School of Humanities and Social Sciences Executive
The School of Humanities and Social Sciences is led by an experienced executive team who are leading scholars in their fields and passionate advocates for humanities and social sciences.
Professor Nick Bisley
Professor Nick Bisley is Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of International Relations at La Trobe University. His research and teaching expertise is in Asia's international relations, great power politics and Australian foreign and defence policy. Between 2013 and 2018, Professor Bisley was the Editor-in-Chief of the Australian Journal of International Affairs, the country's oldest scholarly journal in the field of international relations. He is a Fellow of the Australian Institute for International Affairs, a member of the advisory board of China Matters and a member of the Council for Security and Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific. He has been a Senior Research Associate of the International Institute of Strategic Studies and a Visiting Fellow at the East West-Centre in Washington DC. Professor Bisley is the author of many works on international relations, including Issues in 21st Century World Politics, 3rd Edition Great Powers in the Changing International Order and Building Asia's Security. He regularly contributes to and is quoted in national and international media including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, CNN and Time Magazine.
Associate Professor Sarah Midford
Associate Professor Sarah Midford is Associate Dean, Learning and Teaching, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. Her research expertise is in Classical Reception Studies, particularly in an Australian context. Between 2010 and 2016, Associate Professor Midford was a member of the Joint Historical and Archaeological Survey of Anzac Battlefields on the Gallipoli Peninsula and, in 2016, served as the Victorian World War I Historian for the Department of Premier and Cabinet. Associate Professor Midford also publishes Scholarship of Learning and Teaching and has expertise in Arts cohorts, First Year Transition and Student Retention. Since 2015, she has been a Chief Investigator on the AI Rubrics project developing an instant assessment feedback system to improve the student experience. She is a Senior Fellow of Advance HE (UK), has been awarded a citation from the Australian Awards for University Teaching, and is the recipient of numerous teaching and research awards. Sarah is a founding member and Chairperson of the SHAPE Futures Australian Early and Mid Career Researcher (EMCR) Network, connecting and advocating for EMCRs working in the Social Sciences, Humanities, and Arts for People and Environment (SHAPE) disciplines across Australia.
Professor Andrea Carson
Professor Andrea Carson is Associate Dean, Research and Industry Engagement, in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Professor of Political Communication at La Trobe University. She also serves as the elected representative on La Trobe University’s Council. She is the President of the Australian Political Studies Association and a Fellow of the Women’s Leadership Institute Australia. Her research examines journalism’s role in democracies and is published in the world’s top 10 journals in the field. Professor Carson advises governments, think tanks and non-profits on the digital media environment and is an inaugural member of Meta’s Global Misinformation Advisory Board and an invited affiliate with the International Panel on the Information Environment (IPIE). In 2024 she was a visiting research fellow at the Reuters Institute for the Study of Journalism at the University of Oxford. Professor Carson is the author of several book including Investigative Journalism, Democracy and the Digital Age and Australian politics in the twenty-first century: Old institutions, new challenges. She is a regularly commentator in national and international media including The Guardian, The Wall Street Journal, Asia NBC, Bloomberg, Le Monde and the New York Times.
Dr Raul Sanchez-Urribarri
Dr Raul Sanchez-Urribarri is Associate Dean (Academic and International Partnerships) in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Senior Lecturer in Crime, Justice and Legal Studies in the Department of Social Inquiry. He is also the current Director of La Trobe's Philippines Australia Forum. Dr Sanchez-Urribarri holds a PhD in Political Science from the University of South Carolina, a Master of Laws from Cambridge University and a Law degree from Universidad Catolica Andres Bello (Caracas, Venezuela). His research focuses on constitutionalism, judicial politics and the rule of law in comparative perspective, with an emphasis on contexts of democratic deterioration in Latin America (Venezuela in particular). Dr Sanchez-Urribarri has a strong interest in the internationalisation of higher education, particularly on strategy, partnership building, international mobility and intercultural teaching. He is the Deputy Convener of the Teaching and Learning Network of the International Education Association of Australia, and Vice-President of the U.S. based Consortium for Undergraduate Law and Justice Programs. He is also a co-editor at Thesis Eleven Journal (SAGE), and past Chair of the Section on Venezuelan Studies at the Latin American Studies Association (LASA). He has also contributed comment to the media in Australia and internationally, including the ABC, BBC, Channel 10, SBS and the Voice of America, among others.
Associate Professor Claire Knowles
Claire Knowles is an Associate Professor of English and the Head of the Department of Languages and Cultures. She received her PhD from the University of Melbourne and worked there and at the University of Tasmania before moving to La Trobe University in 2009. Associate Professor Knowles’s research focuses on women writers in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, and on the intersection between Romanticism and emergent forms of popular literary culture. She also writes on the gothic, and as taught gothic TV, film and fiction for many years. Her latest book is Della Cruscan Poetry, Women, and the Fashionable Newspaper (2023). She co-authored a scholarly edition, Charlotte Smith: Major Poetic Works (Broadview, 2017) with Ingrid Horrocks and poets such as Charlotte Smith, Susan Evance, Letitia Landon and Elizabeth Barrett Browning were the focus of her first book, Sensibility and Female Poetic Tradition, 1780-1860: The Legacy of Charlotte Smith (2009). She is currently putting together an edition of British Women Romantic Poets for the Oxford World's Classics imprint and is also working on a number of other research projects including one on "Romanticism and Australia" with colleagues from La Trobe, Monash University, The University of Wollongong, and University College Dublin. She is the Immediate Past President of the Romantic Studies Association of Australaisia.
Associate Professor Emma Robertson
Associate Professor Emma Robertson is Head of Department of Archaeology and History. She is a social and cultural historian of labour, women and gender in the context of modern Britain and the British empire. Her first book, Chocolate, Women and Empire: A Social and Cultural History (2009) drew on PhD research at the University of York into the history of the Rowntree confectionery company, and the lives of women chocolate workers at different stages of the cocoa commodity chain. She went on to study the history of music in the workplace, resulting in the coauthored book, Rhythms of Labour: Music at Work in Britain (2013). Most recently she published BBC World Service: Overseas Broadcasting, 1932-2018 (with Gordon Johnston, 2019) and she has several articles and book chapters on radio in imperial contexts. Her current ARC-funded Discovery Project (DP160102764), with Professor Diane Kirkby and Dr Lee-Ann Monk, explores the history of women working in non-traditional occupations in Britain and Australia, particularly on the buses, trams and railways. She is an Associate Editor of Labour History. Associate Professor Robertson lives and works in Bendigo, on Dja Dja Wurrung and Taungurung Country, moving from her home city of York (United Kingdom) in 2011.
Associate Professor Miriam Bankovsky
Associate Professor Miriam Bankovsky is Head of the Department of Politics, Media, and Philosophy, and an Associate Professor in Politics. Associate Professor Bankovsky’s early work focused on theories of justice in philosophy, leading to the publication of Perfecting Justice (2012) and two co-edited collections, Penser la reconnaissance and Recognition theory (2012, with Alice Le Goff) and Contemporary French moral and political philosophy (2012, with Alice Le Goff). Associate Professor Bankovsky's current research examines how economists have studied birth control, contraception, and abortion, in order to provide a critical history of how we think about reproduction. He most recent book is Economics and the family: A social and political history (2024). Associate Professor Bankovsky’s research on economic envy received the Australasian Association of Philosophy’s Annette Baier Prize in 2017.
Associate Professor Raelene Wilding
Associate Professor Raelene Wilding is Head of the Department of Social Inquiry, Deputy Dean of the School of Humanities and Social Sciences, and Acting Discipline Convenor of Aboriginal Studies. She teaches Sociology, including supervising Honours, Masters and PhD candidates, and teaching into undergraduate subjects including 'Sociology of Relationships', 'Introduction to Sociology' and 'Social Research Methods'. Associate Professor Wilding has published numerous journal articles, book chapters and books, and is regularly invited to present her research findings to both academic and non-academic audiences. Her recent projects include an exploration of the role of virtual reality in enhancing the lives of older adults, the potential for digital tools to better communicate health information in Languages Other Than English, and an examination of how older migrants use mobile phones and social media to maintain their relationships.
Ms Lorraine Ward
Ms Lorraine Ward is Senior Manager in the School of Humanities and Social Sciences. She has a strong management background across several sectors, including sports management and local government. Ms Ward is an alumna of La Trobe University and Swinburne University. In her role as Senior Manager, she is primary adviser to the Dean and the School Executive in relation to University policies, operations and business processes, while also leading the professional administrative team.