School of Humanities, Creative Industries and Social Sciences
Humanities programs
The humanities team teaches in the areas of ancient and modern history, English and writing, philosophy, screen and cultural studies, and the modern languages French, Japanese and Chinese. Each year our academic experts curate a suite of degree level courses in the programs below. The BA is available with flexible blended delivery options as well as completely online.
Our Everyday Laboratory
The Bachelor of Arts includes an Everyday Laboratory (EL) model which uses our city and region as a living lab for teaching and learning. It enables students to engage with local sites and organisations, build networks in the community, and add professional skills to your graduate profile. The EL connects BA students across a range of courses to the places and spaces surrounding the University.
Examples include museum and gallery exhibits as places for observation and review, historical walks, engaging with large events like the Newcastle Writers’ Festival or This Is Not Art, writing for the local press and underground media, editing for publishers, creating websites and content, blogging and vlogging, making podcasts or digital stories, ethnographic experiences, and more. If you would like more information about the everyday laboratory model check out the brochure.
Contact us
For more information about studying humanities programs please contact our program convenors.
Associate Professor Julie McIntyre
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
- julie.mcintyre@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249217029
Dr Janet Liang
Lecturer in Chinese
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
- janet.liang@newcastle.edu.au
- 0240553446
Mr Benn Banasik
Philosophy
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: philosophy of video games; artificial intelligence; gaming as religious experience; new religious movements
- benn.banasik@newcastle.edu.au
- 0434832636
Dr Rebecca Beirne
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: television studies; gender, sexuality and LGBTIQ studies; film studies; media audiences and consumption; race and ethnicity in media cultures; postcolonial studies; documentary film and television; popular culture; media institutions; comics and graphic novels
- rebecca.beirne@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215081
Dr Kit Candlin
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: American History, especially colonial America; European empires; the history of violence and war
- kit.candlin@newcastle.edu.au
- 49216413
Professor Catharine Coleborne
Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Australian history; New Zealand history; colonialism; cultural history; digital history; gender; histories of the family; institutional closures; medical history; mental health service history; mobilities; social history of insanity
Dr Brooke Collins-Gearing
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Indigenous literature; postcolonial literature; children's literature; Young Adult Literature
- brooke.collins-gearing@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215178
Associate Professor Nancy Cushing
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: air pollution; Australian cultural history; environmental history; food studies; heritage studies; human/animal relations; Newcastle; urban history
- nancy.cushing@newcastle.edu.au
- 0243484055
Dr Sacha Davis
Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Germany; Habsburg; Hungary; Roma; Romania; Saxon; Transylvania; Transylvanianism; Zigeuner; diaspora; eugenics; fascism; landscape; migration; minority; nationalism; transnationalism; travel writing; travelogue; wine
- sacha.davis@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215217
Mr Tom Doe
Languages - Auslan Studies
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Australian Sign Language studies
Dr Hamish Ford
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: film theory and history; post-war European cinema, cinema and philosophy; post-colonial studies; contemporary world cinema; film modernism; documentary cinema; race and ethnicity in media cultures; politics and media culture
- hamish.ford@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249217821
Associate Professor Keri Glastonbury
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: contemporary Australian poetry; nonfiction; creative writing.
- keri.glastonbury@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215160
Professor Jesper Gulddal
Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: global crime fiction; mobility studies; World Literature; comparative literature; history and theory of the novel; 18th and 19th century literature; literary theory
- jesper.gulddal@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215166
Professor Victoria Haskins
Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Aboriginal history; Australian history; colonialism; cross-cultural history; dance history; domestic labour; domestic service; gender history; Indigenous history (US, Asia); museum studies; women's history
- victoria.haskins@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215221
Dr Effie Karageorgos
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: war history; history of psychiatry and mental illness; history of gender; history of race; South African history; Vietnamese history
- effie.karageorgos@newcastle.edu.au
- 0240553390
Dr Alexandra Lewis
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Australian literature; creative writing; fiction; fin-de-siècle literature; history of medicine, psychology and the emotions; life writing; literature and science 1800 to present; memory studies; Neo-Victorian fiction; short fiction; the Brontes and George Eliot; trauma narratives circa 19th century to present; travel writing; twentieth-century women’s writing; Victorian literature and culture
Dr Janet Liang
Lecturer in Chinese
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Chinese language studies
- janet.liang@newcastle.edu.au
- 0240553446
Mrs Eri MacAskill
Associate Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: transnational studies; migration studies; Japanese language studies and education.
Associate Professor Julie McIntyre
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: agriculture; Australia's Atlantic; Australian and international wine studies; environmental history; global Newcastle; histories of science; knowledge mobilities; theories of civilising processes; tourism; trans-imperial migration
- julie.mcintyre@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249217029
Dr David Musgrave
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: contemporary Australian poetry and novel; the satire; creative writing
- david.musgrave@newcastle.edu.au
- 0243484056
Associate Professor Trisha Pender
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: early modern women's literature; Jane Austen; literature and film; popular culture; contemporary women's literature
- patricia.j.pender@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215369
Mrs Sophie Rankin
Associate Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: French language, foreign language acquisition.
- sophie.rankin@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249216342
Associate Professor Elizabeth Roberts-Pedersen
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: gender and war; history of psychiatry; war memorialisation; World War II
Associate Professor Alistair Rolls
Associate Professor
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: Boris Vian; existentialism; fetishism; twentieth and twenty-first century literature
- alistair.rolls@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249215559
Dr Michael Sala
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: creative writing; contemporary fiction; memoir
- michael.sala@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249218811
Associate Professor Timothy Stanley
Philosophy
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: deliberative democracy; ethical technology; extended mind theory (EMT); hermeneutics; metaphysics; methodology in the study of religion; political and social theory; print/codex information technology; scientific studies of religion; secularization theory; situated religious cognition; tolerance and antibigotry studies
- timothy.stanley@newcastle.edu.au
- 0249217927
Dr Ryan Strickler
Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: religion and identity in the Greco-Roman world; responses to crisis in the Greco-Roman World; late antiquity; religion and authority in the later Roman Empire
Dr Marie-Laure Vuaille-Barcan
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: foreign language acquisition; French culture, language and literature; literary analysis; literary translation theories and practices
Dr Rowena Ward
Senior Lecturer
School of Humanities, Creative Ind and Social Sci
Expertise: transnational studies; migration studies; Japanese language studies and education.
- rowena.ward@newcastle.edu.au
- 0240550986
The University of Newcastle acknowledges the traditional custodians of the lands within our footprint areas: Awabakal, Darkinjung, Biripai, Worimi, Wonnarua, and Eora Nations. We also pay respect to the wisdom of our Elders past and present.