People, culture, society and politics

Our team of academic experts seeks to identify key opportunities and use these to harness the potential of our society, both at a local and international level. Learn more about our team below.

Dr Greg Acciaioli

Dr Greg Acciaioli is an environmental anthropologist who teaches in Anthropology and Sociology, International Development and Asian Studies at The University of Western Australia.

He has engaged in academic research on disputes over national parks in both Indonesia and Malaysia, as well as such topics as the relationship of the Indigenous peoples’ movement to environmental claims and sectarian conflict, environmental education, participatory development programs, agricultural development, rice intensification, food security and food sovereignty, the social effects of oil palm plantation proliferation, migration and ethnic interaction, statelessness, and State perceptions of minorities and other marginal peoples in Indonesia.

Dr Katie Attwell

Dr Katie Attwell is a Senior Lecturer in Political Science and International Relations at The University of Western Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow with the Wesfarmers Centre of Vaccines and Infectious Diseases, Telethon Kids Institute. Katie is interested in the intersection of policy, identity and behaviour as they pertain to health consumers, healthcare providers and governance. In 2014 she researched, designed, delivered and evaluated the internationally recognised public health campaign, “I Immunise”.

Katie's current projects include analysing governance strategies for addressing vaccine refusal, conceptualising the role of group identity in vaccination decision-making, and designing and piloting strategies for conversational interventions with pregnant women regarding vaccination of themselves and their babies.

Professor Loretta Baldassar

Professor Loretta Baldassar is a migration scholar and researcher in UWA’s Anthropology and Sociology discipline group. Loretta is currently working on three interconnected research projects: Ageing and New Media; Youth Mobilities; and Student Internationalisation. These projects examine the impact of mobility on family and support networks, with a special focus on the role of new technologies in staying connected.  Loretta is a co-founder of the Migration, Mobilities and Belonging research cluster at UWA, Vice President of the International Sociological Association Migration Research Committee and a regional editor for the journal Global Networks.

Loretta collaborates on projects, consultancies and evaluations with local government, service providers and community groups. Her research team helps to combat social isolation and improve digital literacy for older people, particularly people from culturally and linguistically diverse backgrounds.

Her most recent publications can be found below,

 Belmont Stories and Skills Evaluation Report 2018 (PDF 3.15MB)

Professor Peter J Dean

Professor Peter J Dean is a strategic studies scholar, Pro Vice-Chancellor Education at UWA and a Senior Fellow at the Perth USAsia Centre. His research focuses on Australian defence policy with an emphasis on the Australian Defence Force, military operations, strategic policy, the ANZUS alliance and US and Australian strategy in the Indo-Pacific. Peter is the recipient of a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade Fulbright Award and a Commonwealth Government Endeavour Research Fellowship for public policy focused research on the US-Australian Alliance. He has been a Senior Fellow at the Center for Australian and New Zealand Studies at Georgetown University, Washington DC, and an Adjunct Fellow in the Pacific Partners Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Washington DC. 

Dr Judy Fisher

Dr Judy Fisher is Lead Expert for the International Union for the Conservation of Nature, Commission on Ecosystem Management Thematic Group Ecosystems and Invasive Species, which works with experts from 50 countries to implement a holistic approach to identify and respond to the negative impacts which invasive species may have on food security, food production, biodiversity, livelihoods, human health and wellbeing, in terrestrial, aquatic and marine ecosystems.

Judy has been elected by 130 governments to the 25 member IPBES Multidisciplinary Expert Panel. She is also Co-Chair of the IPBES Indigenous and Local Knowledge Task Force, which works to incorporate indigenous traditional knowledge and local knowledge into all IPBES activities.

Dr Caleb Goods

Dr Caleb Goods is a Lecturer of Management and Organisations in The University of Western Australia Business School. His research focuses on the ‘gigification’ of work, work organised via apps like Uber or Deliveroo. The findings of Caleb’s research have important implications for a range of public policy areas, such as the future of work, superannuation, taxation, immigration, income support and industrial relations.

His second major research area focuses on transitioning the world of work from a high-carbon economy to a low-carbon world and asks whether this is a just transition? His 2015 book Green Auto Jobs critically examined the Rudd Labor government’s green car policy and its impacts.

Professor Fiona Haslam McKenzie

Professor Fiona Haslam McKenzie has extensive experience in population and socioeconomic change, housing, regional economic development and analysis of remote, regional and urban socioeconomic indicators. She has published widely and undertaken work for the corporate and small business sectors both nationally and in Western Australia, has conducted work for all three tiers of government, and since 2015 has been co-director of the Centre for Regional Development at The University of Western Australia.

Fiona is currently researching the socioeconomic impact of different workforce arrangements for the mining industry and uneven economic development in Western Australia, focusing on the key issues of competitiveness, resilience and spatial integration.

Dr Paul Maginn

Dr Paul J Maginn is Coordinator of the Master in Urban and Regional Planning program at UWA. Paul’s research interests/expertise include: (i) metropolitan planning and planning reform; (ii) urban regeneration; (iii) urban politics; (iv) local government representation; (iv) social/cultural aspects of suburbia; (iv) geographies and regulation of the sex industry; and (vi) the geographies of porn consumption and production.

Paul’s co-edited book, (Sub)Urban Sexscapes, won the 2016 Planning Institute of Australia’s National Award for Cutting Edge Research and Teaching. Paul is Editor-in-Chief of Australia’s leading urban studies journal, Urban Policy and Research, and a founding member of the Urban Broadcast Collective (@UrbanPodcasts). You can find him on Twitter at @Planographer and @SuburbanistaPod.

Dr Fiona McGaughey

Dr Fiona McGaughey’s key research area is international human rights law. She publishes in Australia and internationally on the role of NGOs in international human rights law, modern slavery, transitional justice, minority rights and disability rights. She is currently co-editing the Edward Elgar Research Handbook on Art and Law and her book, NGOs in International Human Rights Law (Routledge), is forthcoming.

Fiona initially worked in the private sector as a management consultant before moving to semi-state and not-for-profit research and policy roles, which she did for over 10 years in Australia and Ireland. Fiona is co-convenor of the UWA Modern Slavery Research Network and the UWA Not-for-Profit Hub. With colleagues at UWA, Fiona engages in policy submissions and is a regular contributor to The Conversation.

Ian Murray

Ian Murray is a lawyer with a research and teaching focus in the areas of resources taxation and the intersection between not-for-profit law, tax and corporate governance. Ian has a decade’s experience as a legal adviser as well as practical experience in the regulatory and governance issues faced by not-for-profits, having been a not-for-profit board member, including chairperson, for over five years.

His research includes a particular focus on the intergenerational implications of asset accumulation by not-for-profits and the role of not-for-profits within native title asset management structures. Ian regularly contributes to the review and design of not-for-profit legislation as well as the rulings of various government bodies.

Antoine Musu

Antoine Musu is a Lecturer at the UWA Business School. His research focuses on the impact and effectiveness of tourism policy development and strategy for sustainable tourism development and tourism success in regional Western Australia. His research findings have implications on the formulation and implementation of policy and attempts to seek effective ways to measure tourism success. His second area of research is the entrepreneurial ecosystem. 

Antoine worked in the Accounting and Business Advisory sector and the role rapidly developed into a long career in the Hotel, Private Club and Leisure industry in European and South East Asian cities, and in Australia. He lectures in Entrepreneurship and Innovation, Commercialisation and Small Business, and is a member of the Founding Board of the Commercialisation Studies Centre. 

Dr Sagi Peari

Dr Sagi Peari researches and teaches within private law (contracts, torts and restitution), commercial law, international law and their intersections. His work tackles some of the most pressing questions of contemporary social reality. Consider the emerging elimination of checks as a method of payment.

Apparently, the contemporary prevailing method of online direct payment is implausible. Where it provides an advantage for business, it is not clear why the consumer needs to pay in advance, before the delivery of the service or product. From this perspective, one can argue in favour of introducing a method of payment in the form of electronic checks which would support a delicate balance between the interests of sellers and buyers.

Professor Krishna Sen

Professor Krishna Sen is Professor Emerita in the School of Social Sciences at the University of Western Australia, a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and a member of the Reference Group for the New Colombo Plan, which is appointed and chaired by the Minister of Foreign Affairs.

Krishna was Dean of the Faculty of Arts at UWA 2009-2017. She is internationally recognised for her work on the media and has written extensively on Indonesia. She is also editor of several monographs and is a member of editorial boards of several international refereed journals.

Krishna grew up and completed her undergraduate education in India and continues to maintain her networks in India.

Professor Erika Techera

Professor Erika Techera is an international and comparative environmental lawyer with particular emphasis on marine governance in the Indo-Pacific. She has been a consultant on UNEP and FAO projects relating to the environment, fisheries and forestry.

Her research explores the legal frameworks for marine protected areas, marine spatial planning, fisheries, marine pollution and ecotourism, as well as wildlife conservation and management. Much of her research is multidisciplinary, involving both science and social science dimensions. Erika explores the intersection of law and science both in terms of new discoveries requiring law reform and technologies for monitoring and enforcement. She works with social scientists on cultural heritage law and policy, environmental crime and cultural drivers of compliance.

Associate Professor Andrew R Timming

Andrew R Timming is Associate Professor of Human Resource Management at UWA Business School. He holds a PhD from the University of Cambridge. Having worked as a strategy and HR consultant, he has considerable experience in bringing academic insight into real-world problems. He is keen to work with organisations (private sector, public sector and not-for-profit) in the following areas:

1. health in the workplace, especially mental health and its relationship to bullying
2. employee selection systems, especially the design of recruitment methods that eliminate unfair and unconscious bias
3. employee voice, especially the ways in which both organisations and societies can benefit from giving workers a greater “say” in organisational decision-making.

Professor Petra Tschakert

Professor Petra Tschakert is the Centenary Professor in Rural Development in the Department of Geography. Her research focuses on climate change adaptation, environmental justice, and livelihood security, with particular emphasis on poverty, vulnerability, and inequalities. She is the main CI on the ARC-funded discovery project ‘Locating Loss from Climate Change in Everyday Places’ here in WA, examining how people make trade-offs between the many things they value and, collectively, negotiate resilient trajectories through the climate crisis.

Professor Tschakert has extensive experience as coordinating lead author (CLA) on the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. She co-led Chapter 5 (Sustainable Development, Poverty Eradication and Reducing Inequalities) and contributed to the Summary for Policy Makers on the IPCC Special Report on Global Warming of 1.5°C. Prior to that, she played a key role in the IPCC’s Fifth Assessment Report, co-leading the chapter on Livelihoods and Poverty.