Dominique Hecq is an Associate Professor in Writing at Swinburne University of Technology where she has also held senior positions in Research.  She has a Ph.D. in Literature and a background in French and Germanic languages as well as qualifications in translating. She has published widely in the areas of Literary Studies, Translation, Creative Writing, Psychoanalysis and Pedagogy. In recent years she was awarded both the New England Review Prize and the Martha Richardson Medal for poetry and published her fourth volume of poetry, Out of Bounds (re-press, 2009).

Francis Woodley‘s undergraduate studies were in ceramic sculpture (Cardiff), her first Masters, Fine Art/Printmaking (Manchester), her second Masters, Art History (Open University).  For ten years she has headed the Visual Arts division at University of Glamorgan, lecturing in studio practice and art history. She is an artist/art historian, artist/writer, and artist/curator, and is currently undertaking a practice-based PhD at Aberystwyth University where she has also lectured in art history for three years. Francis writes regularly for catalogues and galleries, and most recently curated the exhibition Still Life: Ambiguous Practices (Aberystwyth University).

Dr Rob Roggema, Landscape Architect, is an international renowned design-expert on climate adaptation, renewable energy planning and urban agriculture. He held positions at several universities in the Netherlands and Australia, State and Municipal governments and design consultancies. He is director of Cittaideale, a research office for adaptive planning and is appointed as Professor of Design for Urban Agriculture at VHL University of Applied Sciences, and Adjunct Professor Planning with Complexity at the Design Innovation Centre, Swinburne University of Technology. In 2014 he was Chair of the International AESOP Conference on Sustainable Food Planning in Leeuwarden. He received the scientific award for best paper at the Sustainable Building conference in Melbourne in 2008 and has written books on Climate Adaptation and Spatial Planning, Design Charrettes and Urban Agriculture. He led over 35 international design charrettes involving communities, academics, governments and industries in complex design processes. He has been asked to present his work in countless keynote speeches, presentations and lectures.

Tilly Houghton is currently teaching English as a Second Language in Prague whilst she conducts preliminary research for her doctoral thesis. Tilly completed her honours thesis last year at Deakin University and decided to suspend her doctoral candidature in order to travel the world, work and visit as many galleries and museums as possible. Her honours thesis was on representations of suicide in modern and contemporary literature.  Tilly’s interests in Literary Studies, Aesthetics and Philosophy have been extended to an interest in text and images with a particular interest in photography and its representation of space in contrast with and interrelated with literary representations of the same.

Rina Bruinsma is undertaking a PhD in Creative Writing at Deakin University. Rina is writing a novel that is driven by the selection of strong mental ‘pictures’. She uses free association and automatic writing techniques to create chains of images that drive the narrative within a broader, planned, framework. The creative work, both in content and production, is concerned with the unconscious and with the aims and techniques of the Surrealists in surrendering to the unconscious. The exegesis will therefore examine paradigms of the unconscious and situate the Surrealists within this context.

Dr Michael Giffin is a regular contributor to Quadrant magazine. His M.Litt. thesis explored Patrick White’s perceptions of childhood and his Ph.D. thesis explored White’s religious imagination. As an independent scholar, Michael’s research interests include Literature and Religion, the British and Commonwealth Novel between Jane Austen and Margaret Atwood, Christian and Jewish Relations, Franciscan Studies, and Hawaiian History. As an Anglican priest, Michael is associated with the parish of Christ Church St Laurence and a professed member of the Society of Saint Francis (Third Order). He was born and raised in Honolulu, lives in Sydney, and holds both United States and Australian citizenship.

Kim Roberts is an architect and cultural heritage consultant with an abiding interest in literature as a field of spatial and cultural expression. She is a PhD candidate at Deakin University in Australia. Her research focuses on the real and imagined, localized and globalised space of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park.

Peter Beaglehole is a PhD candidate researching Australian theatre with a focus on cultural memory and Dorothy Hewett. He works as tutor in the Drama department, has reviewed theatre for stagemilk.com, performed as musician and stand-up in Adelaide Fringe and written for Urban Myth Theatre Company as part of the 2013 Come Out Festival and for the Inkpot Diaries project.
In 2014 his play ‘May Day’ was shortlisted in the final five for the State Theatre Company’s Young Playwrights’ Award and he was part of ATYP’s Fresh Ink Mentoring program with Nicki Bloom.

Dr Sarah French is a research fellow in Theatre Studies , School of Languages and Linguistics, University of Melbourne.

Christopher Norris is a Distinguished Research Professor in Philosophy at Cardiff University. His publications are numerous and he is considered one of the leading scholars on deconstruction and the work of Jacques Derrida. His publications engage with literary theory, continental philosophy, philosophy of music, philosophy of language, and philosophy of science. His publications have therefore navigated a vast terrain, investigating such topics as the relationship between theory and practice, postmodernism, deconstruction, and philosophical responses to quantum mechanics. In more recent times, he has published books and articles on Alain Badiou and has published a number of poems in journals. His approach to his poetry is philosophical and he continues in his many kinds of writing to explore the significance of the theoretical and the poetic in all their guises.