The TEEN READING AND DIGITAL PRACTICES research Programme

Leonie Rutherford (PhD, ANU) is a an Associate Professor of Literature and Writing at Deakin University. Her research focuses on a broad range of media with a special focus on young people. She currently leads the Teenagers Reading and Digital Practices Research Projects group in the Faculty of Arts and Education, Deakin University. She has previously researched media practices of children and youth, television studies, multiplatform production, audience research, media policy, and, as a member of interdisciplinary teams researching impacts of media on children’s digital literacy, health, and educational outcomes.

Katya Johanson (PhD, Uni Melbourne) is Professor of Audience Research and a cultural policy researcher with a professional background and interest in publishing. She is currently co-editing a Routledge Companion to Audience Research and the Performing Arts (2021), and is co-editor (with Jennifer Radbourne and Hilary Glow) of The Audience Experience: A critical analysis of audiences in the performing arts  (2013). She also researches in partnership with government cultural policy and funding agencies, including the Australia Council for the Arts, Creative Victoria, VicHealth and local councils. Professor Johanson is on the editorial board of Cultural Trends, and is a member of the Geelong Arts Centre Trust Board.

Michael Dezuanni is a Professor in the School of Communication at Queensland University of Technology. He undertakes research about digital media, literacies and learning in home, school and community contexts. He is Program Leader for Digital Inclusion and Participation in the Digital Media Research Centre which produces world-leading research for a creative, inclusive and fair digital media environment. He is also a Chief Investigator in the ARC Centre of Excellence for the Digital Child. Michael has been a chief investigator on six ARC Linkage projects with a focus on digital literacy and learning at school, the use of digital games in the classroom, digital inclusion in regional and rural Australia and in low income families, and the use of screen content in formal and informal learning.

Donald Matheson is a Professor in the Department of Media and Communications at University of Canterbury. He is an internationally renowned expert in discourse analysis with extensive experience in research across academic-industry boundaries. He is co-director of the Arts Digital Lab at the University of Canterbury, which works with a range of end users.

Bronwyn Reddan (PhD, University of Melbourne) is a Research Fellow in the Faculty of Arts and Education at Deakin University. Her research examines the social and emotional dimensions of literary culture, with a particular interest in women’s writing, strategies of authorship and translation, and bookish social media cultures. She is the author of Love, Power, and Gender in Seventeenth-Century French Fairy Tales (University of Nebraska Press, 2020).

Anne-Marie May (MA, Monash; M. Inf. Mgt. RMIT) has a background that includes librarian work in academic and public libraries, as well as ten years in the retail book trade industry. Her longstanding interests include reading for pleasure, reader advisory practices, and collection development. Her PhD project is focussed on the role that booksellers and librarians play in promoting recreational reading for adolescents. Using a case study of an inner Melbourne network of school libraries, public libraries and bookstores the research will explore the ways these intermediaries interact and work to connect young people to local stories and book culture.