As the Chief Investigator on the ARC funded Interfaith Childhoods Project, I would love to tell you a little more about myself and my experience working as a researcher within communities across Australia and the UK.
I am currently a tenured, full-time Professor with a research intensive position at RMIT University in the School of Media and Communication. In 2016 I was awarded an ARC Future Fellowship, and shortly after this award was granted, I won an RMIT Vice Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellowship (2017-2021).
Early in my career I was employed as a Research Fellow (2004-2005) at Monash on Professor Jane Kenway’s ARC project on young men and intergenerational relationships in de-industrialising economic contexts. I subsequently won a Monash competitive postdoctoral fellowship for my project titled Youth Arts Beyond Risk (2005-2007). This empirical study problematized the use of arts practices as a form of governance for marginalized youth, considered within policy discourses as being ‘at risk’ of leaving school. To benchmark this work, I established an arts case study in a regional Australian centre and two international comparison sites in the UK. These international sites formed the basis of further research and my work with the Tate Modern and Tate Learning Research Centre. The resulting book was published by Routledge in 2013 as Youth, Arts and Education.
In 2008 I was appointed by Monash as a tenured Lecturer and later moved to an equivalent position at the University of Sydney in 2009. In 2011 I was invited by Professor Valerie Harwood, a long-term collaborator, to join her ARC discovery 'Imagining University Education'. I worked with her and a team of 5 junior researchers, interviewing 365 young people with precarious relationships to education in 5 Australian states. The resulting book is The Politics of Widening Participation and University Access for Young People (Routledge 2016).
In early 2013 I was invited to apply for a Readership/Chair at Goldsmiths College, London. I was later promoted to Reader (Associate Professor). For 3 years I ran the Centre for The Arts and Learning (CAL) and I established the Goldsmiths Disability Research Centre with Professor Rob Imrie. I built a new PhD program which had 9 students within 2.5 years. I held a major international conference (London Conference in Critical Thought, 2015), and published a collection of works showcasing the research of CAL members: Arts, Pedagogy and Cultural Resistance: New Materialisms (Rowman and Littlefield).
At RMIT, I am fortunate to continue my ongoing work as an academic mentor to PhD students early career researchers, as well as a community based ethnographic that uses art practice to connect with youth.
Since 2005, I have pioneered new research methods which are widely cited internationally and have changed research practice. I have authored three books and co-authored two books. I have co-edited 8 collections of essays (books and themed journal editions) with early career researchers. These edited collections have been designed to support the research dissemination of early career researchers through including their work alongside established authors. Journals that I have edited special issues for include Angelaki: Journal of the Theoretical Humanities, Review of Education, Pedagogy and Cultural Studies, Critical Studies in Education and Discourse: Studies in the Cultural Politics of Education.
I have collaborated nationally and internationally in securing research funding from the Australian Research Council, the European COST Network, Australian Academy for the Humanities, The Canadian Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council, Darebin City Council, RMIT University, Sydney and Monash. I have given keynotes in Barcelona, Singapore, London, Australia, America and Korea. I have served on the editorial boards of journals such as Continuum: Journal of Media and Cultural Studies, British Journal of the Sociology of Education, A/V and the book series Cultural Studies and Transdisciplinary Education (Springer). I regularly assess grants for the ARC, the AHRC (UK) the ESRC (UK). I have reviewed promotion applications for full professor in America and Canada and have examined numerous doctoral theses, across Australia, Europe and the UK.
PhD Examinations
Kate Maguire-Rosier (Macquarie University)
Emma Mitchell (Macqurie University)
Kirsten Lambert, (Murdoch University)
Eve Mayes (The University of Sydney)
Liam James Rowley (Cardiff University)
Aljosa Puzar (Cardiff University)
Ruth Green-Cole (University of Auckland)
Dylan Holdsworth (Deakin University)
Sarah Austin (Uni Melb)
Kim Satchell (SCU)
Tamara Borovica (Uni Melb)
Navid Sabet (Monash University)
Inge Blockmans (Ghent)
The Interfaith Childhoods project is in its final year and I will be applying for further funding to continue my work with communities that engages in arts based practices for understanding community and belonging. For more information on my experience as a researcher, please contact me at anna.hickey-moody@rmit.edu.au or interfaithchildhoods@gmail.com