The Hawke Legacy

Gerry Bloustien is an experienced film-maker and a lecturer in Communication Studies at the University of South Australia, where she teaches Screen Studied and Media Production. A hopeless musician, she is nevertheless a keen fan of a wide range of popular music and dance. Her doctoral thesis, focusing on gender and representation, explored the significance of popular music and other related cultural texts in the everyday lives of a diverse group of teenage girls in South Australia. Her other current research interests and publications involve film music and, particularly, explorations of new forms of documentary.

Barbara Comber is a key researcher in the Centre for Studies in Literacy, Policy and Learning Cultures in the Hawke Research Institute at the University of South Australia. Her particular interests include literacy education and social justice, teachers’ work and identities, place and space, and practitioner inquiry. She has worked collaboratively with teachers in high poverty locations focusing on innovative and critical curriculum and pedagogies that address contemporary social challenges. She has published two books: Literacies in Place: Teaching Environmental Communication (Comber, Nixon and Reid, 2007) and Turn-Around Pedagogies: Literacy interventions for at-risk students (Comber and Kamler 2005).

Emeritus Professor Alison Mackinnon, AM, was Foundation Director of the Hawke Research Institute at the University of South Australia. Her research and writing spans gender and history, and issues of equity in education for girls and marginalized young people.