Yvonne Patterson
Yvonne Patterson lives in Perth WA, is retired from clinical psychology and has extensive experience in government human services policy.
Oliver Vodeb
Dr Oliver Vodeb is a sociologist looking closely at design and communication. He is an academic at the RMIT School of Design in Melbourne. Oliver is the principal curator of Memefest and Lipstick+Bread and a founding member of Academics for Public Universities and Public Universities Australia. He has published extensively, lectures internationally, and has designed and directed public campaigns and interventions in various parts of the world. His latest books are Food Democracy and Radical Intimacies (Intellect) and also What is Post-Branding? (Set Margins’).
Huw Watkin
Huw began his career in journalism in Australia in the mid-1980’s before moving to Asia where he has lived and worked in Cambodia, Thailand, Vietnam, Malaysia and Hong Kong. He is currently the principal of Drakon Associates, a research and investigation consultancy that focuses on the Asia Pacific, and continues to travel widely and write on a range of subjects and issues throughout the region.
Geetanjali Dhar
Geetanjali Dhar is the founder and CEO of Sanskriti Global Foundation, a social enterprise dedicated to promoting multiculturalism.
Ben Manski
Ben Manski is a scholar of social movements and next system studies who is working to build the Next System Teach-Ins. He is a former attorney, a longtime activist for democracy in the United States, and a professor of sociology and member of AAUP-AFT Local 6741.
Ariadne Vromen
Ariadne Vromen is Professor at the Crawford School of Public Policy at ANU. She has a longstanding interest in citizen engagement and political inequality. Her new co-authored book Story Tech: Power, Storytelling, and Social Change Advocacy will be published soon.
EAF editors The Australian National University
The EAF Editorial Board is comprised of Peter Drysdale, Shiro Armstrong, Ben Ascione, Liam Gammon, Ben Hillman, Adam Triggs, Jiao Wang, Lauren Richardson, Tom Westland, Maria Monic Wihardja and Andrew Levidis, and is located in the Crawford School of Public Policy in the ANU College of Asia and the Pacific.
Malcolm Spry
Malcolm Spry B.Econ, now retired, was an international marketing executive specialising in communications and research. Residing in Sydney he has served on several public company Boards and was a co-founder of E*TRADE Australia and a founding member of Human Rights Watch Australia.
Peter Tregear
Peter Tregear is an academic, performer, and arts commentator. He is a Principal Fellow of the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music and an Adjunct Professor of the University of Adelaide and was Professor and Head of the School of Music at the Australian National University from 2012–2015.
Jane Lydon
Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History, The University of Western Australia
Jane Lydon is the Wesfarmers Chair of Australian History at the University of Western Australia. Her research centres upon Australia’s colonial past and its legacies in the present. Her books include ‘Imperial Emotions: The Politics of Empathy Across the British Empire’ (Cambridge University Press, 2019), and ‘Anti-slavery and Australia: No Slavery in a Free Land?’ (Routledge, 2021). She leads the Australian Research Council-funded research project ‘Australian Legacies of British Slavery: Capital, Land and Labour’, which traces the movement of capital, people and culture from slave-owning Britain to the new settler colonies, aiming to produce a new history of the continuing impact of slavery wealth in shaping colonial immigration, investment, and law.
Mark Christensen
Mark Christensen is Professor, Management Control, at ESSEC Business School in Singapore. He has previously been a business academic in Australian and Danish tertiary institutions with a research interest in accounting as a socio-technical construction, especially in public sector reform.
Fiona McDonald
Fiona is an Associate Professor at the Faculty of Law at Queensland University of Technology (QUT), Australia. Fiona is also an Adjunct Associate Professor at the Department of Bioethics, Dalhousie University, Canada. Fiona’s research encompasses issues related to health governance and has four broad themes:
Dally Messenger III
Dally R. Messenger STB, LCP, BEd, DipLib, GDCel, ALAA. Foundation Secretary of the Association of Civil Marriage Celebrants of Australia (1975-1980). Foundation President of the Australian Association of Funeral Celebrants (1978). Foundation President and administrator of the Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants (1994-1999). Life Member of the Australian Federation of Civil Celebrants (1996). Life Member of the Celebrants and Celebrations Network (2014). Principal of the International College of Celebrancy (current). Celebrant Books: Ceremonies & Celebrations (Hachette),Murphy’s Law And The Pursuit Of Happiness: A History Of The Civil Celebrant Movement (Spectrum).
Yasuo Takao
Yasuo Takao is a political scientist in the research areas of comparative politics and international relations with the geographical emphasis of Northeast Asia and the United States.
Greg Bean
Greg Bean has 50 years experience in software development and in the last 18 months has undertaken a deep analysis of information available from the Australian Electoral Commission. All but 5 years self-employed, and has worked in Canada, Europe and Australia. Latest, 30,000 hours Data Warehouse/Business Intelligence. His employers/customers include Macquarie Bank, Bankers Trust, Reserve Bank Aus, BHP, Sony, AstraZeneca, Pirelli, many SAP sites. Greg is a free speech advocate.
Jee Young Lee
Jee Young Lee is a Senior Lecturer at the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra.
Jordana Hunter
Dr Jordana Hunter is the former Education Program Director at Grattan Institute, with deep expertise in school education reform, teacher professional learning, and evidence-based literacy and numeracy policy. She has held senior policy roles in the Department of Prime Minister and Cabinet, the Victorian Department of Premier and Cabinet, and the ACCC, and has consulted to school systems and providers across Australia. Jordana holds a PhD in social and political sciences and an Honours degree in Law and Commerce (Economics) from the University of Melbourne.
Peter Cook
Peter Cook, PhD, is vice-president of Sustainable Population Australia (SPA). He is co-author, with Jonathan Sobels, Sandra Kanck and Jane O’Sullivan, of the discussion paper Big thirsty Australia: how population growth threatens our water security and sustainability (2024), published by SPA.
Stephen Downes
Stephen Downes is a Melbourne writer and journalist. His debut novel The Hands of Pianists was among five (of 105) shortlisted for the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards in 2022. Several of his short stories have been shortlisted and longlisted in the best UK short-fiction prizes. Last Meal won the 2020 Fiction Factory award. He covered a Middle-East war for Agence France-Presse, and a Pacific insurrection for The Age.
Stephen Downes’s new novel Mural was published by Transit Lounge in September 2024. The criminal narrator of Mural wrestles with the knowledge that Australia’s most prominent public artist Napier Waller painted erotic watercolours years before the religious and military stained-glass windows for which he is best-known. [https://transitlounge.com.au/shop/mural/]
Caroline Fisher
Caroline Fisher is an Associate Professor of Communication and a core member of the News & Media Research Centre.
Carla Treloar
Carla Treloaris Scientia Professor at the Centre for Social Research in Health and the Social Policy Research Centre, UNSW Australia. She is a leading international expert in social research in health in marginalised groups with a focus on stigma and trust in health and social care systems.
Haneen Abo Soad
Haneen, a Palestinian from Gaza, currently resides in Portugal. She is a writer, community organiser, and activist advocating for the Palestinian cause. Haneen is dedicated to promoting peace.
Justin O’Connor
Justin O’Connor is Professor of Cultural Economy at the University of South Australia and visiting Chair in the School of Cultural Management, Shanghai Jiaotong University. He has held professorships at Monash University, Queensland University of Technology and the University of Leeds, and is a former Director of the Manchester Institute for Popular Culture at Manchester Metropolitan University. He also helped establish and was first chair of Manchester’s Creative Industries Development Service (CIDS), the UK’s first dedicated local economic development agency for the creative industries. Justin led the team which established Manchester’s first Creative Quarter - the Northern Quarter. Between 2012 and 2018 he was a member of the UNESCO 2005 Convention’s Expert Facility, supporting cultural policy development in Mauritius and Samoa.
John Barclay
John Barclay led ground-breaking Library Association of Australia China Library Study tours in 1976 and 1983 and later cultural tours to China. He has been committed to educational and cultural exchange between Australia and China for over fifty years.
Sora Park
Sora Park is a Professor of Communication at the University of Canberra and the Director of the News & Media Research Centre.
Brian Lawrence
Brian Lawrence LL.B. M.Ec. prepared submissions and appeared on behalf of the Australian Catholic Bishops Conference and agencies of the Catholic Church in the national annual wage reviews from 2003 to 2019. He is a former barrister and was a Deputy President of the Industrial Relations Commission of Victoria, the functions of which have been transferred to national tribunals.
Jenna Price
Jenna Price is a regular columnist and a visiting fellow at the Australian National University.
Rojan Joshi
Rojan Joshi is Researcher at the South Asian Research and Advocacy Hub, the East Asian Bureau of Economic Research and a recipient of the Australian Government’s 2024 New Colombo Plan Scholarship for India.
Trita Parsi
Trita Parsi is the Executive Vice President of the Quincy Institute and author of Losing an Enemy - Obama, Iran and the Triumph of Diplomacy.
Alexander Titus
Alexander Titus is Researcher at the South Asian Research and Advocacy Hub and a recipient of the Australian Government’s 2024 New Colombo Plan Scholarship for India.
Megan Russell
Megan Russell is CODEPINK’s China is Not Our Enemy Campaign Coordinator.
She graduated from the London School of Economics with a Master’s Degree in Conflict Studies. Prior to that, she attended NYU where she studied Conflict, Culture, and International Law. Megan spent one year studying in Shanghai, and over eight years studying Chinese Mandarin. Her research focuses on the intersection between US-China affairs, peace-building, and international development.