Who we are: Communication for Social Change research centre

The research team at the Communication for Social Change research centre explores contemporary approaches to communication for social change in global and local contexts, including citizen engagement, collective action, community media, entrepreneurial changemaking, media development and social movements.

Meet the team

Associate members

Dr Sarah Baker

Senior Lecturer, School of Communication, AUT

Dr Sarah Baker is the co-founder of the AUT Popular Culture Centre and a member of the AUT Centre for Journalism, Media and Democracy (JMAD) and the AUT Media Observatory Group. She is a senior fellow and a member of the AUT Academy. Her research interests include television and film in mediated popular culture focusing on the gothic, horror, sexuality and gender.

Associate Professor Selvaraj Velayutham

Department of Sociology, Macquarie University

Associate Professor Selvaraj Velayutham’s specialist areas are globalisation, international migration, diaspore and transnationalism, race and ethnic studies, nationalism, multiculturalism and the sociology of everyday life. His research draws on ethnographic and other qualitative research methods to explore structural and institutional factors underpinning questions of identity and social relations in everyday life. He also publishes in the areas of Tamil studies and Tamil cinema.

Professor Libby Lester

Director, Institute for Social Change, the University of Tasmania

Libby Lester is Director of the Institute for Social Change at the University of Tasmania and, from 2022, UNESCO Chair in Communication, Environment and Heritage. She works to understand the place of public debate in local and global decision-making, and her research on environmental communication and political conflict is widely published. Before joining the university, she worked as a journalist for 15 years, reporting for The Age and other Australian newspapers and magazines.

Postgraduate students

• Lewis Rarm, PhD
  The dispositif of terror: Islamic State, biopolitical governance, and the digital conjuncture
• Danielle Selman Julian, PhD
  Jacinda Ardern, gender, and the news media reportage of her political leadership
• Carla Grosman, PhD
  Cinema Made with Neighbours: Amateur Community Cinema in Neoliberal Argentina
• Dominic Pink, PhD
  Making an essay film as dissensus: Toward a utopian commonsense on the climate and ecological crises in Aotearoa New Zealand
• Jayakrishnan Sreekumar, PhD
  Gender and the Cinema of Shyamaprasad
• Nialm Patel, Master of Communication Studies
  Between two Worlds, Bollywood Cinema and Indian migrants in Aotearoa