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» ANU Australian Studies Institute 2023–24 Visiting Fellowship Program » Visiting FellowsVisiting Fellows
Promoting the study of Australia and developing research collaborations.
The ANU Australian Studies Institute (AuSI) Visiting Fellowship Program brings early and mid-career researchers to the ANU campus to conduct and share research that promotes the study of Australia or transnational and comparative research involving Australia.
This Fellowship opportunity is for scholars of all academic disciplines who are based in Australian and overseas academic institutions.
Visiting Fellows
Dr Jaime Baeza Freer
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: jbaezafl@flacso.edu.ec
Visit date: 11 Nov – 17 Dec 2025
Website: https://scholar.google.com/citations?user=xwVLXRQAAAAJ&%3Bhl=en
Dr Jaime Baeza Freer is a Chilean political scientist and professor at FLACSO Ecuador. His project, The Southern Pacific as a Concept in South America: Process Tracing in a Comparative Study with ANZAC, places the Southern Pacific as a transoceanic and central geopolitical concept at the core of his analysis. The research underscores Australia’s leading role in shaping this region, conceptualised not just as a space but as a dynamic cross-Pacific arena connecting Australasian and South American shores. Using historical institutionalism and role theory, Dr Baeza examines how Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and Peru define institutional roles and regional strategies within a context of stable democracies (despite ongoing challenges in presidential succession in Peru). Special focus is given to Chile’s close bilateral cooperation with Australia and to “virtual borders” and policy innovation as mechanisms for trans-Pacific engagement and institutional adaptation.
Dr Nathan Fioritti
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: nathan.fioritti1@monash.edu
Visit date: 27 Oct – 28 Nov 2025
Website: https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/nathan-fioritti
Dr Nathan Fioritti is a lecturer and researcher at Monash University with a background in comparative environmental politics and media studies. During his Fellowship, Nathan will work with collaborators at ANU on a project examining the public climate statements made by Australia’s top emitters. Beginning with a paper that examines statements made by the top 100 high-emitting firms in the Australian media, this project will test the argument made in the academic literature on the clean energy transition that, as this transition accelerates, a change in the balance of forces of organised interests will be observed.
Dr Megha Sharma
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: megha.sharma@nls.ac.in
Visit date: 1 Oct – 30 Nov 2025
During her Fellowship, Dr Megha Sharma will examine how agricultural collaboration between India and Australia, particularly through the Australian Centre for International Agricultural Research (ACIAR), has shaped labour systems and ecological governance. Her research examines how scientific partnerships have impacted rural development, labour organisation, and resource management in South and Southeast Asia. Using archival and oral history methods, the project situates ACIAR within broader Commonwealth and Indo-Pacific networks.The long history of collaboration reflects evolving relationships and shifting motivations behind Australia’s engagement with Asia. A core concern of the project is how social identities have shaped and been shaped by institutional interventions, often becoming sites where scientific practices are negotiated through local practices. In doing so, the project engages with the intersection of national and transnational narratives of progress, while challenging the universalist assumptions about development and scientific rationality dominant in the 1980s.
Professor Peter Sloman
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: pjs93@cam.ac.uk
Visit date: 24 Oct – 24 Nov 2025
Website: https://www.polis.cam.ac.uk/Staff_and_Students/dr-peter-sloman
Prof Peter Sloman will be visiting ANU in October/November 2025 to carry out research on policy development in Australian federal parties, as part of a larger project on the politics of public finance in Westminster democracies. Tax and spending proposals are central to election campaigns in many countries, and 'costings' debates have become ubiquitous in Australia and elsewhere since the 1980s, but the choices which parties make in drawing up their fiscal plans are not always well understood. Peter is looking forward to carrying out archival and interview research in Canberra (for instance, using party records at the National Library of Australia) and engaging with the work of the Australian Studies Institute, the Tax and Transfer Policy Institute, and the Australian Politics Studies Centre.
Dr Agnieszka Sobocinska
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: agnieszka.sobocinska@kcl.ac.uk
Visit date: 3 Oct – 19 Dec 2025
Website: https://kclpure.kcl.ac.uk/portal/en/persons/agnieszka.sobocinska
Dr Agnieszka Sobocinska's Fellowship project seeks to reassess the established narrative of a neoliberal consensus by focusing on critical responses to global economic governance in Australia and Indonesia. These two nations had a widely diverging experience of economic globalisation. But the turn to global economic governance was heavily contested in both contexts. A close assessment of the debates accompanying the ascent of neoliberal economic governance, and the historical actors at their heart, will facilitate a new understanding of the contested nature of neoliberalism both as an ideology and a grassroots experience.
Associate Professor Filippo Trevisan
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: trevisan@american.edu
Visit date: 9 Nov – 9 Dec 2023
Website: http://www.filippotrevisan.net
Dr Trevisan's Fellowship project builds on my on-going collaboration with ANU colleagues – in particular, Crawford School’s Professor Ariadne Vromen with whom I co-authored a forthcoming book on crowdsourced storytelling and policy advocacy – and will investigate the transition from storytelling to story “action” in policymaking. Specifically, we will develop a model for building capability within government to engage effectively with narrative evidence drawn from lived experience that can spur action, support new policy narratives, and create change. In the spirit of “engaged” research, this model will be co-created with policymakers and public servants. This inter-disciplinary project cuts across policy studies, communication, and political science, and centers on a distinctive moment in Australian policymaking, laying the foundation for a future international study of government use of narrative evidence.
Dr Sophie Loy-Wilson
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: sophie.loy-wilson@sydney.edu.au
Visit date: 20 Nov – 15 Dec 2023
Website: https://www.sydney.edu.au/arts/about/our-people/academic-staff/sophie-loy-wilson…
At the ANU, Sophie will be working closely with colleagues on a series of newly uncovered court cases involving Chinese Australians 1850s-1940s. These cases include large caches of Chinese-language material and further her intellectual interest in uncovering Australia's Asian past. They will also allow her to investigate the survival strategies employed by Chinese Australians to circumvent the extensive surveillance systems in place under the auspices of the White Australia Policy and its early colonial iterations.
Associate Professor Xiaoming Liu
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: xiaomliu@unc.edu
Visit date: 7 Feb – 22 Mar 2024
The geochemist Associate Prof. Xiao-Ming Liu will come to ANU for a two-month research stay as an ANU Australian Studies Institute Fellow. She will be hosted by and collaborate with Prof. Penny King and others at ANU. Associate Prof. Xiao-Ming Liu plans to perform research projects that aim to investigate soil formation in Eastern Australia through the innovative use of non-traditional isotopes. Specially, the project aims to trace the movement of potassium, a fundamental plant nutrient, from rocks to soil, providing vital insights into global soil nutrient dynamics. This study is of particular significance considering Australia's unique environmental circumstances, such as its varied climates, frequent bushfires, and significant dust transport. The findings from this research will contribute to our global understanding of soil formation and will shed light on nutrient transportation in response to bushfires and dust transport. This knowledge is essential in addressing the challenges posed by climate change. To ensure the success of this project, Prof. Liu will leverage the advanced research infrastructure available at the Australian National University (ANU), including the Sensitive High Resolution Ion Microprobe (SHRIMP) and the East Australian Regolith Collection.
Dr Fernando Martinez Coma
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: f.martinezcoma@griffith.edu.au
Visit date: 5 Feb – 8 Mar 2024
Website: https://experts.griffith.edu.au/8140-fernando-martinez-coma
During his Fellowship Ferran proposes to asses the reasons on migration preferences of the Australian people over immigration as well as the variations in these attitudes. He propose that with climate change impacting our lives, climate migrants are another group of potential migrants that have recently raised attention. We currently lack an account of the preferences of the Australian people towards such group. Their importance will increase in the coming years, as climate change and environmental hazards will also impact in the Indo-Pacific. During the Fellowship, Ferran will assess not only the views of the Australian people on the number of migrants, but also on the reason for migration. The general research questions are: Do the reasons for migration matter for preferences of the Australian people over immigration? And what explains variations in these attitudes?
Dr Leonie John
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: l.john@uni-koeln.de
Visit date: 8 Feb – 15 Mar 2024
Website: https://anglistik1.phil-fak.uni-koeln.de/abteilungen-lehrende/sprachwissenschaft…
Dr John’s Fellowship project is aimed at illuminating the intersections and cross-connections between the growing fields of nuclear and medical humanities. By examining historical documents alongside different forms of creative writing, she seeks to reveal the complexity and variety of narratives surrounding the nexus of nuclear technology, health and wellbeing in Australia, to contemplate their continued impact on Australian society, and to identify associated visions of, as well as implications for, the future.
Dr Nóra Ni Loideain
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: nora.niloideain@sas.ac.uk
Visit date: 9 Feb – 9 Mar 2024
Website: https://research.london.ac.uk/search/staff/1231/dr-n%C3%B3ra-n%C3%AD-loide%C3%A1…
Safeguarding the Health and Digital Rights of Vulnerable Groups: A Role for AI Digital Assistants? Research undertaken during this Fellowship will examine the regulation and mainstreaming of human rights in AI-based systems adopted to interact and monitor individuals, in order improve the health of vulnerable groups. Analysis will focus on whether current safeguards and oversight of the design and deployment of these systems to protect the privacy and data protection rights of individuals are still fit for purpose. Building on ground-breaking research concerning human rights law and government use of automated decision-making systems in Australia, South Africa, and Europe. Comparative insights, findings, and policy recommendations will be drawn from oversight mechanisms in the emerging privacy and data protection frameworks of Australia and South Africa which have been influenced by EU standards (GDPR) and the European Convention on Human Rights. This work recognises that policymaking and scholarship on how best to collect and use health data from vulnerable groups, whilst respecting key data protection principles and safeguards, should be informed by a global dialogue of shared data and leading expertise.
Dr Geraldine Fela
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: geraldine.fela@mq.edu.au
Visit date: 12 Feb – 22 Mar 2024
Dr Fela is undertaking the first sustained scholarly examination of the 1998 waterfront dispute between Patrick Stevedores, the Coalition government, and the Maritime Union of Australia. Dr Fela’s fellowship will enable her to undertake sustained research in the ANU’s Noel Butlin Archives Centre, which is home to significant archival holdings relevant to the dispute. This research will lead towards the production of a monograph, the first book-length historical study of this watershed moment in Australia's political and industrial history.Pages
Dr Kate Fitch
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: kate.fitch@monash.edu
Visit date: 25 Jul – 26 Aug 2022
Website: https://research.monash.edu/en/persons/kate-fitch
Related news: AuSI welcomes Visiting Fellow: Dr Kate Fitch
Dr Fitch's Fellowship project focuses on Phyllis Parkinson, who worked for the Australian Wine Board from the early 1950s to the late 1970s. Her public relations activities targeted women and helped normalise wine consumption in the home, creating a strong domestic market for Australian wine and changing perceptions around women and alcohol. The findings will provide a better understanding of feminised labour and promotional culture.
Dr Ipsita Sengupta
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: ipsita444@gmail.com
Visit date: 11 Sep – 11 Nov 2022
Website: https://www.bankurauniv.ac.in/uploads/faculty/1653293837.pdf
Related news: AuSI welcomes new Visiting Fellow: Dr Ipsita Sengupta
Dr Sengupta’s Fellowship will cultivate a monograph on Australia’s India between 1890 and 1950, an area hardly explored in its plural palette in excess of the colonial rote of tea, cricket or – the camels. India had been a formative influence in shaping debates and narrations around Australianness in the nascent years of Federal formation, if sometimes as a creatrix of alterities. Dr Sengupta’s research aims to dig into India as shadow-narrative in the policies, published volumes and private journals of three time Prime Minister Alfred Deakin, trace the subcontinent confected by storytellers and travel-writers in journals and magazines of the period, as also explore the India-perfumed translational models of Australianness limned by invisibilised authors deemed “failures” at the time, such as Mollie Skinner. The monograph aims to cultivate “failure” and the dis(re)membered pasts of Indo-Australian connections as non-formulaic places of possibility for the nation and trans-nation, presently plagued by holograms and retrotopes of the insular singular.
Dr Erin O'Brien
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: erin.obrien@qut.edu.au
Visit date: 22 Sep – 8 Oct 2022
Website: https://www.qut.edu.au/about/our-people/academic-profiles/erin.obrien
Related news: AuSI welcomes Visiting Fellow: Dr Erin O’Brien
During this fellowship Dr O'Brien will undertake research on the role of the state in relation to market-based activism. A particular focus is the Australian government’s responses to political consumerism (for example, boycotts and buycotts), and political investorism (for example, divestment and shareholder activism). The aim of this research is to improve understandings of the intersection between the state, corporate actors, interest groups, and individual citizens in protest politics in the marketplace.
Dr Piers Kelly
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: piers.kelly@gmail.com
Visit date: 26 Sep – 25 Oct 2022
Website: https://www.une.edu.au/staff-profiles/hass/piers-kelly
Related news: AuSI welcomes Visiting Fellow: Dr Piers Kelly
Message sticks are marked wooden objects that were once used throughout Indigenous Australia to convey important information between communities. Dr Kelly's Fellowship will address the question: What role did message sticks play in Indigenous long-distance communication? Drawing on archival evidence and original fieldwork, the project aims to be the first empirically grounded study of message sticks as a practice. The project is informed by Australian linguistics and anthropology, as well as historiography and material culture studies. Dr Kelly will interact with colleagues at the Centre of Excellence for the Dynamics of Language, the ANU Centre for Heritage and Museum Studies, the Australian Centre for Indigenous History, and national collecting institutions. The projected outcomes of the fellowship are: to initiate collaborations, explore significant archival resources and to promote the study of message sticks as a uniquely Indigenous information technology.
Dr Rhonda Evans
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: revans@austin.utexas.edu
Visit date: 9 Oct – 9 Nov 2022
Website: https://liberalarts.utexas.edu/government/faculty/arden
Related news: AuSI welcomes Visiting Fellow: Dr Rhonda Evans
Dr Evans' book-length project is the first longitudinal, systematic analysis of the Australian Human Rights Commission (AHRC) as an institution—in fact, it is the first such analysis of any National Human Rights Institution (NHRI). It adapts concepts and theories from scholarship on judicial independence and the political construction of judicial power and uses them to develop a more robust analysis of NHRI independence than is currently offered in the extant literature. Marshalling five original datasets that draw on a diverse array of primary sources, Dr Evans will examine how partisan political actors have used the means at their disposal to enlarge and constrain the AHRC’s capacity to act independently.
Dr Alice Garner
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: agarner1@unimelb.edu.au
Visit date: 1 Nov – 10 Dec 2022
Website: https://unimelb.academia.edu/AliceGarner
Related news: AuSI welcomes Visiting Fellow: Dr Alice Garner
The extraordinary life of Mavis Robertson offers a window onto major social and political movements in 20th-century Australian history. Robertson, a key figure in the the Communist Party of Australia, left the Party in the 1980s to became a pioneer in the development of industry and compulsory superannuation in Australia. She was actively involved in the peace, anti-nuclear, women's and post-Allende Chilean solidarity movements, helped establish Emily's List, the Jessie Street Trust and the Mother's Day Classic for breast cancer research. Dr Garner's Fellowship will enable a close study of Robertson's papers in the Noel Butlin Archives, leading to the eventual production of a biographical-historical audio documentary series.
Dr Kamaljit Sangha
Position: AuSI Visiting Fellow
School and/or Centres: Australian Studies Institute
Email: Kamaljit.Sangha@cdu.edu.au
Visit date: 31 Jan – 10 Apr 2023
Website: https://researchers.cdu.edu.au/en/persons/kamaljit-sangha
Related news: AuSI welcomes first Visiting Fellow of 2023: Dr Kamaljit K Sangha
Dr Sangha will use this Fellowship to focus on analyzing the existing Indigenous welfare policies, frameworks, and developing an Indigenous specific well-being framework that can inform future policy decisions and development programs. Currently, the Australian Bureau of Statistics measures every Australian’s well-being applying a standard framework, which fails to reflect Indigenous well-being.
