Academic Reference Group

Dr. Robin Fox is a leading Australian audio-visual artist. His AV laser works, which synchronise sound and visual electricity in hyper-amplified 3D space have been performed in over 60 cities worldwide to critical acclaim. His recent work Single Origin premiered at Unsound Krakow 2017 and has toured extensively with highlights including headline shows at Berlin Atonal, Mutek (Montreal and Mexico City), Semibreve (Braga - Portugal) and Sonica (London) festivals. He has produced large public artworks including The Giant Theremin for the City of Melbourne, White Beam for the inaugural Dark Mofo festival and two recent commissions Sun Super Night Sky, a city wide laser and sound installation for Brisbane Festival 2020 and AQUA LUMA a new laser sound and fountain work at the Cataract Gorge for MONA FOMA 2021. He has scored over 20 contemporary dance works working with Australia's most celebrated choreographers including Stephanie Lake, Gideon Obarzanek, Lucy Guerin and Antony Hamilton. Fox holds a PhD in composition from Monash University and has written a history of experimental music in Melbourne 1975-1979. He is a founding director of MESS (Melbourne Electronic Sound Studio).

Australian composer, teacher and explorer Mark Clement Pollard embraces music, sound and interdisciplinarity.  Professor Pollard creates collaborative site-specific music with other media works emerging from global interactions with museums, hospitals, galleries, parks, and pacific island communities. He completed a BA Honours Music Theory and Composition, La Trobe University (1976-79), Master of Arts Music Theory and Composition La Trobe University (1983), Doctor of Music, University of Melbourne 2012. His awards include Jacobena Angliss Music Award (1983), Albert H. Maggs Composition Award (1992), The Adolph Spivakovsky Composition Prize (1993), VCA Teaching Excellence Award (2001), VCA Incredible Colleague Award (2006), AMC /APRA Classical Music State Award for long-term contribution to the Advancement of Australian Music (2008) and theUniversity of Melbourne Universitas21 teaching Fellowship (2009). He was appointed Head of VCA Music and VCA Contemporary Music (2008-11) and Head of Interactive Composition, University of Melbourne (2012-).

Clare Delany is a Clinical Ethicist at the Royal Children’s Hospital Children’s Bioethics and at Peter MacCallum Cancer Centre in Melbourne. She is also a is Professor in Health Professions Education in the Department of Medical Education, Melbourne Medical School. Clare teaches and conducts research in health ethics, health professions education, applied clinical ethics, critical thinking and clinical and ethical reasoning.

Professor Alan Pert is the Deputy Dean of the Faculty of Architecture, Building and Planning at the University of Melbourne. Prof. Pert is internationally known for his creative practice research having received several awards for his built projects as principal of NORD Architecture, while in the UK.  He was featured in the ‘Faces of British Architecture’ exhibition in 2012, which celebrated the UK’s leading experts, innovators and visionaries in architecture and engineering, responsible for many iconic buildings and landmark developments. He carries out practice-based research, analysing and forging propositions across writing, discourse, exhibitions, education and building.  He has worked extensively as an architect, exhibition designer, and curator while concurrently holding a role as Professor of Architecture. In 2006 NORD were awarded the title of Young Architect of The year by Building Design Magazine. Key built projects include the Furniture Galleries for the Victorian & Albert Museum in London, The Shingle House in Dungeness for ‘Living Architecture’, The Primary Substation for the London Olympic Park, Tramway Arts Centre in Glasgow and WASPS Creative Industries Hub which won the Doolan Prize in 2013. In 2018 Prof. Pert was the designer for the Clement Meadmore Exhibition at the Potter Museum.

Michael Christoforidis lectures in musicology at the Melbourne Conservatorium of Music, University of Melbourne. He has published extensively on nineteenth- and twentieth-century Spanish music and dance, and its impact on Western culture, and on Hispanic culture and the guitar. He is the author of Manuel de Falla and Visions of Spanish Music (Routledge, 2017), and co-author with Elizabeth Kertesz of Carmen and the Staging of Spain (Oxford University Press, 2018). He has been a research associate at the Instituto Complutense de Ciencias Musicales (Madrid) and at the Archivo Manuel de Falla (Granada), where he was responsible for classifying the composer’s annotations to his library. He has published extensively on aspects of 20th-century Hispanic music and is currently completing a monograph on Spanish music in Belle-Epoque Paris. Other research interests include the music of Igor Stravinsky and Percy Grainger.

Heather Gaunt is Academic Engagement Manager, Museums & Collections Department, University of Melbourne. She is passionate about working creatively with academic collaborators to shape and deliver transformative learning experiences for tertiary students in the University’s cultural collections.  Heather has 20+ years’ experience in the museum sector across museum-based pedagogy in multidisciplinary tertiary teaching and learning contexts, museum curation and collection management. She has published widely and presented internationally, in tertiary education pedagogy in museums across disciplines, as well as library and archive history.

Ryan Jefferies is Associate Director, Science and Academic Engagement at the Department of Museums and Collections at The University of Melbourne and Director of Science Gallery Melbourne and the Grainger Museum. Ryan has had an interdisciplinary career that transects science research, education and museums and galleries. He completed a PhD in biomedical science at Murdoch University and postdoctoral research fellowships at The University of Western Australia and University of Bristol researching infectious diseases, molecular epidemiology and drug discovery. He has worked with the Western Australian Museum, Museums Victoria, the HBA Museum of Anatomy and Pathology and the Science Gallery global network, and has curated major interdisciplinary science and art exhibitions, festivals residencies and events, including collaborative programs with White Night, Footscray Community Arts Centre and Ars Electronica.