Research Fellows and Students

Professor Verity Burgmann

Honorary Professorial Fellow

Verity Burgmann is an Honorary Professor and Director of the online resource of primary source documents of Australian radicalism, hosted by the ESRC at www.reasoninrevolt.net.au. In 2013 she was Ludwig Hirschfeld Mack Visiting Chair of Australian Studies at the Free University in Berlin. From 1988 to 2012 she taught in Political Science at the University of Melbourne and became its first female professor in 2003. She was Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Arts 2004-2007, President of the Australasian Political Studies Association 2002-2003 and was elected a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences in Australia in 1999. In 1988 she co-edited the four-volume A People’s History of Australia (1988). Author of numerous publications on labour movement history and politics, protest movements, radical ideologies and environmental politics, her books include: ‘In Our Time’: Socialism and the Rise of Labor (1985); Power and Protest (1993); Revolutionary Industrial Unionism (1995); Green Bans, Red Union (1998); Unions and the Environment (2002); Power, Profit and Protest (2003); and Climate Politics and the Climate Movement in Australia (2012). Her current research interests are utopianism and international labour movements’ opposition to neo-liberalism and corporate globalization.

Chris Kirk

Honorary Research Fellow

An experienced computer hardware and software engineer, Christopher Kirk has been an Honorary Research Fellow at the ESRC since 2009 as the Project Manager for the Find & Connect Records Access Documentation Project. He has also developed software tools to ensure consistency in describing historical records, and data visualisation techniques for a state government department, to improve the reduction of duplicated standards.

Richard Vines

Honorary Research Fellow

Richard Vines is a Knowledge Management Specialist at the Victorian Department of Environment and Primary Industries and Honorary Research Fellow, eScholarship Research Centre at the University of Melbourne. Since Dec 2010 has been involved in a startup knowledge management initiative within the DEPI Farm Services Division. He previously worked both as a Knowledge Broker, Quality Manager and sector development consultant in the child and family welfare sector from 2007 to 2011 during which time he built a relationship with the eSRC. Earlier he worked as an industry analyst, strategic advisor and consultant for a range of government, industry associations and private corporations that encompass the manufacturing, including print and publishing, mining and mineral processing, higher education and natural resource management sectors He has consulted and published widely on matters to do with knowledge management, digital-media convergence and interoperability.

Dr Rebe Taylor

Project Historian

Rebe Taylor joined the ESRC in January 2013 as historian and editor on the Find & Connect web resource.  Rebe completed an ARC Discovery Research Fellowship at the University of Melbourne in early 2013. During her Fellowship, she published several papers from her research on the Tasmanian Aboriginal people in scientific imagination in the journals Meanjin, History Compass, Collections: A journal for Museum and archive professionals and Aboriginal History. Her multi-award winning book Unearthed: the Aboriginal Tasmanians of Kangaroo Island was republished by Wakefield Press in 2008. Rebe has worked, with co-authors Gavan McCarthy and Michael Jones, on the publication of the online history and archive guide Stories in Stone: the collections and papers of Ernest Westlake (1855-1922), as well as a substantial paper on the Tasmanian work of archaeologist Rhys Jones (1941-2001).

Louise Baker

Ph.D. Student

Michael Falk

Ph.D. Student

Michael Falk is a PhD candidate supervised by Gavan McCarthy, jointly based at the ESRC and Melbourne Business School. Michael’s research looks at how organisations strategically respond to factors that shape innovation pathways, with a focus on knowledge brokering activities. Previously, Michael worked as a research analyst and writer for some of the most creative and disruptive entrants in media, technology, publishing and the arts, including The Conversation Media Group, the Creative Industries Innovation Centre (CIIC) and Enhanced Editions in the UK.

Sarah Webber

M.Sc. Student

Larissa Halonkin

Research Assistant