The CfSC Research Centre includes the co-directors, researchers, associate members, and postgraduate scholars.
Vijay Devadas
Co-Director
Vijay Devadas is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication Studies @ AUT. He is particularly interested in social, cultural & political communicative ecologies across cultures and platforms. He has published across a range of topics including cinema and social change, popular culture & politics, indigenous media in Aotearoa, media & climate change, media, terror, sovereignty and gender and technology. You can view his full profile here.
Sarah Baker
Co-Director
Sarah Baker is an Associate Professor in the School of Communication at Auckland University of Technology. She is the co-founder of the AUT Popular Culture Centre and a member of 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 Sexuality and Gender. Her current research interest is in misinformation and disinformation within Aotearoa
Geoffrey Craig
Researcher
Professor Geoffrey Craig conducts research in the areas of environmental and political communication. His most recent books are Media, Sustainability and Everyday Life (Palgrave Macmillan 2019) and Performing Politics: Media Interviews, Debates and Press Conferences (Polity 2016). He is on the editorial board of a number of journals including the Journal of Communication and Environmental Communication. In 2017 he received the Anne Dunn Scholar of the Year award from the Australia and New Zealand Communication Association and the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia. You can view his profile here.
Christina Vogels
Researcher
Dr Christina Vogels is a Senior Lecturer within the School of Communication Studies. Her research passions are fuelled by critical feminist inquiries into violence against women prevention. Within this research focus also sits her expertise in feminist media studies, critical youth studies methodologies, rural masculinities and feminist Bourdieusian social theory. Christina is also published in the field of decolonising education in tertiary classrooms. She is dedicated to developing curriculum underpinned by te Tiriti o Waitangi. She also has many years of experience in violence against women prevention networks in Tāmaki Makaurau.
Tui Matelau
Researcher
Tui is an early career researcher who explores the ways in which Māori and Pacific identities are constructed with the aim of enhancing the wellbeing and success of Māori and Pacific people in Aotearoa. In her PhD study she examined Māori and Pacific identity within the context of the arts: dance, visual arts and creative writing. Her current research extends on her thesis by examining the relationship between positive ethnic identity construction and wellbeing.
She uses multimodal (inter)action analysis as a methodological and analytical framework to analyse the different datasets she collects. From 2021-2023 she held a MBIE Science Whitinga Postdoctoral Fellowship where she further explored Māori and Pacific identity construction within Aotearoa.
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Janet Tupou
Researcher
Janet Tupou (Tongan) is a Lecturer in the School of Communication Studies (SCS). She has been involved in a wide range of research projects centred around emotional labour, Tongan cultural identity and community consultation efforts in Auckland. She is also interested in intercultural communication and particularly the representation of women in Tongan spaces and Pasifika cultures. She also conducts research and evaluation for government agencies and NGO's.
Janet is a member of the Kaipatiki Local Board and volunteers in the Tongan community on a regular basis.
Jennie Watts
Researcher
Jennie worked as a writer and communicator and in media liaison in the Education, Health and Tourism sectors before completing a PhD in Communication at AUT. Jennie's diverse research interests include media policy, learning design, public relations communication, and communication in the fields of environment, food, and architecture. She is a member of the Lifting Literacy Aotearoa steering group, an advocacy and social change organisation focused on improving literacy in Aotearoa New Zealand.
Matt Halliday
Researcher
Matt is a lecturer in Te Kura Whakapāho | The School of Communications Studies at AUT. He teaches in the Advertising and Brand Creativity major, with a focus on using his creative skills for the social good. Matt’s research focuses on the ethics of advertising, especially when it comes to the very fine line between environmental claims and greenwashing.
Shuaib Mohamed Haneef
Associate Member
Shuaib Mohamed Haneef has been teaching media and communication studies for two decades now. He is an Professor in the Department of Electronic Media and Mass Communication, University of Pondicherry. Prior to that, he worked as subeditor in The New Indian Express and later as senior subeditor in The Hindu, two leading English dailies in India. He also worked in the e-learning domain as Senior Instructional Designer and Content Head in IT firms. His areas of interest include digital cultures, digital journalism, algorithmic bias, and affect, subjectivities and technologies. He is co-editor of the journal Communication and Culture Review.
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Amanda Rutherford
Associate Member
Amanda Rutherford teaches in the School of Social Sciences at AUT and is a PhD candidate. She is a member of the Popular Culture Association, the Pacific Ancient and Modern Language Association, and the Northeast Modern Language Association, and writes predominantly in Mediated popular culture with a multi-discipline approach to research. She is currently using the Leximancer data mining software to examine hate speech in Aotearoa for the misinformation and disinformation project, and other current research examines grief, trauma, and death through apocalyptic narratives in film and literature, focusing on pandemic, war and terrorism, existential and environmental threat through biblical, historical, and present-day times.
Jim Marbrook
Associate Member
Jim is a Associate Professor at the University of Canterbury. He is a filmmaker with a wide experience in making films which explore the complex dynamics of social change, the environment, the Pacific and health issues. His latest prize-winning film Loimata (co-producer/writer) explored family-based solutions to abuse and indigenous approaches to healing, including using traditional wayfinding and navigation techniques as tools for healing. His documentaries include Mental Notes (2012), Cap Bocage (2014), Dark Horse (2003) and revised version in 2014. He co-edited the book Conflict, Custom and Conscience. His interests include supporting community media projects, education through creative practice, and supporting marginalised communities who wish to tell their own stories.
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Libby Lester
Associate Member
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.
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Selvaraj Velayutham
Associate Member
Selvaraj Velayutham is from the Department of Sociology, Macquarie University. His 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.
Ayesha Scott
Associate Member
Ayesha is an interdisciplinary researcher, with an agenda that spans violence against women, empirical finance, personal finance and financial econometrics. Her research, teaching, and professional interests focus on improving New Zealanders’ understanding of healthy financial relationships and their personal financial fitness. Passionate about healthy financial relationships and an advocate against economic harm in intimate relationships, Ayesha has partnered with charitable trust Good Shepherd NZ to promote financial and relationship wellbeing for all Kiwis. Her work (particularly on KiwiSaver and personal finance) has generated media interest within Aotearoa New Zealand, and you will find her commentary in outlets such as the NZ Herald, stuff.co.nz and The Conversation.
Yijun (Margo) Liu
Associate Member
Yijun Liu is a researcher with a diverse academic background and a deep passion for media and communication studies.
With hands-on experience in fan subtitling, Yijun’s research explores identity formation and audience awareness within contemporary political and economic contexts. She examines fandom through the lens of social and political economics, often analysing the cultural and ideological tensions that shape mediated popular culture. Her work offers critical insights into the evolving relationship between media, society, and audience engagement in the digital age
Lewis Rarm
Associate Member
Lewis Rarm is a critical communications scholar working at the intersection of violence, technology, media, and biopolitics. His research efforts so far have been directed at the media and governance strategy of the Islamic State, focusing specifically on the group’s administrative apparatus and use of social and legacy media to deploy a specific mode of Islamist biopolitics.
He has written on media produced by Islamist terrorists and white supremacists, including the 2019 Christchurch terror attacks. His book, Islamic State, Biopolitics and Media Governmentality (2024), draws on the thought of Michel Foucault and Gilles Deleuze (and Felix Guattari) to conceptualize the Islamic State’s global media and local governance efforts.
Brett Nicholls
Associate Member
Brett is immersed in research on media and politics, critical theory, and discourse analysis. His published work includes critical analyses of documentary film, wearable fitness devices, social media, and television. He is also a specialist on Jean Baudrillard’s thought. Brett’s latest work takes a historical view of reactionary politics in Australia and New Zealand. It considers the ideological formation of this politics, its evolution over time, and its integration into today’s mainstream political discourse.