Research student biographies
Leticia Anderson
Leticia's thesis, Religion and multiculturalism in Australia: the Islamic dimension, explores the intersection between nationalism, secularism, globalisation and multiculturalism in the formation of attitudes towards Australian Muslims, and the consequences of these attitudes for Australian community relations.
Click here to view Leticia's full bio.
Vivianna Rodriguez Carreon
Vivianna is a PhD candidate at CPACS. Her research interests cover women survivors of war and their experiences during the aftermath of violent conflict. Currently her research area is gender and conflict, focusing on women’s empowerment and development through agencies within a peacebuilding framework for political participation after conflict. She is working on a case study which covers both East Timor and Peru.
Click here to view Vivianna's full bio.
Lyn Dickens
Lyn Dickens is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, the University of Sydney. Her thesis examines representations of mixed race Eurasians in Australian cultural production and their relationships with constructions of Australian national identity.
Lyn is currently attending the English Faculty at the University of Cambridge as an Academic Visitor and a member of Emmanuel College.
Click here to view Lyn's full bio.
Camellia Webb-Gannon
Camellia Webb-Gannon is a PhD candidate at the Centre for Peace and Conflict Studies, and is the coordinator of the West Papua Project at CPACS. Her PhD research examines the forces and processes of unity and conflict-transformation within the West Papuan independence movement, in West Papua and its diaspora. She has conducted field work for her PhD in West Papua (Indonesia), Sweden, The Netherlands, Australia, Papua New Guinea, the United Kingdom, and Vanuatu. She holds a Master's Degree in Development Studies and a Bachelor of Arts and of Social Work from the University of Sydney.
Annie Herro
Annie’s PhD examines the development of a radical global policy idea – using the case of the United Nations Emergency Peace Service – across cultural, political and historical differences.
Click here to view Annie's full bio.
Karen Kennedy
Karen’s thesis explores the idea of the Free Spirit in the 21st Century. Using the method of exegesis the thesis engages with the contemporary expressions of nonviolent action, anarchism and new religious movements.
Karen has an honours degree in politics and wrote her honours thesis on the practice of culture jamming as a spectacular nonviolent technique. She has been working as a casual tutor at a range of Sydney universities for five years and teaches in a diversity of social theory subjects, such as, communications and cultural industries, ideas in history and geo politics and occasionally guest lectures for the CPACS political economy of peace subject.
She is a long time member of schweik action and has co authored a range of papers with this group, these are all available at:
www.uow.edu.au/arts/sts/bmartin/others/SAW.html
Karen has a long history of involvement in movements for social change; a love of travel and cultural politics and a passion for the production, discussion and dissemination of alternatives to capitalism.
She welcomes all and any type of discussion on her research and is always interested in collaborative projects that aim to celebrate nonviolent action. She is currently interested in producing independent documentary films and is seeking funding, in collaboration with the Jura collective, to document oral histories of anarchism in Sydney.
The CPACS newsletter peacewrites has published some of Karen’s short articles on contemporary anarchism.
Ingrid Matthews
Ingrid Matthews (BEc 1992; LLB 2008) is enrolled in an MA (Research), supervised by Associate Professor Jake Lynch. Her thesis is provisionally entitled Media representations of human rights law violations in Gaza.
Ingrid is a mother of three and a research officer at the Centre for Cultural Research, University of Western Sydney. Her previous role at UWS was Caring for Country project manager with the School of Environment. Ingrid has worked with women escaping domestic violence in Alice Springs and Armidale; is a member of the NAIDOC (Hawkesbury) Committee; and is a founding volunteer with the award-winning Yellomundee Aboriginal Bush Care group. Her current research is on Israeli violations of humanitarian law, and she has presented several papers on the rights of the Palestinian people. In 2007 she was awarded a Human Rights Law prize by the NSW Bar Association.
UWS Centre for Cultural Research
David John Penklis
David Penklis is a PhD candidate investigating the Burundi peace process from 1993 to 2008. His thesis is titled, Implications of the 1993 to 2008 Burundi peace process for United Nations peacekeeping operation. This is a critical review of the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping operations and intra-state peace process framework applied in Burundi. The aim is to identify improvements to the intrastate peace process framework and UN field operations. The success or failure of UN field activities has a high impact on the UN, and the country receiving assistance. The research investigates the peacemaking, peacekeeping and peacebuilding theoretical frameworks and the UN engagement and implementation of these activities in the Burundi peace process. A constructivist approach is employed to analyse the activities, functions, behaviour, structure and coordination of the UN peacekeeping operation, UN Agencies, Funds and Programmes, UN Integrated Office and UN Peacebuilding Commission engaged in the Burundi peace process. The analysis reveals coordination deficits and significant overlaps in UN mandated field activities and roles, and a loose coupling between talk and actions. The research outcomes support an argument for a new UN peace process model, the deconstruction of multidimensional peacekeeping operations, elimination of UN field overlaps and the full use of UN Agencies, Funds and Programmes in their mandated roles. The knowledge and understanding derived makes an interdisciplinary contribution to UN peacekeeping operations, international relations, organisational sociology, and peace studies.
David has worked for the UN, in the Secretariat in Vienna and New York, and for UN peacekeeping operations in Europe and Africa and awarded the Humanitarian Overseas Service Medal. He has a multidisciplinary academic background. He has published articles, presented at conferences and lectured in the CPACS postgraduate programme at the Sydney University.
Elenie Poulos
Elenie Poulos has been enrolled at CPACS for some years now and is finally beginning to research her Doctorate of Social Sciences thesis on international human rights advocacy and the World Council of Churches.
She is an ordained Minister of the Uniting Church in Australia and National Director of UnitingJustice Australia, the justice policy and advocacy unit of the Church's National Assembly. It assists the Church to develop policies and positions on issues relating to social and economic justice, human rights, peacemaking and the environment and engages in advocacy and education, political lobbying and helps to communicate the Church’s vision for a just and peaceful society into the public forum.
Elenie is also Chairperson of Act for Peace, the international aid and development agency of the National Council of Churches in Australia and a member of the World Council of Churches’ advisory group, the Commission of the Churches on International Affairs. She is a member of the Steering Committee of the Australian Human Rights Group and represents the Uniting Church in a variety of other civil society networks.