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Research Support Staff
ICS has a growing cohort of research support staff (comprising research associates, research assistants and research officers). Research support staff bring a wide range of interdisciplinary skills and interests to their roles, contributing significantly to the innovative and collaborative research that is characteristic of ICS.
- Dr Kate Hepworth
- Dr Michelle Kelly
- Dr Phillip Mar
- Kieryn McKay
- Dr Yasmin Tambiah
- Dr Vibha Bhattarai Upadhyay
- Phillip Wadds
- Dr Alexandra Wai-Wah Wong
Dr Kate Hepworth
Dr Kate Hepworth is a Research Officer working with Professor Brett Neilson and Professor Ned Rossiter on the ARC Discovery Project Logistics as Global Governance: Labour, Software and Infrastructure along the New Silk Road. She has a background in human geography and urban studies. She was awarded her PhD from the University of Technology Sydney in 2012, with a thesis entitled Encounters with the Clandestino/a and the nomad in Milan: Securitisation, irregularisation and the illegitimate outsider through the Italian 'Security Package'. The dissertation was included on the 2012 UTS Chancellor’s List. Her research considers the spatial and temporal dimensions of citizenship, legal geographies, and the lived experience of non-citizenship and the border.
Dr Michelle Kelly
Dr Michelle Kelly is a Research Assistant working with Research Professor of Social and Cultural Theory Tony Bennett. She also works across the Institute, providing research support for a range of members and administrative support for several of ICS’s Knowledge Practice strands and Culture and Society research themes. She was research assistant for the Institute’s completed ARC Linkage project The Art of Engagement: Exploring C3 West, A Contemporary Arts Project around Western Sydney. In 2012 Michelle was awarded a PhD for her thesis Library Encounters: Textuality and the Institution from the Department of English at the University of Sydney. In 2003 she graduated from a BA (Hons) with a University Medal and the James Coutts Scholarship No. 3 for English Literature. She was a co-editor of The Politics and Aesthetics of Refusal, published by Cambridge Scholars Press in 2007, and a co-founder and senior editor of postgraduate journal Philament from 2003 to 2007. Her research interests include libraries and literary institutions; reading practices; contemporary literature; and reading publics. Her work has appeared in M/C Journal, Rhizomes: Cultural Studies in Emerging Knowledge, Australian Book Review, API Review of Books and Colloquy.
» Contact Dr Michelle Kelly
Dr Phillip Mar
Dr Phillip Mar is a Research Associate with the Institute for Culture and Society. He has a background in social anthropology and the sociology of culture. His research interests include transnational migration and culture, emotions and migration, and cultural policy. He contributed to the University of Western Sydney’s Linkage project The Art of Engagement: Exploring C3 West, A Contemporary Arts Project Around Western Sydney (2009-2011). At present Phillip is working with Professor Ien Ang of the Institute for Culture and Society on the Diversity of Cultural Expressions project, a research partnership with the Australia Council for the Arts which is developing best practice case studies to guide the implementation of the UNESCO Convention for the Promotion and Protection of Diversity of Cultural Expressions. Information on this partnership is available on the UNESCO website (opens in a new window).
» Contact Dr Phillip Mar
Kieryn McKay
Kieryn McKay is a Research Assistant working with Professors Deborah Stevenson and David Rowe on the ARC Discovery Project Culture Circuits: Exploring the International Networks and Institutions Shaping Contemporary Cultural Policy, and with Professor Kay Anderson on the UWS Urban Research Initiative-funded project Law and the City: The Parramatta Justice Precinct as Civic Culture. She is also working with Associate Professor Hart Cohen on the ARC Linkage project The Visual Mediation of a Complex Narrative: TGH Strehlow's 'Journey to Horseshoe Bend'. Kieryn is a PhD candidate at the University of Sydney, where she is writing her (increasingly self-reflexive) doctoral thesis on cult literature and film, focusing on theories of contagion, obsession and insanity. Kieryn was a co-founder of Philament: A Postgraduate Journal of Culture and the Arts in 2003 and was its senior editor from 2003-2006.
Dr Yasmin Tambiah
Dr Yasmin Tambiah manages the project, Asia Literacy: Language and Beyond, which is part of the Securing Australia’s Future program of the Australian Council of Learned Academies (ACOLA). The Asia Literacy project is chaired by Distinguished Professor Ien Ang, FAHA, Director of ICS.
Yasmin’s substantial experience in project management includes coordinating an international project on women’s human rights while based in the USA, and a five-country project on women and governance in South Asia while based in Sri Lanka. She has also worked in research development at the University of Sydney and the University of Western Sydney.
Yasmin earned her doctorate in Medieval Studies from Yale University, looking at the organisation of sexuality among Jewish, Christian and Muslim communities in fourteenth-century Spain. Her subsequent research has focussed on law and sexuality, especially in postcolonial states (Trinidad and Tobago, Sri Lanka and Singapore), and on militarization, gender and sexuality. Her work has appeared in Nordic Journal of International Law, Reproductive Health Matters, Gender & Society and Caribbean Review of Gender Studies, among others. She has also been a contributing researcher to reports of the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Violence Against Women and the United Nations Working Group on Minorities.
Dr Vibha Bhattarai Upadhyay
Dr Vibha Bhattarai Upadhyay is a Research Assistant working with Professors David Rowe and Deborah Stevenson at ICS. Vibha was awarded a PhD for her thesis entitled Modern Plans, Ancient Ideologies: A Hybrid Urban Management in the Kathmandu Valley, from the Faculty of Architecture, Design and Planning at the University of Sydney in 2012. Vibha graduated with a Bachelor degree in Architecture (2001) from Tribhuvan University, Nepal, and M.Sc in Urban Planning (2003) from the University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include cultural heritage studies, urban transformation and the relationship between space and culture in an urban environment.
» Contact Vibha Bhattarai Upadhyay
Phillip Wadds
Phillip Wadds is a project manager at the Institute for Culture and Society, working on the NDLERF research project: Patron Offending and Intoxication in Night-Time Entertainment Districts (POINTED), with Professor Stephen Tomsen. Phillip is in the final stages of completing his PhD with the Institute for Culture and Society at the University of Western Sydney. His thesis, Policing Nightlife: The Representation and Transformation of Security in Sydney’s Night-Time Economy, follows critical transitions in the regulation and policing of Sydney nightlife and the role that both public and private policing agencies play in this complex and highly politicised environment. Phillip’s research interests include policing policy and practice, the night-time economy and urban governance.
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Dr Alexandra Wai-Wah Wong
Dr Alexandra Wong is a Research Associate working with Professors Ien Ang, Donald McNeill and Kay Anderson on the ARC Linkage Project Sydney’s Chinatown in the Asian Century. Prior to her appointment at the Institute for Culture and Society in 2012, Alexandra worked at the Urban Research Centre where she took part in an ARC Discovery Project which seeks to develop criteria to help solve Australia’s urban infrastructure crisis. She was also the administrator for the journal Geographical Research (2010-2012). Alexandra received her PhD in Management from the University of Edinburgh in 2009. Her thesis used the sociotechnical constituency approach to examine the building processes of the ICT clusters in Scotland and Hong Kong. Alexandra has a multi-disciplinary academic background. Apart from her PhD, she also holds a Master of Science in Business Studies from the University of Edinburgh, a Master of Letters in Economics, Management and International Relations from the University of St Andrews, as well as a Bachelor’s degree in Journalism and Communications from the Chinese University of Hong Kong. Her research interests include clusters, innovation systems, sociotechnical constituencies, technology strategies, knowledge cities, urban theories and multiculturalism.
» Contact Dr Alexandra Wai-Wah Wong
