Tara Brabazon

Tara Brabazon (born 3 January 1969) is the Professor of Education and the Head of School of Teacher Education at Charles Sturt University, Australia.[1] Born in Perth, Western Australia, she was previously the Professor of Creative Media and Head of Photography and Creative Media at the University of Bolton, Professor of Media at the University of Brighton, Professor of Communication at the University of Ontario Institute of Technology, Associate Professor of Media, Communication and Culture at Murdoch University in Australia and held lectureships at the Victoria University of Wellington in Aotearoa/New Zealand and Central Queensland University in Australia.

A specialist in media literacies, online learning, the knowledge economy, city imaging, creative industries, sonic media, popular culture, popular memory and cultural history, she has published 14 books. Her best known monographs are Digital Hemlock: internet education and the poisoning of teaching (2002), The University of Google (2007) and Digital Dieting (2013), which focus on building an information scaffold for students managing the information age. Brabazon explored the consequences of the online 'revolution' on social change through her edited collection, Digital Dialogues and Community 2.0: After Avatars Trolls and Puppets (2012).

She received some media and online coverage for 'banning' students on her courses from using Google and Wikipedia in their first year of study.[2] Currently she is completing this argument in the third book of her Digital Hemlock trilogy, titled Digital Dieting.

Her Inaugural Address at the University of Brighton in 2008 was titled "Google is White Bread for the Mind."[3]

Tara has also written extensively on popular culture, including Thinking Popular Culture (2008) and in 2005, published From Revolution to Revelation: Generation X, Popular Culture, Popular Memory and edited Liverpool of the South Seas: Perth and its popular music. Calling attention to the interplay between nation, identity, representation and popular culture, Tracking the Jack: a retracing of the Antipodes (2000) and Playing on the Periphery: sport, memory and identity (2006), investigate the historical iterations of culture and iconography between the United Kingdom and the Antipodes. More recently, The Revolution will not be downloaded: dissent in the digital age was published in January 2008, and Thinking Pop: war, writing and terrorism was being published by Ashgate in June 2008.

A finalist for Australian of the Year in 2005, she has also won awards for postgraduate supervision, disability education and teaching excellence. In 1998, Brabazon received the Australian Award for University Teaching (Humanities). She is also a public commentator on cultural and political issues, and was a features writer for the Times Higher Education (THE). She has previously published feature articles in both The Times and The Guardian. She is active in social media, with an extensive podcast series [4]

Brabazon is also director of the Popular Culture Collective, a nonprofit community organization whose stated goals are to "create thinking - and thoughtful - popular culture."[5]

She is married to Steve Redhead, Sub Dean of Graduate Studies at Charles Sturt University. They live in Bathurst, New South Wales.

References

  1. ↑ http://www.csu.edu.au/faculty/educat/teached/staff/profiles/head/tara-brabazon
  2. ↑ Andrea L. Foster (2008-01-17). "The Wired Campus". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2008-06-04.
  3. ↑ University of Brighton (2008-01-07). "Google is white bread for the mind". University of Brighton. Retrieved 2008-01-18.
  4. ↑ http://tarabrabazon.libsyn.com/webpage
  5. ↑ http://www.popularculturecollective.com/

External links