Day 2 Speakers
MQ Supervisor panel - You Can't Ask That!
Associate Professor Alice Chik
Associate Professor, School of Education, Macquarie University
Alice Chik is an Associate Professor in the School of Education, Faculty of Arts, and the Associate Director of Multilingualism Research Centre, Faculty of Medicine, Health and Human Sciences.
Her primary area of research examines language learning and multilingual literacies in digital environments. She is especially interested in exploring how language learners construct and direct their autonomous learning in informal contexts. She also has a particular interest in multilingualism is public discourse, representation, and narratives of everyday multilingual experience. She is the lead co-editor of Multilingual Sydney (Routledge, 2019) and lead author of 'Languages of Sydney: The people and the passion' (Candlin & Mynard, 2019). Her recent projects can be found on www.multilingualsydney.org.
Alice is currently on the editorial boards for Language Learning & Technology, and The Australian Journal of Teacher Education. She also works closely with community organizations in Sydney that serve culturally and linguistically diverse communities. She serves on the Multicultural Advisory Committee, Ryde City Council, and on the management committee of NSW Federation of Community Language Schools Inc.
Professor Michael J. Aitken
Professor, Department of Applied Finance, Macquarie University
Mike Aitken is Chair of ICT Strategy within the Department of Applied Finance at the Macquarie Business School. While he began his career as a traditional academic working on attaining high quality publications, he swapped this approach for a more industry centre approach (where publications were inconsistent with creating valuable IP) when he set up the Securities Industry Research Centre of Asia-Pacific (SIRCA) in 1997. SIRCA to this day provides research infrastructure (large scale computing facilities, data and software) to Universities across Australia and NZ enabling researchers to access intraday stock market, accounting and related data. This endeavour morphed into his setting up the Capital Markets Cooperative Research Centre in 2001 which he ran for 19 years (including two rebids) until it was reconstituted as the Rozetta Institute (RI) (www.rozettainstitute.com) in 2019. The object of the CMCRC was to take post-graduate students on a journey of exploration in which they gained their postgraduate awards by working in start-up businesses created by the CRC and its partners.
More recently students have worked in businesses like Lorica Health P/L (www.loricahealth.com), Trovio P/L(www.trovio.io), Digicash P/L (www.digi.cash), Ordermentum P/L (www.ordermentum.com) and CIM Environmental (www.cim.io). As a result RI now has an endowment of approximately AUD$40m and is using it to fund more academic industry research initiatives. Rozetta's latest success is the recently established Digital Finance CRC (www.digitalfinanceCRC.com.au) where RI funded the entire bid of half a million dollars. It is currently also funding a bid for a superannuation CRC. Mike has won many awards for this work including the Prime Ministers Prize for Innovation in Science in 2014.
Professor Andrew Barron
Professor, Department of Biological Sciences, Macquarie University
Dr Barron is an Australian Research Council Future Fellow, and Deputy Head of the Department of Biological Sciences at Macquarie University. He is a neuroethologist, which is a discipline of neuroscience studying the neural mechanisms of natural animal behaviour. Most of his research focuses on insects, especially honey bees. Using advanced techniques to visualise, manipulate, map and record from the insect brain Barron’s team has made important contributions to the understanding of fundamental behavioural systems such as cognition, navigation, social behaviour and learning and memory.
He also conducts research to improve honey bee health and welfare. He is studying how bees and bee colonies are impacted by pesticide and disease stressors, and how to best intervene to help bee colonies under stress.
Professor Ingrid Piller
Professor, Department of Linguistics, Macquarie University
Ingrid Piller is Distinguished Professor of Applied Linguistics at Macquarie University, Sydney, where she previously served as Executive Director of the Adult Migrant English Program Research Centre (AMEP RC). Over the course of her international career, she has also held appointments at universities in Germany, Switzerland, United Arab Emirates and USA. She is a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and recipient of a 2018 Anneliese Maier Research Award.
Ingrid Piller is an applied sociolinguist with research expertise in intercultural communication, language learning, multilingualism, and bilingual education. She has published, lectured and consulted widely in these areas.
Ingrid Piller is the author of Linguistic Diversity and Social Justice (Oxford University Press, 2016), which won the 2017 Prose Award in the Language and Linguistics category and the 2017 BAAL Book Prize. She is also the author of the bestselling Intercultural Communication (Edinburgh University Press, 2nd ed., 2017) and over 400 other publications.
Ingrid Piller is a member of the Australian Research Council (ARC) College of Experts, serves as editor-in-chief of the international sociolinguistics journal Multilingua (De Gruyter Mouton) and edits the sociolinguistics portal Language on the Move, through which many of her publications and those of her team, including their research blog, can be accessed. She tweets about linguistic diversity @lg_on_the_move.
Communicating the Impact of your Research - Workshop
Mr Hugh Kearns
Public speaker, educator and researcher, Thinkwell
Hugh Kearns is recognised internationally as a public speaker, educator and researcher. He regularly lectures at universities across the world including Oxford, Cambridge, Harvard, Berkeley and Stanford.
His areas of expertise include self-management, positive psychology, work-life balance, learning and creativity. He draws on over twenty five years of experience as a leading training and development professional within the corporate, financial, education and health sectors in Ireland, Scotland, North America, New Zealand and Australia. He has coached individuals, teams and executives in a wide range of organisations in the public and private sectors.
Hugh lectures and researches at Flinders University, Adelaide, Australia. He is widely recognised for his ability to take the latest research in psychology and education and apply it to high-performing people and groups. As a co-author with Maria Gardiner, he has published ten books which are in high demand both in Australia and internationally.
3 Employability Skills for Graduate Researchers - Workshop
Dr Andrew Dunstall
Graduate Research Academy Development Advisor, Macquarie University
Dr Andrew Dunstall is an experienced Higher Education worker with a range of roles under his belt. He loves getting into the nitty gritty of policy and implementation to make things work well for students and staff.
He has been a researcher, an administrator for research students, worked with education technology, and as a Lecturer in philosophy. He’s worked with universities since 2005 and his current role is as a research trainer and student experience coordinator for Macquarie University's new Graduate Research Academy.
Andrew has a PhD in Philosophy and a Grad Cert in Higher Education. He’s always looking to learn more, and his current favourite thing to learn about is project management.
Jason Ford
Graduate Research Academy Industry Programs Coordinator, Macquarie University
Jason has worked at Macquarie University since 2015. Before this he worked in the International office of TAFE NSW and NSW Government Schools for 10 years. He has worked in the GRA office since 2017, working initially in the Admissions team, processing new applications. He has also worked in the examination team, processing MRes thesis submissions and examinations, and worked in the candidature management team processing leave requests, changes to candidature and candidate enquiries.
Jason is now working in the Strategic Programs team, looking at internship opportunities that MRes, MPhil and PhD candidates can undertake. The Federal Government is incentivising internship opportunities for Higher Degree Candidates, so this is a growing area of interest for candidates and supervisors. He is also involved in the development of Industry PhD programs in Macquarie and works closely with the Graduate Research Liaison Coordinators for each faculty, developing and assisting with the strategic direction of each faculty, in the Higher Degree Research space.
Supporting Each Other
Ashwin Singh
Psychologist/Allied Health Officer, Macquarie University Student Wellbeing
Psychologist/Allied Health Officer, Macquarie University Student Wellbeing
Ashwin is a registered psychologist who has been at Macquarie University for 6 years. He has presented numerous workshops on topics to help research candidates, including dealing with impostor syndrome and managing stress.
He loves how workshops not only help candidates build skills, but also build a supportive community.
Conference Close
Professor Jennifer Cornish
Academic Director of Graduate Research and a Professor in Psychological Sciences, Macquarie University
Professor Jennifer Cornish is Academic Director of Graduate Research and a Professor in Psychological Sciences (Macquarie University). Professor Cornish obtained her PhD in Neuropharmacology from Monash University in 1997 and has since researched in the fields of drug use disorders and associated mental health issues of psychosis, anxiety and depression. Her work has discovered neurotransmitter systems and brain circuits that mediate maladaptive behaviour (80 publications, H index of 31, 3245 citations). In addition to lecturing in biopsychology and psychopharmacology, she has been Director of Higher Degree Research (HDR) for Psychology (2007-2014), acting Associate Dean Research (2014) and Associate Dean HDR for the Faculty of Human Sciences (2017-2020). Jen has a strong interest in supporting graduate research candidates, and continues in this domain in her current role in the Graduate Research Academy.
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