I am a qualitative new media scholar and Associate Professor in the School of Communication, Media and Journalism at Adelaide University*. My research looks at online persona, the strategic production of identity through digital media, and particularly focuses on content creation and the domestic use of social media. From 2026, I will be teaching into the Bachelor of Communication and Media program, the Master of Strategic Communication program, and supporting postgraduate studies in my School in AU. Prior to the merger, I taught into the UofA undergraduate Bachelor of Media degree as well as aligned Honours and Masters programs, and supervised Honours and Post-Graduate student research. A list of my current and completed supervisions can be found here. From 2024-2025, I was the Honours Coordinator for the B.Media(Hons) program and Post-Graduate Coordinator for Masters by Research and PhD students in Media, Philosophy, and European Languages and Linguistics.

My current research focus explores digital content creators in gaming through two key avenues. Firstly, I engage with the HermitCraft Minecraft YouTube collective to explore collaborative emergent transmedia storytelling, a form of distributed narrative that utilises game spaces and platform affordances to entertain a large, dedicated global community of fans. Secondly, I am working with colleagues and industry to understand and intervene in online gaming spaces to visibilise and amplify healthy and positive forms of masculinity in gaming live-streaming and e-sports to counter the often hostile (or ‘toxic’) hegemonic masculinities that these spaces are most widely known for. Both of these projects are ongoing.

In 2023, my sole-authored book Women and Persona Performance was published by Palgrave, while my co-authored book Persona Studies: An Introduction (with P. David Marshall and Christopher Moore, Wiley Blackwell) was released in 2019 (copyright date 2020). I have published articles in Convergence, Continuum, Celebrity Studies, TDR: The Drama Review, M/C Journal, Media International Australia, and First Monday, and have chapters in edited collections published by Palgrave McMillan, Routledge, and Adelaide University Press. Publications are listed here. Feel free to contact me to request copies of chapters or articles if you are unable to access them through a library or university, although I am unable to provide the full PDF of a book (chapter requests are fine). I am the co-founding and managing editor of the Persona Studies journal, an online, diamond open access journal exploring the construction of the public self.

In addition to my teaching and research work, I was the Faculty of Arts Director, Gender Equity, Diversity and Inclusion (2021-2022), sitting on the central Staff Gender Equity Committee for the University of Adelaide. I was co-facilitator of the Diversity and Inclusion in Teaching Community of Practice (DITCoP) from 2019-2023, working within the cross-faculty group to ensure the university supports and engages with their student cohort in all of its diversity. Within The University of Adelaide, I was a member of the Ally Network, supporting LGBTIQA* students and staff to have a safe, equitable, and positive engagement with university life, as well as a Wellbeing Champion with Mental Health First Aid training. I have served as Chair of the School of Humanities Teaching and Learning Committee (2017-2018), including representing the School at Faculty level, and was the 2018 Early Career Researcher Representative on the Faculty of Arts Research Committee.

I am currently Vice President/President Elect of the Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand Communication Association (AANZCA), after serving as Secretary for 2024-2025 and as Regional Representative for South Australia from 2018-2023.

*From 2026, The University of Adelaide and University of South Australia are merged to create the new Adelaide University. For more on this process, see here: https://adelaideuni.edu.au/about/our-journey/