About CHASS: Current Board   (Elected 9 November, 2011)

See also: Previous Boards

Professor Sue Willis: President
Professor Sue Willis is Pro Vice-Chancellor (Social Inclusion), Monash University and was until recently Dean of the Faculty of Education at Monash. Sue was past President of the Australian Council of Deans of Education (ACDE). Sue began her career in Western Australia as a secondary mathematics teacher before moving into curriculum development and then university teaching and research. Her research, curriculum and professional development work have had two foci: mathematics and numeracy, and equity and social justice in and through education. Sue has engaged extensively in consultancy and policy work and served on a number of Boards and Steering and Consultative Committees at state and national levels. Sue is currently a Director of the Australian Institute for Teaching and School Leadership Limited (AITSL) and on the Board of the VCAA, chairing its Post Compulsory Curriculum and Assessment Committee.
Associate Professor Peta Ashworth: Vice President
Peta Ashworth leads CSIRO's Science into Society Group (SISG), researching stakeholder perceptions to areas of national significance to Australia. Peta holds an Adjunct Associate Professor position at the University of Queensland. She manages over 20 social science researchers working across five CSIRO flagships and her group has grown from 3 to 23 in the past five years, signifying the importance of integrating complex issues into society. The current profile of research for her group includes working across energy, climate adaptation, oceans, minerals, and sustainable agriculture domains. Researchers in her team are also involved in the Centrelink Alliance project aimed to improve service delivery for Centrelink stakeholders. In each project researchers develop social processes to engage with a range of relevant stakeholders on the topic of research. This approach aligns with Peta's own research interest on how to deliver information to best effect. In her current work Peta Chairs the International Energy Agency's Greenhouse Gas (IEA GHG) Social Research Network and has gained an international reputation in researching stakeholder perceptions to climate change and low emission energy technologies.
Mr Michael Crayford: Treasurer
Michael Crayford is the Assistant Director of Collections and Exhibitions at the Australian National Maritime Museum and is responsible for a number of key functions of the museum including research, collections, preservation, curatorial, library, design, registration, exhibitions, USA Gallery, and Indigenous programs. Other accomplishments are planning and managing major museum/heritage sites with primary responsibilities in strategic planning, exhibition development and project management, financial management, advocacy and liaison. Michael has been involved in a range of cultural activities and initiatives outside of museums including music copyright, contemporary craft, public art and community cultural development. He is a board member of AusHeritage and has been a member of numerous cultural committees over a 25 year period. Michael is committed to capacity building between university research in the humanities and research applications in cultural agencies such as museums.
Associate Professor Rhian Parker: Secretary
Rhian Parker is an Associate Professor and senior research and policy synthesis fellow at the Australian Primary Health Care Research Institute based at the ANU. Rhian's research focuses on the organisation and delivery of primary health care services, with a particular focus on nurses and non medical health professionals and on preventive activities. Over the past 5 years she has published 23 papers and book chapters and a book. Over the same period she has also been involved as a chief investigator on 15 funded research projects. Rhian's role at APHCRI also involves engaging with researchers, policy makers, consumers and practitioners to support the use of research evidence in policy development and in primary care practice.
Ms Christie Anthoney
Christie Anthoney is the Creative Director of the TAFE SA Adelaide College of the Arts, a multi-arts training facility in the heart of Adelaide. She brings to this role a wealth of experience in the delivery of festivals and events, an enormous network of practicing artists and arts-workers; and a commitment to raising the bar for both arts training practice and the understanding of the benefits of the arts for a wider public. Christie was Director of the Adelaide Fringe as it successfully moved from a biennial to an annual event 2007 - 2010. She worked closely with research practitioners to enable data to be sourced from Fringe audiences and artists. This work was particularly focused on the social impact of arts events. Christie worked to create shared methodology for social impact across South Australian events. Now in the Vocational Education Sector - delivering two stand-alone degree programs in Dance and Visual Arts as well as a breadth of industry based vet sector. Through the Adelaide College of the Arts there are thousands of graduates who remain 'untapped' sources of arts training information.
Dr Camilla Couch
Camilla Couch is the Outreach Coordinator at Ultimo College, Sydney Institute, TAFENSW. She has broad professional experience in the development and delivery of innovative place/community based Vocational Education and Training (VET) programs in inner and south western Sydney, particularly in public and social housing communities. Camilla has a strong professional and academic background in education and she has ongoing practitioner research experience on advisory research committees and is active on many local education and cross sectoral community committees across the Sydney LGA. She has a strong commitment to social justice, VET and quality research and is the key contact for Sydney Institute for the DEEWR Innovations Fund 'Promising Futures' PLACE (Partners in Learning and Community Enterprise) project. Camilla is interested in strengthening relationships between VET and the humanities, arts and social sciences and building research capacity through innovative collaboration between the tertiary education sectors.
Professor Linda Rosenman
Linda Rosenman is Deputy Vice Chancellor (Research and Knowledge Exchange) at Victoria University. Professor Rosenman was Associate Dean of Arts and Sciences at the University of Missouri before returning to Australia in 1987 as Head of School of Social Work and Social Policy at the University of Queensland. Whilst there she served as President of the University of Queensland Academic Board, and Executive Dean of the Faculty of Social and Behavioural Sciences. Professor Rosenman has a PhD in Economics and Social Work from Washington University, with extensive experience in research, both in the United States and Australia. She has a long history of community engagement within and beyond the tertiary sector, and was awarded an Australian Centenary medal for her services to education and the community. She is the former President of the Australasian Council of Deans of Arts, Social Sciences and Humanities (DASSH) and a number of other Boards, Commissions and advisory councils in education and human and community services sectors. Professor Rosenman has served on the Board of CHASS since its foundation, and was recently President for three years until March 2011.
Professor John Simons
Professor John Simons is Executive Dean of Arts at Macquarie University. He was educated at the University of Wales and the University of Exeter. He previously worked at the universities of Wales, Exeter, Winchester, Edge Hill and Lincoln and has held visiting Professorships in the USA. In 1993 he held a fellowship at the Huntington Library.
In the 1990s he worked in various Eastern European countries on projects to rebuild universities after the fall of communism.
He is a Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts, the Higher Education Academy, the Zoological Society of London and the Oxford Centre for Animal Ethics and on the Peer Review College of the AHRC. Before coming to Australia he was on the steering committee of the Standing Conference for the Arts and Social Sciences, a council member of the charity Vegetarian for Life, a director of EMMedia (a company providing capital for film projects), and chair of the board of SIREN FM (a community radio station). He is now treasurer of DASSH, on the council of the charity Voiceless, on the advisory board of the Australia India Youth Dialogue, co-chair of the board of 2SER (a community radio station) and a TEQSA auditor.
He has published very widely on topics ranging from Middle English romance to the history of cricket. Lately he has concentrated on animals and his chief publications are Animal Rights and the Politics of Literary Representation (2002) and Rossetti's Wombat (2008). He has two monographs appearing in 2012. One, Kangaroo, is a social history of kangaroos. The other, The Tiger that Swallowed the Boy, concerns the exotic animal trade in Victorian England. He is a published poet.
Associate Professor Michele Simons
Michele Simons is Associate Professor in Education at the University of South Australia at the University of South Australia. Michele has made a significant contribution to scholarship in the field of vocational education and training in Australia. Since 1996 she has won more than two-million dollars in research funding for a range of projects in vocational education and training – many of these were Category 1 funded projects managed by the National Centre for Vocational Education and Research (NCVER) under the National Vocational Education and Training Research and Evaluation (NVETRE) research program. Associate Professor Simons' research interests include learning in non-formal settings such as workplaces and community organisations; apprenticeships and the development of the vocational education and training workforce. Associate Professor Simons has been a member of the Australian Vocational Education and Training Research Association (AVETRA) since its inception and is currently the Secretary of AVETRA. She is also holds the position of Treasurer for the Australian Association for Research in Education (AARE).
Professor Joe Siracusa
Joseph M. Siracusa is Associate Dean of International & Justice Studies and Professor of Human Security and International Diplomacy in the School of Global Studies, Social Science and Planning, at the Royal Melbourne Institute of Technology University, Melbourne, Australia. A native of Chicago and long-time resident of Australia, he studied at the University of Denver and the University of Vienna and received his PhD from the University of Colorado (Boulder). He is internationally known for his writings on nuclear history, American diplomacy, and presidential politics. Professor Siracusa is also a frequent political affairs commentator in the Australian media. He has worked at Merrill Lynch, in Boston, the University of Queensland, in Brisbane, and for three years served as senior visiting fellow in the Key Centre for Ethics, Law, Justice and Governance, Griffith University. Among his numerous books are A History of United States Foreign Policy (with Julius W. Pratt and Vincent De Santis); Depression to Cold War: A History of America from Herbert Hoover to Ronald Reagan (with David G. Coleman); Presidential Profiles: The Kennedy Years; Real-World Nuclear Deterrence: The Making of International Strategy (with David G. Coleman); Nuclear Weapons: A Very Short Introduction; Reagan, Bush, Gorbachev: Revisiting the End of the Cold War (with Norman A. Graebner and Richard Dean Burns); America and the Cold War, 1941-1991: A Realist Interpretation (with Norman A. Graebner and Richard Dean Burns); Globalization & Human Security (with Paul Battersby); and Diplomacy: A Very Short Introduction.

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