TD researchers

Lucy Allen

Lucy's research focuses on the application of transdisciplinary and creative practices to support transformative social change for students, educators, industry and communities. Driven by her passion for theatre, Lucy is particularly interested in the role of drama and creative practices in supporting collaboration, reflexivity, creative thinking and transdisciplinary approaches. Lucy leads and contributes to research across higher education, transdisciplinary education, innovative pedagogy, mutual learning and student transition.

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Dr Shibani Antonette

Shibani has a background in computer science engineering and researches applied areas of computing and data science, particularly in education. Her research interests are learning analytics, artificial intelligence in education and data for social good. Shibani's expertise is in text analytics, writing analytics and natural language processing. In her doctoral research in Learning Analytics from the Connected Intelligence Centre, UTS, she developed automated writing feedback for higher education classrooms and a conceptual framework for its usage.

In her prior research work at the National Institute of Education, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, she employed machine learning techniques and text mining to automatically study teamwork dimensions from text chats.

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Dr Alex Baumber

Alex has a variety of research interests around environmental and sustainability issues, including Social licence to operate Innovative practices that combine agricultural production and the restoration of degraded land; Participatory social research on renewable energy (particularly cellulosic energy crops); Adoption of low-carbon technologies and practices; Revegetation techniques using; Australian native species; Conservation through sustainable use approaches involving native plants and wildlife.

He is currently undertaking research with the NSW Department of Primary Industries on the co-benefits of carbon farming and with colleagues in the UTS Business School on the social licence of the sharing economy. Recently completed projects cover landholder collaboration for landscape-scale conservation, revegetation strategies and low-carbon tourism.

In 2016 he released his first book, exploring ways in which the production of woody bioenergy crops can create incentives to restore degraded land while addressing concerns around food security and climate change. His research has been published in the Journal of Environmental Management, Ecosystem Services, Environmental Science and Policy, Biomass and Bioenergy, Ecological Management and Restoration, Rural Society, The Rangeland Journal and Australian Zoologist.

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Associate Professor Martin Bliemel

Martin’s research interests include entrepreneurial networks, accelerators, education, research commercialisation, entrepreneurial ecosystems, and the entrepreneurial university. In particular, his work on accelerators played a key role in the design of Australia’s federal Incubator Support Programme. He was part of a team that evaluated of the $150m Southern Cross Renewable Energy Fund by the Australian Renewable Energy Agency (ARENA) who are now acting on our recommendations, and has co-authored multiple innovation policy reports for the NSW government on incubators, accelerators and innovation districts. More recently, he has informed the OECD about incubator policy for other governments to learn from.

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Associate Professor Paul Brown

As part of cross-disciplinary teams, Paul has been funded for a number of notable projects, including Accounting for Value Chain Sustainability and Competitive Advantage, funded by the Australian Government Cotton Research and Development Corporation. Paul’s research interests include Production Economics, Contracting Theory, Corporate Governance, Sustainability Accounting and Reporting, Management Practices and their impact on firm performance.

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Dr Rosalie Chapple

Rosalie is a Senior Research Fellow in the Centre for Compassionate Conservation. She is a co-founder and Executive Director of the Blue Mountains World Heritage Institute, a small non-government organisation. Her core passion has always been wildlife, with a concern for their humane treatment, and has researched the behavioural and physiological responses of wildlife to captivity.

A key interest of Rosalie is the integration of science and other forms of knowing into decision-making for environmental policy and practice, including inspiring behavioural change toward sustainability based on understanding our internal worlds such as our values and beliefs as well as our external world based on intellectual and scientific understanding. Her research interests include human-wildlife conflict, especially involving dingoes and introduced fauna.

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Dr Alice Dong

Alice Xiaodan Dong is a lecturer in Data Science at UTS. Before UTS, she held the position of Head of Analytics at HSBC Australia, accumulating over 15 years of industry experience in Data Science across major financial institutes including the Commonwealth Banks, Toyota Finance, Citi Bank, and Insurance Australia Group. Alice’s research focuses on integrating statistic models with Machine learning in the field of AI. This includes applications such as the Bayesian method, business analytics, claims reserving, pricing, deep learning visualization, and image analysis for computer vision and self-driving car research. Alice holds a PhD degree in Applied Statistics from Sydney University, A Master of Science (Bioinformatics) degree from the same institute and a Master of Information Technology degree from the University of Queensland.

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Dr Barbara Doran

Barbara specialises in identifying creative opportunities that respond to complex challenges and putting them into action. Her research interests include Transdisciplinary approaches to working with new ways of framing the challenges we face; Creative methods and practices to tap into expanded, embodied intelligence; Arts-based practices, mental health and social wellbeing; The significance of care in social capital; Creating healthy built environments Sustainable fashion or adornment, aesthetics and healthy ways of bonding materially and socially; Fulfilling ways to eat together - food cultivation systems, cultures and economics; Revising values and exchange - sustainable economics; Making art for knowledge translation and social impact; and Using technology equitably.

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Professor Kees Dorst

Kees is passionate about designing and understanding the workings of design. He is considered one of the lead thinkers developing the field of design, valued for his ability to connect a philosophical understanding of the logic of design with hands-on practice. As a bridge-builder between these two worlds, his writings on design as a way of thinking are read by both practitioners and academics.

Over the years his focus has developed to the use of designerly ways of thinking outside the traditional design domains – in particular as applied to the ‘wicked’ problems of the new networked society. He has developed a set of methodologies to support these processes, experimenting with them in practice through the research centres and degree programs he founded. He is a member of the Advisory Group for the UN Development Program, overseeing the creation of platforms around the world to achieve the UN Sustainable Development Goals. 

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Dr Tanja Golja

Tanja’s research interests include Transdisciplinary learning, Transdisciplinary educational design, Research designs and methodologies for transdisciplinary learning investigations, Collective learning, Design education, and Educational design.

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Dr Jan Henrik Gruenhagen

Jan’s research interests include international entrepreneurship, industry transitions, innovation systems and the development, adoption and diffusion of new technologies. Jan has been involved in several externally funded research projects informing policy and industry, including  projects investigating enablers and barriers to technology adoption, decarbonisation initiatives in the resources sector, mapping and measuring innovation districts, and analysing regional diversification. 

Prior to joining UTS, Jan worked as a Postdoctoral Research Fellow  at QUT Business School researching firm and system-level enablers and barriers to technology development, adoption and diffusion. He received his PhD for his research at the Australian Centre for Entrepreneurship Research at QUT investigating start-up activities and the impact of returnee entrepreneurs in emerging economies. Jan also has extensive industry experience in the media industry.

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Dr Hossai Gul

Hossai is a transdisciplinary (TD) researcher, teacher, and practitioner specialising in leading TD teams to co-produce knowledge via research and harness those learnings in practice to understand and solve wicked problems within complex systems.

Her research lies at the intersection of innovation, complex systems, social impact, social justice, change, and implementation science. She is particularly interested in how knowledge and innovations developed in research settings can be translated into usable and equitable solutions that can be applied in practice across different industries to transform social and organisational outcomes.

Dr Andrea Harvey

Andrea has a passion for animal welfare, in particular the behaviour and welfare of horses. Andrea graduated as a veterinarian from University of Bristol (UK) in 2000, going on to specialise in feline medicine. As a RCVS Registered Specialist in Feline Medicine and European Specialist in Veterinary Internal Medicine, she has published and lectured widely in this field. After relocating to Australia in 2011, Andrea developed a broader interest in animal welfare science, alongside particular interests in brumbies both in the wild and in captivity. This inspired her to undertake a PhD studying the population ecology and welfare of Australian wild horses (brumbies). In her spare time, she enjoys training and rehabilitating brumbies on the farm she shares with her partner and many rescued farm animals.

Associate Professor Tony Huang

Tony is a data visualisation researcher with expertise in visual analytics and human-computer interaction. He designs visualisations, user interfaces and interaction methods to combine data values with human-centred artificial intelligence for effective data exploration, communication and decision-making. He also designs and evaluates tele-assistance technologies using AR/VR/MR and wearable/mobile devices such as Apple Vision Pro to support remote collaboration on physical tasks.

He is the author of over 150 publications including books entitled “Handbook of Human Centric Visualisation” and “Human Factors in Augmented Reality Environments”. Dr Huang’s research has been supported by Australian government funding agencies and commercial partners with a total value of over 3 million dollars including highly prestigious and competitive ARC DP and LP projects, and has achieved impact both in academia and in industry. 

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Dr Leila Khanjaninejad

Dr Leila Khanjaninejad (she/her) is a lecturer in Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation (BCII) at TD School, UTS. Her research is focused on gender equity and inclusion in male-dominated sectors and the impact of organisational policies on diversity and inclusion. Leila’s expertise lies in social development and impact. In the past 10 years, she has conducted and contributed to research projects on women in management and leadership, gender equity in sport, and women and girls’ attraction and retention in male-dominated higher education, STEM. She is a mixed methods researcher with experience in conducting quantitative and qualitative research towards understanding and addressing complex social problems.

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Dr Giedre Kligyte

Giedre’s research is focused on transdisciplinary collaboration practices in universities and industry or community organisations. Through her research, she explores how different perspectives and relationships across organisational roles, silos and disciplinary divisions can be creatively leveraged to create ‘third spaces’ – spaces where difference, experimentation and co-creation are embraced to stimulate mutual learning, new ways of thinking and creativity.

Giedre primarily uses qualitative and participatory research methodologies, including partnership pedagogies and transdisciplinary co-creation. Her research often involves working in partnership and co-authoring with students and other non-academic stakeholders.

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Associate Professor Simon Knight

We're facing an epistemological crisis. Misinformation and challenges in disagreeing well abound. Simon's research considers how we build evidence literacy, to support sustainable decision-making and participation in society. His work is highly innovative, drawing on his background in philosophy, psychology, and education, innovative uses of technology, and the novel application of qualitative and quantitative analyses, alongside methodological approaches drawn from participatory and design-based paradigms.

Simon has developed theory in epistemic cognition, seen through the lens of information seeking and dialogue, this work has involved significant methodological innovation and empirical work in searching to learn, and the role of dialogue, and sociocultural discourse analysis as an analytic approach. He has had a particular focus on the mediating role of technology and data in learning, and developing participatory approaches to designing pedagogically aligned learning analytics. This has led to innovative research and implementation approaches in writing analytics, in which the task is central in effectively implementing technologies to support learning.

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Professor Bem Le Hunte

Bem Le Hunte is an international novelist, published to critical acclaim, and an expert in the field of Creative Intelligence and educational innovation. Bem’s research interests lie in learning for individual and collective transformation, as well as in the thinking, theory and practice of creativity. She has a passion for introducing trailblazing educational and organisational innovation and a belief that our stories and our work as educators have the power to change the world.

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Dr Jarnae Leslie

Specialising in waste-related research, Jarnae is a Lecturer at the UTS TD School with a PhD on waste reduction within complex systems. As a sustainability researcher, Jarnae focuses on using social science approaches to understand barriers and enablers to system change in environmental contexts. This work has a particular focus on the alignment of public policy to support change, working with stakeholders and communities, to support sustainable futures development. In 2023, Jarnae completed her PhD in holistic waste reduction target assessment and public reporting in Australia; identifying factors that influence change to support system change. She holds a Bachelor of Design in Interior Architecture and a Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation. 

Advocating for collaborative practices, Jarnae has previously conducted research for the Department of Agriculture, Water & Environment (DAWE), BehaviourWorks Australia (Monash University), UTS Business School, the UTS Centre for Business and Social Innovation and the UTS TD School. Projects featured themes of defining and measuring waste prevention measurement, public reporting (e.g. the 2021 Annual National Waste Report), circularity & waste reduction targets, collaborative partnerships (e.g. University-SME), sustainable universities, and transdisciplinarity.

As a transdisciplinary researcher, Jarnae is currently leading two funded research projects: the first exploring the impact of NFPs in Bushfire land preparation and recovery in South East Queensland; the other developing supports for diverse undergraduate students to transition into transdisciplinary learning environments.

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Dr Luis-Hernando Lozano-Paredes

Luis-Hernando Lozano-Paredes possesses a rich academic and professional background that places him at the forefront of addressing contemporary challenges within the Built Environment, Urban Economics, Urban Planning, and Architecture. His role as a lecturer at the TD School at UTS is underpinned by over a decade of experience in academic and policy research, enhancing his ability to critically engage with issues and opportunities of our time. His proficiency in analytical thinking, research project management, and learning design equip him to conduct and supervise transdisciplinary research and share knowledge across various disciplines and sectors. Luis’s research interests span a broad spectrum, including the Built Environment, Design, Digital Geographies, Ethics of Research, Platformisation, and the study of Science, Technology, and Society (STS), reflecting a commitment to integrating diverse fields to inform his teaching and research.

Before his tenure in Australia, his career took shape within several key departments of the Argentinean Federal Government, such as the Ministry of Transportation, the Ministry of Interior, and the Ministry of Modernisation, where his contributions significantly impacted policy and operational frameworks. Further expanding his global footprint, he worked as a consultant to international organisations like the World Bank, the Interamerican Development Bank, and UN-HABITAT. Beyond his professional capabilities, Luis speaks English, Spanish, Portuguese, French, Hebrew, and Papiamento and is always open to cross-cultural and international communication, enhancing his capacity to engage with diverse communities and contexts. His methodological skills, including participatory design methods, digital ethnography, autoethnography, spatial analysis, action research, and conducting interviews and focus groups, underscore his comprehensive approach to research and education in his field.

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Dr Scott Matter

Scott holds a PhD in sociocultural anthropology from McGill University, where his research focused on ethnic, political, and legal belonging related to land tenure transformation and conflict in rural Kenya. His postdoctoral research, supported by a Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (Canada) Postdoctoral Fellowship, explored the intersection of global Indigenous rights and climate change mitigation efforts with local social and political contexts.

He has been a doctoral and postdoctoral collaborator on multidisciplinary projects funded by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council (2007-2014) and the Canadian International Development Agency (2005). He has also completed commissioned research projects for academic and community-based organisation partners. Some key areas of interest for new research include applied ethnographic research practices, critical futures studies, collectives, cooperatives, and new organisational models, collaboration and collective improvisation, engaged scholarship, participatory methods, and critical practice, political ecology, social movements and activism, societal transition, theories of social and cultural change.

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Dr Jacqueline Melvold

Jacqueline’s background is in biomedical science and she completed her PhD at UTS in emerging infectious disease in 2017, where she investigated proteogenomic approaches that could assist in the identification of emerging human pathogens and the mechanisms by which they cause disease.

Jacqueline researches in the following areas: Proteogenomic approaches to infectious disease; Antibiotic resistance; Transdisciplinary education; Student transition to university; Innovative education; Primary and secondary staff professional development in transdisciplinary education.

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Dr Beate Mueller

Beate is a higher education teaching and learning scholar with expertise in global WIL, career development learning, intercultural communication, international and cultural studies, and diversity and inclusion. She completed her undergraduate and postgraduate studies in applied linguistics (English and German), tertiary teaching and intercultural business communication at Friedrich-Schiller University in Germany. Her PhD in intercultural competence development was awarded through Macquarie University, Sydney.

Beate’s research interests include work-integrated learning, international WIL, higher education learning and teaching, transition pedagogy, intercultural communication, intercultural competence development, student mobility, graduate capabilities/employability, and language teaching and learning.

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Dr Betty O’Neill

Betty has an eclectic range of degrees which equips her well to contribute to transdisciplinary research, teaching and learning. Driven by her love of stories and their power to impact change, her recent focus has turned to research and writing creative non-fiction.

Her interest in History and the way it shapes our world views, values, thinking and being underpin her current research. As part of her doctoral output, Betty published a hybrid biography-memoir-history book (2020) exploring the long-term impact of war on families. Her current research is grounded in critical settler family history, colonial history truth-telling, dispossession and displacement, challenging traditional tropes in Australian and transnational history and the current complex crisis of homelessness, with a focus on intergenerational drivers. This research and writing contribute to changing the narrative around home, homelessness and belonging, to effect positive social change and social justice for those who are currently experiencing insecure and/or unsafe housing.

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Dr Jarrod Ormiston

Jarrod’s research focuses on working with social enterprises and impact investors to enhance their impact, supporting refugee and migrant entrepreneurs, educating entrepreneurs from marginalised backgrounds, and understanding the role of emotions in entrepreneurship. His PhD explored the role of impact measurement as a transdisciplinary practice in the fields of social entrepreneurship and impact investment. Jarrod’s specific research interests include social entrepreneurship, sustainable entrepreneurship, impact investing, refugee entrepreneurship, emotions, impact measurement, entrepreneurship policy

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Monique Potts

Monique is a lecturer and researcher in the TD School with a strong interest in transdisciplinary and transformative research traversing fields of mental health, education, technology, climate, systems thinking and gender. Her PhD titled 'Towards and understanding of resilience in the context of uncertain futures and climate disruption' involved participatory action research with a Sydney-based high school developing a framework of meta-competencies for learning in uncertainty. Her thesis presentation (view on YouTube) was the winner of the TD School and runner-up in the overall UTS three-minute thesis competition in 2022.

Monique has a strong professional background in innovation research and has coordinated and contributed to research with industry partners including the Australian Human Rights Commission research on technology and AI, iYarn digital wellbeing platform for young people. In her professional career prior to joining UTS Monique led and contributed to research projects at the ABC and TAFE NSW with wide range of partners in cultural industries, business and government. In 2023 she was awarded the Margaret Mead Memorial award by the International Society of System Sciences for a paper titled ''Promoting systemic change in our educational institutions through metacompetencies that develop transformative qualities of our being and agency'' and in 2024 has been invited by the Possibility Studies Network to present a paper in the New Voices conference category in Cambridge University. Monique is passionate about working with young people, schools, health services and communities to co-design systems change initiatives to support mental health and collective agency of young people and families in the current context of pluri-crises. 

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Dr Susanne Pratt

As a transdisciplinary researcher, educator, artist and techno-scientific muser Dr Susanne Pratt explores how creative practice can foster social and environmental responsibility, with an emphasis on futures-oriented research to improve collective flourishing and responsible innovation. Susanne has both teaching and practical experience in art, digital storytelling, futures studies, innovative social research methods, public engagement, environmental humanities, feminist politics of care, transdisciplinary pedagogy and science and technology studies (STS). 

Susanne currently teaches across a range of transdisciplinary subjects including subjects on envisioning futures, science fiction, creative methods and entrepreneurial initiatives and the past, present and future of innovation.

Her creative work has been internationally exhibited in various forms, including digital storytelling, convergent media installations, site-specific sound works, urban design proposals and participatory events. 

At the University of Technology Sydney (UTS) she co-founded the xFutures Lab in 2018. The lab is a transdisciplinary project that consolidates futures-oriented research, teaching, and creative practices to develop new models of socially responsible innovation and value-sensitive design of emerging technologies.

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Associate Professor Daniel Ramp

Daniel Ramp is a conservation biologist with an interest in landscape ecology, behavioural ecology, road ecology, and wildlife-human interactions. At the core of his research lies an adoption of the principles of compassionate conservation, an expanding international discipline that promotes the wellbeing of individuals in environmental decision-making. He is active in creating science that assists in policy change and his primary goal is to incentivise coexistence with wildlife in agricultural landscapes.

Daniel is the Director of the UTS Centre for Compassionate Conservation. With a long interest in marsupials from the family Macropodidae, Daniel was a co-founder of THINKK – the think tank for kangaroos, an academic forum that operated from 2010–2014 with the aim of fostering a greater understanding among Australians of kangaroos.

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Dr Helena Robinson

Helena is an internationally recognised Museum Studies scholar whose work, in both museological and transdisciplinary contexts, focuses on the impact of disciplinary integration and hybridisation on how we make sense of our world. Her museum-focused research explores intersections between processes of meaning-making in museums and broader cultural and public policy frameworks. Her PhD examined the convergence of galleries, libraries, archives and museums (GLAM) and the impact of these integrated institutional structures on the interpretation of museum collections. Her recent museological projects evaluate the concept of cultural democracy, practices of stakeholder participation in the cultural sphere, and community-led research.

Helena’s interest in transdisciplinary collaboration methods extends to educational scholarship, where she researchers how students learn and academics teach transdisciplinarity in the Higher Education context.

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Associate Professor Fanny Salignac

Driven by her passion for social justice and equality, Fanny aims to be a catalyst for change and global social impact. In her research, Fanny works towards understanding how to address complex social problems and the processes that create a better society (e.g. partnerships, collaboration and co-production). Her expertise spans across areas of Social Change, Impact and Policy; as well as Business Ethics, Sustainability and Corporate Social Responsibility. 

Her work to date has focused primarily on financial resilience and wellbeing, gender equality, collaboration for social impact and outcomes evaluations. In her teaching, Fanny strives to support and accompany students through their learning journey to become leaders of social change. For over 10 years, she has brought topics such as Business Ethics and Social Impact to business students – her experience spans across the undergraduate and postgraduate level.

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Professor Martin Tomitsch

Professor Martin Tomitsch is a design academic with 20 years of experience in teaching design, facilitating workshops, and conducting design research at universities in Vienna, Paris, Beijing, and Sydney. He is a Professor and Head of the Transdisciplinary (TD) School at the UTS. The TD School operates at the intersection of creativity and innovation and offers transdisciplinary programs, including the award-winning Bachelor of Creative Intelligence and Innovation and postgraduate programs in Data Science & Innovation and Creative Intelligence & Strategic Innovation.

Before joining UTS, Martin was an academic in the Design Lab at the School of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney, where he held various leadership roles, including Program Director for the Bachelor of Design Computing, Head of the Design Department, and Director of Innovation (Education, Enterprise and Engagement). 

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Dr Nicole Vincent

The concept of responsibility occupies centre stage in Nicole's scholarly pursuits. Socially responsible innovation and value-sensitive design are key features of her approach to various topics in diverse fields including neuroethics, neurolaw, philosophy and ethics of emerging technologies, political philosophy, public policy, jurisprudence and philosophy of law, bioethics, media, feminism, gender and happiness. 

Nicole's earlier work focused predominantly on the fields of neuroethics, neurolaw, ethics, philosophy of tort and criminal law, and political philosophy. Nicole's more recent work addresses topics in the philosophy of technology, ethics of emerging technologies, feminism, gender studies, and bioethics.  

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Rodger Watson

Rodger has a background in Psychology and Criminology, and with his colleagues at the Designing Out Crime Research Centre pioneered the Designing for the Common Good approach to multi-stakeholder collaboration (2010-2018). This body of work received many industry awards (including multiple Good Design Australia awards) and academic awards (UTS Vice Chancellor’s award for excellence in research collaboration). The work was assessed by the Australian Research Council as highly impactful.

In recent years, Rodger has contributed to government strategy and policy across topics ranging from domestic and family violence, mental health, built environment, counter-terrorism, night-time economy, waste & circular economy, environmental protection, cybercrime, transport innovation, and digital transformation. Rodger’s UTS work is underpinned by a body of work and a methodology developed under industry conditions, community engagement, and academic rigour since 2010. This body of work includes product, service and policy innovations that are experienced by millions of people each day in communities across the world.

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Samuel Yu

Sam seeks to reframe the ways in which we understand and practice design. In its broadest sense, design is a fundamentally human practice that shapes our existence and reality. Every act of design opens and closes possible ways of being. In order to transition towards more sustainable and just futures, we need to recognise design's profound significance and be equipped with a greater critical futures literacy.

Throughout his studies and early career, Sam has worked across several fields of design from industrial, UX, service, research, entrepreneurship and innovation. Currently in inclusive design and doing a PhD exploring future visioning for transition.

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