Alumni and Students
Past alumni of Deakin’s Writing, Literature and Culture programs include writers, academics, researchers, teachers, librarians, critics, editors, communications specialists, copywriters and digital storytellers.
Featured Alumni
Katie Hansord
Katie Hansord is a writer and researcher living in Melbourne, Australia. Her research interests include gender, poetry, feminism, political activism and print culture. Katie edits the Association for the Study of Australian Literature’s newsletter, was a research fellow at University of Melbourne, and has convened related conferences.
Her most recent work is Colonial Australian Women Poets: Political voice and feminist traditions (2021, Anthem Press). This book considers the political and feminist significance of non-canonical women poets, particularly those who were writing in newspapers and periodicals, in colonial Australia.
…more featured alumni to come…
PhD completions from 2021 onwards
| 2025 | ||
| February | Luke Jackson Literary Sense of Place in Novel-to-Comics Adaptation | Prin supervisor Patrick West |
| Tee Olivier Montague The Ambivalent Devil on the Early Modern English Stage. | Prin supervisor Geoff Boucher | |
| Síofra Josephine Ramsden The Polyphonic Other: Trans Voice in an Australian Zine Archive. | Prin supervisor Alyson Miller | |
| Anita Jaboor Spatial and Temporal Re-Imaginings in Contemporary Climate Crisis Fiction | Prin supervisor Helen Young | |
| 2024 | ||
| February | Oscar Davis ‘(Not) In Here: Logocentrism and Undecidability in Creative Arts Research.’ | Prin supervisor Patrick West |
| Noah O’Connor Asexual Necropolitics: Slow Death and Death-Adjacency in Young Adult Fiction.’ | Prin supervisor Jodi McAlister | |
| Christian Hayes Designing Narrative Spatiality Systems for Indie Video Games.’ | Prin supervisor Karen Le Rossignol | |
| 2024 | ||
| June | Hannah Garden Australian News and Lifestyle Sites and Popular Feminisms.’ | Prin supervisor Kris Moruzi |
| Caitlin Mary Kavanagh-Ryan Crip Worldbuilding: Representing Disability in Young Adult Speculative Fiction.’ | Exec supervisor Sue Chen co-supervisor Clare Bradford | |
| Maria Paula Jones Representations of Liminality in Videopoetry and Graphic Memoir.’ | Prin supervisor David Mccooey | |
| 2024 | ||
| September | Cecilia Yubuko Rogers/Lia Rogers Dark Topographies: Young Adult Gothic Fiction and the Natural World | Prin supervisor Kris Moruzi |
| Karen Lyon Trauma and Testimony in Contemporary Crime Fiction | Prin supervisor Helen Young | |
| Alice Elizabeth Bellette Deadly Reckonings: Recognition, Refusal and Relationality in Contemporary Aboriginal Women’s Writing. | Exec supervisor Emily Potter co-supervisor Gabrielle Fletcher | |
| Nicole Maree Hayes Representations of Mothers and Motherhood in Australian Young Adult Fiction.’ | Prin supervisor Jodi McAlister | |
| Simon John Gluskie Hyperconnected Distance: Kaleidoscopic Narratives of the Human and Surveillance Capitalism.’ | Prin supervisor Antonia Pont | |
| Maria Paula Jones Representations of Liminality in Videopoetry and Graphic Memoir.’ | Prin supervisor David Mccooey | |
| Anne-Marie Teresa May Bookseller and Librarian Practices for Influencing Teen Recreational Reading. | Prin supervisor Leonie Rutherford | |
| Danielle Susanne Netherclift The Elegiac Lyric Essay: A Creative Artefact and Exegesis.’ | Prin supervisor David Mccooey | |
| Kieran Stevenson Pre-Apocalyptic Fiction: Writing Between a Reality Principle and a Real.’ | Prin supervisor Antonia Pont | |
| Carmen Tudor Negotiating Matrophobia and Matricentricity in Short Gothic Fiction.’ | Prin supervisor Alyson Miller | |
| 2023 | ||
| February | Charlotte Lucy Guest A Feminist Response to Catullus: A Creative Artefact and Exegesis | Prin supervisor David Mccooey |
| 2023 | ||
| June | Hayley Elliott-Ryan What Writing Wants: Repurposing Bricolage, Waste and Desire in Creative Practice | Prin supervisor Antonia Pont |
| Claire Marita Gaskin Ismene’s Survivable Resistance: Claiming Poetic Voice in the Contemporary Era | Prin supervisor Ann Vickery | |
| Shelise Marjorie-Rose Robertson Calculated Investors: John Arbuthnot, Hans Sloane, John Woodward and Slavery | Prin supervisor Geoff Boucher | |
| 2023 | ||
| October | Eliza-Jane Henry-Jones Salt and Skin: Climate Change in Australia and Orkney | Prin supervisor Emily Potter |
| D’arcy William Molan The Wimmera Speaks: Adaptive Work, Poetic Histories, and Place-based Arts | Exec supervisor Emily Potter co-supervisor Lynn McCredden | |
| Lorinda Tang Writing Trauma Making Fiction: Dialogic Practices after Bakhtin, Levinas, Derrida | Prin supervisor Antonia Pont | |
| Elizabeth Sarah Little ‘Mediating (Post)Feminist Girlhood Through Young Adult Fantasy Literature. | Prin supervisor Kris Moruzi | |
| 2022 | ||
| February | Sophie Jane Brown ‘Malfunctioning Bots: Posthuman Identities in Young Adult Literature.’ | Exec supervisor Sue Chen co-supervisor Alyson Miller |
| Karen Mai Donnelly ‘The Soldier Artists of the Australian Imperial Force. | Prin supervisor Kris Moruzi | |
| David John Ryan ‘Be a Good Sport. | Exec supervisor Cassandra Atherton co-supervisor Alyson Miller | |
| 2022 | ||
| June | Lynette Hinings-Marshall A Flash Life: Exploring Female Understandings of Home Through Experimental Memoir. | Prin supervisor Ann Vickery |
| Rachel Fetherston ‘Reading for Nature: Non-human Representation in Australian Ecofiction. | Prin supervisor Emily Potter | |
| Neena Sachdeve Trauma, Desire and Hope in Contemporary Novels of Sexual Abuse. | Prin supervisor Lynn McCredden | |
| Samatha Stephens ‘From Conflict to Kinship: Renegotiating Age in Youth Fantasy Fiction. | Prin supervisor Leonie Rutherford | |
| Michelle Jean Beamish ‘Poetry and the Trauma of Child Abuse: A Creative Thesis and Exegesis. | Prin supervisor David mccooey | |
| Heather Katherine Brown ‘Interrogating Postfeminist Female Empowerment in Bestselling Post-millennial Young Adult Literature. | Prin supervisor Cassandra Atherton | |
| Ebony Jade Muller ‘CARE DANCE: Dance/Movement Improvisation and the Ethics of Care. | Prin supervisor Indigo Perry | |
| 2022 | ||
| October | Rina Bruinsma Star Algae Contemporary Surrealist Poetics: Painting Words Around Unconscious Things | Prin supervisor Ann McCulloch |
| Christopher Cody Bustard: Confronting the Wounded Male in the (Post) Realist Short Story | Prin supervisor David Mccooey | |
| Dinasha Sajithani Edirisinghe Helene Cixous, Patrick White and the Theoretical Value of Ecriture Feminine. | Prin supervisor Marion Campbell | |
| 2021 | ||
| February | Robin Freeman Ethical Approaches to Editing Indigenous Writing in Settler Societies | Prin supervisor Clare Bradford |
| Jack Kirne Stray Writing: Ecology, Geoengineering and Writing in the Climate Crisis | Dxec supervisor Emily Potter co-supervisor Marion Campbell | |
| 2021 | ||
| June | Heather Joanne Cameron Cancer Poetry: Responding to Loss Through Autopathography and Elegy. | Prin supervisor David mccooey |
| Tasha Maria Haines ‘Redemptive Hybridism in Post-Postmodern Fiction. | Prin supervisor Marion Campbell | |
| Lara Bridget Hedberg ‘Queer Girls, Queer Landscapes in Texts for Young People. | Prin supervisor Kris Moruzi | |
| Yasmin Samira Mobayad ‘Mother: Spectres of the Post-Industrial Narrative. | Prin supervisor Lyn McCredden | |
| Samantha Elizabeth Phillips ‘False Gods and Faultlines: Reading Great Recession Fiction. | Prin supervisor Emily Potter | |
| Dipak Singh ‘Transforming Memory into Art: Stories from Fiji and the Indo-Fijian Diaspora.’ | Prin supervisor David Mccooey | |
| Linda Jane Wells ‘Living in Tin: The Bungalow Alice Springs, 1914–1929. | Exec supervisor Emily Potter co-supervisor Paul Venzo | |
| 2021 | ||
| October | Samuel Cadman Anthropocentrism and the Novel | Prin supervisor Maria Takolander |
| 2021 | ||
| December | Eleanore Rose Gardner ‘The Quintessence of Difficult’: Examining the Disruptive Literary Antiheroine. | Prin supervisor Alyson Miller |
Anna Spargo-Ryan, PhD candidate in Creative Writing
Anna Spargo-Ryan is the author of The Gulf and The Paper House, stories that try to break open ribcages and stomp on hearts. She won the 2016 Horne Prize for her essay “The Suicide Gene”. Her PhD seeks to understand the experiences of destitute women in nineteenth-century South Australia, and to restore their voices through creative nonfiction writing. Title: Altered States: truthful unreliable minds in contemporary Australian storytelling
…more PhD candidates to come…
Further Alumni Links
Alumni writers include Paddy O’Reilly, Tom Cho, Liam Guilar, Ania Walwicz, Sam Cooney, Christopher Lappas, Sophie Black, Emma Alberici, Kieran Carroll, Fiona McCallum and Gregory Day.
Other alumni have gone on to forge careers as academics, including Indigo Perry, Alyson Miller, Toby Davidson, Liz Parsons, Emma Whatman, Jo Scicluna, Shelley Buerger and Jo Langdon.