Professor Tara Brabazon

Academic Status

College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences

place Humanities (006)
GPO Box 2100, Adelaide 5001, South Australia

Tara Brabazon is Professor of Cultural Studies at Flinders, Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) and Director of the Popular Culture Collective. She has worked in nine universities in four countries, holding research professorships in media, creative media, communication and education. She is the author of 20 books and over 250 refereed articles and book chapters, and is a columnist for the Times Higher Education. Her best known books include the Digital Hemlock trilogy (Digital Hemlock, The University of Google and Digital Dieting), Enabling University: (dis)ability, impairment and higher education, Thinking Popular Culture: war, writing and terrorism, Unique Urbanity: renewal, regeneration and decay, From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, popular memory, cultural studies, Trump Studies and The Creative PhD.

Tara has won six teaching awards, including the National Teaching Award for the Humanities, along with other awards for disability education, cultural studies and doctoral supervision. In recognition of community engagement, Tara was a finalist for Australian of the Year and Telstra Businesswoman of the Year in 2005. An awarded speaker, she had delivered hundreds of speeches around the world to business leaders, professional organizations and community groups. She was made a Member of the Order of Australia (AM).

Her research interests include city imaging, creative industries, cultural studies, physical cultural studies, digitization and higher education studies. She is committed to ensuring that Flinders is an enabling university, aligning excellence with social justice in the higher degree programme.

Tara is an expert in - and active user of - social media. Please refer to her podcasts
(http://tarabrabazon.libsyn.com/webpage/category/podcasts),
YouTube Channel (https://www.youtube.com/user/TaraBrabazon),
Twitter feed (@tarabrabazon),
Academia.edu profile(https://flindersclosingthegapprogram.academia.edu/TaraBrabazon),
LinkedIn profile (http://www.linkedin.com/in/tarabrabazon?trk=nav_responsive_tab_profile) and Pinterest boards (https://www.pinterest.com/tarabrabazon/).

Qualifications

Bachelor of Arts with First Class Honours in History (University of Western Australia) 1990

Bachelor of Literature and Communication (Murdoch University) 1990

Bachelor of Education with Distinction (Central Queensland University) 1998

Graduate Diploma of Internet Studies with Distinction (Curtin University) 2001

Le Cordon Bleu Graduate Diploma in Gastronomic Tourism (Southern Cross University) 2016

Master of Arts by Research in History with Distinction (University of Western Australia) 1992

Master of Letters in Cultural Studies (Central Queensland University) 1995

Master of Education with First Class Honours (University of New England) 2006

Master of Leadership (Deakin University) 2020-1

Doctor of Philosophy (Murdoch University) 1995

Honours, awards and grants

Member of the Order of Australia (AM), January 2019

Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA)

Winner, Teaching Excellence Award (for undergraduate and postgraduate education), University of Brighton, 2009/10

Dean’s Prize, Masters of Education with Honours, University of New England, April 2007

Finalist Australian of the Year – Western Australia, 2005

Finalist Telstra Businesswoman of the Year – Western Australia, 2005

Winner of the Supervisor of the Year, Murdoch University, 2005

Winner of the Teaching Excellence Award, Murdoch University, 2005

Winner of the Vice Chancellor’s Equity (Disabilities) Award, Murdoch University, 2000

Winner of the Australian Award for University Teaching, Federal Government of Australia, 1998

Winner of the Vice Chancellors Teaching Excellence Award, Murdoch University, 1997

Key responsibilities

Tara welcomes approaches about PhD supervision, particularly with regard to the PhD by Prior Publication, artefact and exegeses thesis, and popular cultural studies research.

Teaching interests
  • Introduction to Cultural Studies
  • Introduction to Communication
  • Creative Industries
  • Thinking Pop
  • Communication for Social Change
  • Cultural Difference and Diversity
  • Scholarship
  • Lipstick Traces: A secret history of the 20th century
  • Communication Capstone Course
  • Media Literacies
  • Sonic Media
  • Teaching, Learning and Writing through popular culture
  • Media Research
  • City Imaging
  • Lifestyle Capitalism
  • Social Capital
  • Moving Knowledge
  • Words and music
  • Here to stay: popular memory
  • Fat and fitness
  • Multiliteracies
  • The Repetitive Beat Generation
  • Making Trouble: Men, women and politics
  • The Study of Man
  • Dance to disco(urse)
  • Assume Nothing: Theories of Cultural Studies
  • Text, Space and Place: Cultural Geography and Cultural Studies
  • Volatile Bodies: Body Theory and Cultural Studies
  • Television Theory
  • Media and Popular Culture
  • Flowers in the dustbin: Post-punk popular music
Supervisory interests
Auditory cultures
City imaging
Communication studies
Creative industries
Cultural studies
Deterritorialization
Digitisation
Disintermediation
Dr Who studies
Education cities
Enabling university
Fandom
Feminism
Fitness
Food studies
Higher education studies
Information literacy
Information management
Media studies
Men's studies
New media
Online learning
Physical cultural studies
Popular cultural studies
Popular music
Postcolonialism
Quantified self
Regional development
Science fiction
Screen cultures
Social media
Sonic media
Sport
Star Trek
Tourism studies
University cities
Urban regeneration
Wine studies
Higher degree by research supervision
Current
Principal supervisor: Feminism, Women's health, Women's rights (1), Alternative therapies, Reiki (1), Music education, Music technology (1), Multiculturalism, African immigration (1), Early child education, professionalism (1), Classic cinema, Memes (1)
Completion
Principal supervisor: “Music as a service not a product,” University of Brighton (1), “It’s in the bin: finding and understanding dead popular culture,” Photostory and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “Oral history of dance culture,” Sonic documentary and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “No comment: unravelling comment culture,” University of Brighton (1), “Unplugged moments,” Sonic installation and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “Social media as social reality: when the cult of the amateur becomes a culture of necessity,” University of Brighton (1), “The Lord of the Rings: the untold tale,” Novella and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “Touring the imaginary: exoticism in sex tourism in Brazil,” University of Brighton (1), What happens when your hard drive crashes, man? Dead vinyl and living memory', University of Brighton (1), Public and Private Models for Broadcasting: the cases of Cyprus and Greece,” University of Brighton (1), Small nation media regulation: the case of Cyprus,” University of Brighton (1), Young, mobile and backpacking,” Murdoch University (1), Billy Bragg: mixing pop and politics,” Murdoch University (1), Witnessing death,” University of Brighton and Murdoch University (1), “Static and Flux: Excess in the New Russian Television, Murdoch University (1), Exit Planet Face,” Murdoch University (1), Women and Australian Rules Football,” Murdoch University (1), “Got to get the executive look: the building of professional woman,” Murdoch University (1), “Governance and the World Wide Web,” Murdoch University (1), “Beyond the digital diva: women@theworldwideweb,” Murdoch University (1), “Women and Generation X film,” Murdoch University (1), “The Night-time economy,” Murdoch University (1), “Movement,” Murdoch University (1), “Questions of Popular Cult(ure), Murdoch University (1), “Bitch,” Murdoch University (1), “Thinking on your feet,” Murdoch University (1), “Antipodean popular cultural policy,” Murdoch University (1), “Rock ‘n’ roll cinema,” Murdoch University (1), “Walking down the road to Wigan Pier,” Murdoch University (1), “Popular queer studies,” Murdoch University (1), “Supersizing fitness: putting the class back in exercise classes,” Murdoch University (1), “The interview as research and communication,” Sonic documentary and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “Once upon out times,” Ficto-criticism, photostory and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), Maths education through neoliberalism,” Charles Sturt University (1), Trans-disciplinary design,” University of Bolton (1), Fashion cities: summoning a city imaging strategy through the commodification of clothing in urban environments,” University of Brighton (1), Age 2.0: the age of the version number,” University of Brighton (1), “Dark matters: the inevitability of the online community exile,” University of Brighton (1), “City of god as community media,” University of Brighton (1), “Imag(in)ing Brighton,” Photographic series and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), The politics of memory, identity and affect in oral history: a case study,” University of Brighton (1), “Sonic interventions for political change,” sonic artefacts and exegesis, University of Brighton (1), “The subaltern can podcast: Podcasting in the Cameroon,” sonic artefacts and exegesis, University of Brighton (1)