gender identity in early childhood and on scoping the style and content of a safety planning and communication app (My Safety App) for primary school aged children who have experienced family violence.

Research High Degree Students

• 
   Bonita Cabiles

  Bonita is working on a project that explores the schooling experiences of students from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) background in Australia. She examines the concept of ‘participation’ – specifically, the ways in which educators and students experience and understand student participation in a primary school classroom.  Her thesis is provisionally entitled Language, culture and the field of participation: Exploring school experiences for CALD students.

  Bonita completed a Master’s degree at the University College London - Institute of Education and the University of Deusto, Spain under the Erasmus Mundus scholarship program. Her work experiences include primary school teaching, teacher training, and curriculum development. She has also worked in various non-government organisations and in international development in the Philippines.

• 
   Elizer Jay de los Reyes
  

  Jay is supervised by Professor Fazal Rizvi and Professor Julie McLeod.  Born and raised in Northern Philippines, he draws from his rural and transnational biography to explore topics such as imagination, futures, and mobilities of young people.

  His thesis, an ethnographic work, explores the ways in which young people – most of whom are children of local pocket miners and migrant women domestic workers – in the Cordillera Mountains, Northern Philippines are imagining and forging their futures in the context of banal transnational mobilities of labour, finance, and ideas. Jay was a Fulbright scholar at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign where he finished an MA in Educational Policy Studies and a specialisation in Global Studies in Education.  He was also an NYU-Steinhardt Faculty-First Look Scholar (2017-2018) and a Deutscher Akademischer Austauschdienst (DAAD) scholar at the Bielefeld Graduate School in History and Sociology, Germany (Winter 2017).  His thesis is provisionally entitled “Making-Do” for the Future: Schooling, Labour, and Gender in the Cordillera Mountains, Northern Philippines.

• 
   Joanne Higginson
  

  Under the supervision of Professor Julie McLeod and Professor Fazal Rizvi, Jo is researching the transnational experiences of senior secondary students and the their families who have experience of education, work and family life both in and between Australia and other countries. Working from the perspective that the mobility of people, capital, images and ideas is an integral aspect of contemporary social transformations and times, her work examines how migrations of people can provide us with insights into social and change processes, encompassing identities, class formations, work and family life and schooling.

  Jo has masters degrees in social science and teaching and has worked in policy and projects within government and the community legal sector and as a secondary teacher.  She currently teaches within MGSE’s MTeach Secondary program.

• 
   Annette Rome FACE, FACEL
  

  Annette is the Principal of St Margaret’s and Berwick Grammar School. Initially trained as a scientist, Annette’s current research interests include the education of young people to be global citizens who operate ethically and knowledgeably. Her research focuses on International Mindedness and the International Baccalaureate ’s Theory of Knowledge.

  She was coordinator of the CSE International Education Action Group, Indigenous Education Focus Group and is an adjunct lecturer at MGSE. She served on the Science Teachers’ Association of Victoria Council and Orica Corporate Affairs Division (Education). She is an International Baccalaureate Jeff Thompson Research Award winner, a Fellow of the Australian College of Educators and the Australian Council of Educational Leaders. She is a founding member of the James Macready-Bryan Foundation and an active member of ACEL, ACE and the Principals Australia Institute Change Team. She has been a board member of ACE and The Songroom. She is also a disability advocate with a particular focus on young people with acquired brain injury.