Teaching and Supervision

My teaching and supervision are grounded in the belief that rigorous scholarship develops through intellectual generosity, methodological clarity, and sustained critical curiosity. I combine high expectations with structured support, helping students develop ambitious projects that are theoretically grounded, ethically responsible, and strategically positioned for publication, impact, and long-term academic development.

I work closely with students as collaborators in thinking rather than passive recipients of instruction. I place strong emphasis on research design, argument architecture, scholarly voice, and intellectual confidence, supporting candidates to move from early ideas to coherent, durable research programs. Supervision is structured but flexible, with regular milestone planning, writing development, and publication mentoring integrated into candidature. Many candidates complete with strong outcomes including awards, distinctions, and PhDs by publication.

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  • I teach across:

    • Popular culture and media studies

    • Cultural theory and critical methods

    • Environmental humanities

    • Gender and sexuality studies

    • Screen analysis and visual culture

    My teaching integrates close reading, theoretical literacy, and applied cultural analysis, encouraging students to work across disciplinary boundaries while maintaining conceptual precision and methodological rigour.goes here

  • I welcome Higher Degree Research enquiries in:

    • Popular culture and screen studies

    • Environmental humanities and eco-media

    • Media industries and political economy

    • Gender, labour, and celebrity

    • Cultural theory and interdisciplinary research

    Since 2017, I have supervised doctoral, MPhil, Masters, and Honours research to completion, alongside a substantial portfolio of current HDR candidates. My supervision spans sociology, politics, media studies, cultural studies, and social policy, with a strong record of completions, publications, and competitive outcomes.

  • I supervise HDR research using qualitative, comparative, discourse-analytic, rhetorical, historical, and interdisciplinary methodologies, including PhDs by publication. I place strong emphasis on research design, methodological justification, ethical reflexivity, scholarly writing, and publication strategy, supporting candidates to develop sustainable academic profiles alongside their theses.

  • Collectively, my supervisory portfolio demonstrates sustained leadership in research training across disciplines, career stages, and methodological approaches. My supervisory practice supports projects that are intellectually ambitious, ethically grounded, and publicly engaged, contributing meaningfully to debates on power, media, culture, governance, and social justice at local, national, and international scales.

  • Prospective students are welcome to make enquiries. Please include:

    • A short project outline

    • Relevant academic background

    • Proposed methodology and research interests

    I encourage early conversations to ensure strong alignment between project scope, methodological design, and supervisory fit.

  • I serve as a peer reviewer for journals and publishers including:

    The Journal of Contemporary Gothic Studies; Australasian Journal of Popular Culture; Media/Culture Journal; Film, Fashion and Consumption; Fandom Cultures Research; Australian Journal of Sociology; Taylor and Francis; Cambridge University Press; Routledge; and Emerald Publishing.

My Approach

I approach supervision as a long-term intellectual partnership grounded in trust, clarity, and shared responsibility for the work. My role is not simply to oversee a project, but to help shape a researcher’s thinking, scholarly voice, and capacity to sustain complex ideas over time. I work closely with candidates to develop strong research architecture early: clarifying the conceptual stakes of a project, sharpening research questions, building methodological coherence, and establishing realistic pathways toward completion and publication.

I place strong emphasis on writing as a form of thinking. Supervision includes structured feedback cycles, argument mapping, and iterative drafting practices that help candidates move beyond accumulation toward precision, synthesis, and intellectual confidence. I support candidates to develop a distinctive scholarly voice while remaining attentive to disciplinary standards, ethical responsibility, and audience awareness.

I supervise with a balance of rigour and care. I set clear expectations around momentum, accountability, and research integrity, while remaining responsive to the realities of academic labour, caregiving, health, and uneven institutional support. I encourage projects that are ambitious but sustainable, theoretically serious but publicly engaged, and attentive to the ethical consequences of knowledge production.

I am particularly invested in mentoring candidates toward long-term academic independence. This includes supporting publication strategies, conference development, collaborative opportunities, and professional identity formation alongside thesis progress. Wherever appropriate, I work with candidates to translate their research into broader public, policy, or creative contexts.

Above all, I value intellectual generosity, curiosity, and courage. I encourage candidates to take conceptual risks, ask difficult questions, and build research that contributes meaningfully to cultural understanding rather than simply meeting minimum requirements. My aim is to support researchers who leave supervision not only with a completed thesis, but with the confidence, skills, and intellectual clarity to sustain a scholarly life.

Supervisory Expertise and Research Themes

  • I supervise research examining how power operates through institutions, policy systems, and governance failures at national and international scales. Projects address state fragility, corruption, UN peacekeeping abuses, foreign policy alliances, responsibility-to-protect frameworks, family law failures, and extra-legal protection practices, integrating political sociology, international relations, ethics, and policy analysis.

  • A significant supervisory strength lies in screen studies research focused on genre, industry, aesthetics, and cultural politics. Projects examine Australian noir and Gothic traditions, dystopian screen cultures, disability representation, food as affective and political narrative device, regional production cultures, labour, place-based aesthetics, and national identity across film and television.

  • I supervise research on digital political communication, platform governance, news framing, financial media amplification, parasocial relations, and online discourse. These projects examine how media systems shape democratic participation, trust, institutional authority, and public legitimacy.

  • Projects in this area address women’s political participation, disability and representation, family law, displaced homemakers, palliative care in migrant communities, sexual exploitation, and feminist analyses of child marriage, bridging gender studies, sociology, disability studies, and policy frameworks.

  • I supervise research on belief systems, diasporic religion, food cultures, political theology, and contemporary religious movements, connecting cultural identity, ideology, governance, and social cohesion.

  • This strand focuses on everyday cultural practices including fashion, nostalgia, sport discourse, public rituals, food cultures, and crime fiction, treating popular culture as a critical lens for analysing social transformation.

Contact Me

  • "Jo balances high expectations with genuine care. She creates clear momentum and accountability while remaining deeply attentive to the realities of academic life."

    —HDR Student

  • "Her feedback is precise, generous, and always strategically oriented toward publication, coherence, and long-term scholarly development. Working with Jo fundamentally sharpened my thinking and my confidence as an independent researcher."

    - ECR

  • “Jo’s supervision is both intellectually demanding and deeply supportive. She pushes you to clarify what your project is really doing, not just what it is about, and helps you build an argument that can sustain a full doctoral thesis and beyond."

    — PHD Candidate