Honorary College Fellows

2021

Professor Rachel Fensham

Professor Rachel Fensham, Director of the Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts, The University of Melbourne.

Professor Rachel Fensham was the Academic Mentor for United Board Fellow Dr Rafael Cabredo in 2019. She is a dance and theatre scholar, and Inaugural Director of the Digital Studio, Faculty of Arts.

Her 2021 Australian Research Council (ARC) LIEF project will establish an Australian Cultural Data Engine to aggregate and interpret data from a range of arts and cultural institutions. She also established the Theatre and Dance Platform in the Baillieu for housing digitized collections for the University and has managed a Linkage project investigating the impact of theatre for young people in regional Victoria.

Dr Ross McMullin

Dr Ross McMullin is an award-winning historian and biographer. His most recent book is Pompey Elliott at War: In His Own Words, his second book about Australia’s most famous fighting general in World War I. Ross’s previous biography, Pompey Elliott, was awarded the Christina Stead Award for biography and the Melbourne University Press Award for literature. His multi-biography Farewell, Dear People: Biographies of Australia’s Lost Generation was awarded the Prime Minister’s Prize for Australian History and the National Cultural Award. His biography of Australia’s first official war artist, Will Dyson: Australia’s Radical Genius, was highly commended by the judges of the National Biography Award.

Ross also wrote the official ALP centenary history, The Light on the Hill, together with another political history, So Monstrous a Travesty: Chris Watson and The World’s First National Labour Government. He has been a prolific contributor of articles to newspapers; and, as an acclaimed speaker, he has delivered hundreds of talks to a wide variety of audiences.

Ross has been delivering the Remembrance Day address at Graduate House each November for the past three years and specialises in unearthing unfamiliar stories that underline the Great War’s severe consequences for Australia.

2020

Associate Professor Kate MacNeill

Associate Professor MacNeill is Director of the Graduate School of Humanities and Social Sciences and Associate Dean (Graduate Studies) in the Faculty of Arts.

She continues to teach in the Master of Arts and Cultural Management program, in the School of Culture and Communication.

With a background in law and economics she had extensive experience in policy work in the government and non-government sector prior to returning to study art history, and obtaining a PhD in Art History (Identity and contemporary Australian art).

Her research interests include the intersection between law and artistic practice (in particular cultures of intellectual property and censorship), leadership in the arts and cultural sector, and ethics and creative practices.

Associate Professor MacNeill was one of the academic mentors for the two 2018 United Board Fellows.

Emeritus Professor John Polesel Melbourne Graduate School of Education

Professor Polesel is Co-Director of the Centre for Vocational and Educational Policy and Director of International Centre for Classroom Research, Melbourne Graduate School of Education. His research interests include the relationship between schools and vocational training, models of education and training, VET in schools and youth transitions from upper secondary schooling in Australia and internationally. He has played leading roles in winning and conducting >70 major educational research grants and consultancies, focusing on young people, education and VET, including: the ACACA national longitudinal VET in Schools study tracking Year 12 students’ development of career and life skills across time (2018-2020), the Careers Guidance: defining and measuring quality project for NSW DEC (2014), the NSW BVET Destinations and Expectations Survey for the Office of BoS and NSW BVET (2013), and the Evaluation of the Senior Secondary School Pilots (DEECD Victoria 2012).
 
He has written journal articles, book chapters and commissioned reports, including in some of the most prestigious international journals such as Oxford Review of Education, Comparative Education, British Journal of Sociology of Education, Journal of Education Policy, Australian Journal of Education, and European Journal of Vocational Training. And chapters in major publishers, including Springer and Oxford University Press.
Professor Polesel was one of the academic mentors for the two 2018 United Board Fellows.

2019

 

Professor Dara S. Manoach PhD

Professor Dara S. Manoach PhD is a Professor of Psychology in the Department of Psychiatry at Harvard Medical School.

Professor Manoach received her doctoral degree in psychology from Harvard University. She then completed a clinical psychology internship at McLean Hospital and a Fellowship in Clinical Neuropsychology at the Behavioral Neurology Unit of Beth Israel Hospital.

Professor Manoach is based at the Athinoula A. Martinos Center for Biomedical Imaging and in the Department of Psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital where she is the Director of the Sleep, Cognition and Psychopathology Laboratory (SCAN Lab).

Professor Manoach resides at Graduate House when visiting Australia (the last visit was in the latter half of 2018) to work with scientists at The University of Melbourne. These research collaborations focus on understanding the role of sleep in cognitive dysfunction and psychopathology in young people at risk for severe mental illness. This work will identify sleep biomarkers that can be treated to prevent psychosis and improve outcomes.

 

Professor Colin Norman

Professor Colin Norman is Professor of Astrophysics at Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, Maryland.

Professor Norman’s research focus is on both astronomy and astrophysics. He investigates traditional detailed mathematical physics- based descriptions of astronomical phenomena and undertakes large space projects where frontier technology meets the rigors of space based projects.

Gaining an undergraduate degree from The University of Melbourne, Colin then gained his doctoral degree (DPhil) from Oxford University. He has held appointments at Oxford, Cambridge, Leiden, Munich, Johns Hopkins University and the Space Telescope Science Institute, as well as many fellowships and visiting appointments at global centres in astrophysics.

Professor Colin Norman has been a Member of our Association since 1980 and is the son of Life Member Jean Downing who joined in 1949. He gave the 2018 Science Graduation Speech for The University of Melbourne and was awarded an Honoris Causa by The University of Melbourne in 2018.

Colin visits Melbourne annually and stays at Graduate House contributing to intellectual and spirited discussions about life and, literally, the universe.

2018

 

Dr Irma Mooi-Reci

Dr Irma Mooi-Reci is Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Social Policy at the School of Social and Political Sciences at the University of Melbourne.

Previously she worked as Assistant Professor and Programme Director of the Graduate School of Social Sciences (GSSS) at Vrije Universiteit (VU) Amsterdam.

Irma researches employment instability and its implications for individual careers, wage opportunities and public policy. Her research agenda encompasses three main areas: (1) the socioeconomic consequences of disruptive events such as unemployment, joblessness and casual employment; (2) the intergenerational consequences of joblessness; (3) application and innovation of quantitative methods for panel data. She has been a visiting scholar at the University of Madison Wisconsin in 2010, 2011 and 2012 and she is currently a visiting professor at Nuffield College, Oxford University. Irma has published in various journals including Social Science Research, European Sociological Review, British Journal of Industrial Relations and Social Forces.

 

Dr David Wilson

Dr David Wilson is a Senior Research Fellow in the Department of Engineering and Infrastructure at The University of Melbourne.

Dr Wilson is also a transport planner in Chicago and Los Angeles and a consultant to Port of Melbourne developing computer simulation model of land-sea interface. He has provided consultancy advice in logistics and transport to Australia Post, Australian Air Express, Kmart, Bunge Metals and Engineering, Ratio Planners.

Previously Director of Transport in Victoria, Dr Wilson has also been a Senior Research Fellow with the (then) Transport Research Centre (University of Melbourne and then RMIT) and an Invited Lecturer to the Department of Industrial Technology, Faculty of Engineering, Purdue University.

Dr Wilson has undertaken a number of research projects on project governance for the Victorian Government Department of Treasury and Finance and is well-published (and lectures) in transport planning and transport economics, and logistics. He has supervised Masters and PhD students at RMIT University, Monash University and The University of Melbourne.

2017

Professor Anne Steinemann

Professor Anne Steinemann is a Professor of Civil Engineering, and Chair of Sustainable Cities, at The University of Melbourne. She is internationally recognized for her research in areas of engineering and sustainability.

Professor Steinemann serves as adviser to governments and industries around the world, and has directed more than $24 million in competitive research funding. Her work has resulted in new federal and state legislation, agency policies, and industry practices.

Professor Steinemann has received the highest teaching awards at the college, university, and national levels. She has published over 55 peer-reviewed journal articles and two textbooks: Microeconomics for Public Decisions and Exposure Analysis. In addition to academic recognition, Professor Steinemann’s research and journal articles have received significant international media coverage, spanning more than 1,000 major newspapers, magazines, and broadcast stations across six continents.

Professor Steinemann was made an Honorary College Fellow of The Graduate Union in 2017.

Professor Stephen Peterson

Professor Peterson developed and directed Harvard’s University Executive Education Program in Public Financial Management from 1986 to 2010. The Executive Education Program trained over one thousand five hundred senior government officials from forty seven countries, as well as officials from both international development agencies and non-government organisations.

During his time at Harvard University, Professor Peterson also taught public financial management in the Graduate program of the Kennedy School of Government.

Equipped with more than thirty years of experience in public financial management, financial management information systems, financial and administration decentralization, institutional development and project design and management, Professor Peterson has delivered public financial management training to the Polish and Philippines governments and additionally, designed a public financial management training program for the Zimbabwean Ministry of Finance.

He was a resident advisor for Kenya and Ethiopia for eight and twelve years respectively. In Ethiopia, he directed the reform of budgeting, accounting, disbursements, multi-year planning and financial information systems.

He is the author of the book, Administration not Management: How Ethiopia Reformed Public Expenditure – A Model for Developing Countries, and has drafted numerous peer-reviewed articles on public financial management and public sector reform.

Professor Peterson was made an Honorary College Fellow of The Graduate Union in 2017.

2016

Professor Depei Wang

Professor Wang is the Chief Economist at Forecast Thinktank, Shanghai and Vice President of the China Society of Economic Reform. He is a Senior Consultant for local governments, large enterprises and over one thousand industry and government projects. His major works include: China Economy 2016, The Future of RMB, The 4th “Finance Big Bang” and Rebalance – the Chinese Ascendancy and the American Power.

Professor Wang was made an Honorary College Fellow of The Graduate Union in 2016 during his visit to Australia.