- Tara Brabazon
Tara Brabazon (
3 January 1969 -) is Professor of Media Studies at theUniversity of Brighton ,Great Britain . Born in Perth,Western Australia , she has previously held a number of academic positions inAustralia andAotearoa /New Zealand , including Associate Professor in the School of Media, Communication and Culture atMurdoch University and lectureships atCentral Queensland University and at theVictoria University of Wellington .Known as a "digital dissenter" and cultural historian, she has published ten books. Her best known monographs are "Digital Hemlock: internet education and the poisoning of teaching" (2002) and "The University of Google" (2007), which both focus on building an information scaffold for students managing the information age. She has also written extensively on popular culture, including "Thinking Popular Culture" (2008) and in 2005, published "From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, Popular Culture, Popular Memory" and edited "Liverpool of the South Seas: Perth and its popular music". Calling attention to the interplay between nation, identity, representation and popular culture, "Tracking the Jack: a retracing of the Antipodes" (2000) and "Playing on the Periphery: sport, memory and identity" (2006), investigate the historical iterations of culture and iconography between the United Kingdom and the Antipodes. More recently, "The Revolution will not be downloaded: dissent in the digital age" was published in January 2008, and "Thinking Pop: war, writing and terrorism" is being published by Ashgate in June 2008.A finalist for
Australian of the Year in 2005, she has also won awards for postgraduate supervision, disability education and teaching excellence. In 1998, Brabazon received the Australian Award for University Teaching (Humanities). She is also a public commentator on cultural and political issues, and is currently a features writer for theTimes Higher Education (THE). She has previously published feature articles in bothThe Times andThe Guardian .Brabazon is also Director of the
Popular Culture Collective , a not for profit community organization whose stated goals are to "create thinking - and thoughtful - popular culture." [cite web|url=http://www.popularculturecollective.com/mission.htm|title=Mission Statement of the PCC|work=Popular Culture Collective |accessdate=2008-06-04|author=Popular Culture Collective] She is married toSteve Redhead , who is also a Professor at the University of Brighton.Brabazon recently taught two first year courses at the University of Brighton: "Creative Industries" and "Thinking Pop". She was also the Program Leader of the Master of Arts in Creative Media and runs four masters courses on campus and through distance education: "City Imaging", "Media Literacies", "Sonic Media" and "Teaching, Learning and Writing through Popular Culture". She received some media and online coverage for 'banning' students on her courses from using
Google andWikipedia in their first year of study. [cite web|url=http://chronicle.com/wiredcampus/article/2673/the-university-of-google|title=The Wired Campus|work=The Chronicle of Higher Education |accessdate=2008-06-04|date=2008-01-17 |author=Andrea L. Foster] Her Inaugural Address at the University of Brighton was titled "Google is White Bread for the Mind." [cite web|url=http://www.brighton.ac.uk/news/2008/080107googleiswhitebread.php?PageId=810p|title=Google is white bread for the mind|work=University of Brighton |accessdate=2008-01-18|date=2008-01-07 |author=University of Brighton]References
External links
* [http://www.australianoftheyear.gov.au/pages/bio.asp?pID=211 Bio at Australian of the Year site]
* [http://www.tlc.murdoch.edu.au/eddev/grants/awards/recipients03_04.html Bio at Teaching Excellence Award]
* [http://www.liswa.wa.gov.au/pbk02rep.html "Digital Hemlock" at the Western Australian Premier's Book Award]
* [http://www.popularculturecollective.com Popular Culture Collective homepage]
* [http://www.artshub.co.uk Arts Hub UK]
* [http://www.artshub.com.au Arts Hub Australia]
* [http://www.brighton.ac.uk/cmis/courses/postgraduate/maca/index.php?PageId=454 University of Brighton Master of Arts Creative Media]
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