JERAA National Conference 2023

• 3 minute Research Presentations: Early Career Researchers and PhD students - Dr Penny O'Donnell, University of Sydney

• Workshop: From Thesis to Book Without Giving Up - Dr Ayesha Jehangir, University of Technology Sydney

• Workshop: Grant Writing - Dr T.J. Thompson, RMIT University, and Dr Belinda Middleweek, University of Technology Sydney

• Workshop: Developing your research narrative - Professor Mark Deuze, UTS/University of Amsterdam

• Official Opening: Welcome to Country, FASS Dean Professor Alan Davison, Head of School of Communication Professor Stephanie Hemelryk Donald, JERAA President Associate Professor Alex Wake

• Keynote: Professor Cherian George, Baptist University of Hong Kong – Blind spots and biases in media freedom advocacy

• Keynote: Associate Professor Johan Lidberg, Monash University – Lawfare and Media Freedom: Where to Next?

• Book Launch Lunch

• Panel: Demystifying AI in journalism

• International Panel: Unifying Global North and Global South media approaches to addressing violence against women 

• International Panel: Challenges for campus and community media in Asia-Pacific diversity

• Research Presentations 

• Welcome Event

• Keynote: Live Video Meeting with Professor Matt Carlson, University of Minnesota - How Do We Understand What is Happening to Journalism Right Now? Exploring Epistemic Contests Around News

• Keynote: Dr Amy McQuire, Queensland University of Technology – Reporting on disappeared Indigenous women

• National Panel: - Reporting violence against women within legal constraints - Dr Annie Blatchford, Dr Amy McQuire

• JERAA Annual General Meeting: Launch of journalism guides, reporting child abuse, language guide for mental health news, DART centre resources.

• Research Presentations

• Conference Dinner at The Mercure (ticketed separately)

• Keynote: Professor Colleen Murrell, Dublin City University - The BBC's Women Foreign Correspondents: From the 1960's to today

• Keynote: Associate Professor Jake Lynch, University of Sydney - Peace Journalism in a troubled year 

• International Panel: Reporting crises - DART Centre Amantha Perera TBC, Christine Kearney, Professor Colleen Murrell, Associate Professor Jake Lynch 

• The Junction: Workshop on collaborative university journalism 

• International Panel: Journalists at war - goals and objectives, the Ukrainian case

• Research Presentations 

• Conference Close 

Dr Amy McQuire is a Darumbal and South Sea Islander academic, writer and journalist currently based at the Queensland University of Technology. 

Amy has over 17 years experience working in Aboriginal and independent media, having written for numerous publications such as Meanjin, Griffith Review, New York Times, Washington Post, Vogue, Marie Claire and Buzzfeed Australia. Amy investigated the wrongful conviction of Aboriginal man Kevin Henry for 'Curtain the Podcast' co-hosted with Martin Hodgson. In 2021 Amy published her first book Day Break, and her first non-fiction book Black Witness is set for publication in 2024. 

Amy earned her from PhD from the University of Queensland researching Media Representations of Violence against Aboriginal Women. She currently holds the position of Indigenous Post-Doctoral Fellow at the QUT School of Communications, within the Digital Research Media Centre and Centre for Justice. Amy is exploring building a sovereign black media, as well as writing about disappeared Aboriginal women, wrongful convictions and justice system brutality.

Associate Professor Johan Lidberg is an Australian-Swedish journalist, researcher and educator currently based at Monash University, where he serves as the Head of Journalism within the School of Media, Film and Journalism. Johan completed his Bachelors at the University of Gothenburg, before working as a reporter and editor for the Swedish Broadcasting Corporation, based in Sweden and as a Foreign Correspondent across Europe. 

Johan's primary teaching areas are Journalism Law and Ethics, and Investigative Reporting. His main research areas are freedom of information, information access and media accountability, journalism ethics and media coverage of climate change. 

Johan has made submissions to Australian inquiries into press freedom and public interest journalism and freedom of information. He is a chief investigator on projects including the ARC Linkage Project 2021-2024 The Culture of implementing Freedom of Information in Australia. His scholarly books include In the Name of Security Secrecy, Surveillance and Journalism (Anthem Press 2018) co-edited with Denis Muller.

At this year's conference, Associate Professor Lidberg is presenting a keynote titled Lawfare and Media Freedom - where to next?

Professor Colleen Murrell is an academic, researcher and journalist at Dublin City University. Colleen has worked at Monash, Deakin and Swinburne universities.

Colleen earned her PhD in media and communications from the University of Melbourne. She has held research fellowships at the London School of Economics, The Reuters Institute at the University of Oxford, and City University of London. Colleen researches international news gathering and crisis reporting, public service broadcasting, public interest journalism, foreign correspondence, and women foreign correspondents. Prior to her academic career, Colleen worked as a producer, reporter and news editor for broadcasters across Europe and the Middle East, including the BBC, AP, ITN, the CBC and ABC Australia.

Professor Murrell serves on the editorial boards of journals including The Australian Journalism Review and Ethical Space: The International Journal of Communication Ethics. Previously she served on the executive board of JERAA and The Junction.

Colleen is the research lead for the Reuters Digital News Report Ireland. Her scholarly works include her research monograph Foreign Correspondents and International Newsgathering: The Role of Fixers (Routledge). 

Associate Professor Jake Lynch teaches within the Master of Social Justice program at the University of Sydney. For the past 25 years he has researched, developed, taught and trained in the area of peace journalism, for which he was awarded the 2017 Luxembourg Peace Prize by the Schengen Peace Foundation. Jake has created and led training workshops in peace journalism for editors and reporters, as well as media training for peace workers, in countries including Afghanistan, Fiji, Nepal, Indonesia and the Philippines. 

Jake served on the Executive Committee of the Sydney Peace Foundation and as Secretary General for the International Peace Research Association. He has held research fellowships at Cardiff and Bristol universities in the UK, and at the University of Johannesburg. Prior to his academic career he was a journalist, serving as a political correspondent for the UK Sky News, Sydney correspondent for the Independent, and as anchor for BBC World Television News.

Jake's scholarly books include A Global Standard for Reporting Conflict (Routledge), Debates in Peace Journalism (Sydney University Press), and with Galtung, Reporting Conflict: New Directions in Peace Journalism (University of Queensland Press).

Edited volumes include Responsible Journalism in Conflicted Societies Trust and Public Service Across New and Old Divides with Rice (Routledge) and Expanding Peace Journalism: Comparative and Critical Approaches with Shaw & Hackett (Sydney University Press).

At this year's JERAA Conference, Associate Professor Jake Lynch is presenting a keynote address on Peace Journalism in a troubled year.

Professor Cherian George is a Professor of Media Studies and Director of the Centre of Media and Communication Research at Hong Kong Baptist University's School of Communication. Cherian's areas of research and practice centre on freedom of expression and hate propaganda, including ways in which media's democratising potential is restricted within various types of political regime. 

His books include Red Lines: Political Cartoons and the Struggle against Censorship (MIT Press, 2021) and Media and Power in Southeast Asia (Cambridge University Press, 2019). Prior to academia, Prof. George spent a decade working at Singapore's The Straits Times. 

At this year's JERAA Conference, Prof. George is presenting a keynote address on Blind Spots and Biases in Media Freedom Advocacy.

Professor Matt Carlson is professor and Cowles Fellow at the Hubbard School of Journalism and Mass Communication at the University of Minnesota, USA. He is the author of three books: News After Trump: Journalism’s Crisis of Relevance in a Changed Media Culture (with Sue Robinson and Seth C. Lewis), Journalistic authority: Legitimating news in the digital Era, and On the Condition of Anonymity: Unnamed Sources and the Battle for Journalism, and has published over seventy journal articles and book chapters. He is also editor of three books, including Boundaries of Journalism: Professionalism, Practices, and Participation with Seth C. Lewis. In combining interests in discourse, epistemology, and power, his research centres on how various actors engage in an ongoing public competition to define what constitutes legitimate journalism in the face of technological, political, and cultural change.

Professor Carlson’s keynote is titled: How Do We Understand What is Happening to Journalism Right Now? Exploring Epistemic Contests Around News