Robert van Krieken received both his BA Honours and PhD in Sociology from the University of New South Wales, and also has a Law degree from the University of Sydney. He has taught and researched for many years at the University of Sydney, where he played a central role in establishing a distinct sociology program from 1991 onwards, as well as setting up a program in socio-legal studies in 2006. He has done research on the historical sociology of child welfare in Australia, the Stolen Generations, processes of civilisation and decivilisation, the question of cultural genocide, the sociology of recent changes in family law in Australia, the United States and Europe, and celebrity society, as well contributing to the theoretical debates around the work of Elias, Foucault, Luhmann and Latour. His most recent work is on the development of a sociological account of ‘celebrity society’.
Daphne Habibis is Director of the Housing and Community Research Centre at the University of Tasmania. She has published widely in areas of inequality especially in relation to Aboriginal issues and housing. She is the co-author, with Professor Maggie Walter, of the monograph , Social Inequality in Australia: Discourses, Realities and Futures (Oxford University Press, 2008, 2015). She is the lead investigator on a number of Australian Research Council and Australian Housing and Urban Research Institute funded research projects concerning Aboriginal and Euro-Australian race relations,welfare conditionality in Aboriginal housing, and improving tenancy management in remote Aboriginal communities.
Philip Smith has an MA in Anthropology from Edinburgh and a PhD in Sociology from UCLA. He worked at the University of Queensland from 1993 to 2002, where for a time he was head of both the sociology and criminology programs. He is currently Professor in Sociology at Yale University.Known as a member of Yale’s Strong Program in Cultural Sociology. Philip’s work argues for the role of deep meanings in shaping cultural life. His most recent work concerns the representation of climate change in the mass media and in the civil sphere.
Brett Hutchins is an Associate Professor in Communications and Media Studies at Monash University. He holds a PhD in Sociology from the University of Queensland, graduating in 2001 and receiving the Dean’s Commendation for Outstanding Research Higher Degree Thesis (PhD). His thesis was published as Don Bradman: Challenging the Myth by Cambridge University Press in 2002, receiving significant media and critical attention and appearing in paperback in 2005. Brett’s current research and teaching interests are in the areas of digital media, mobile media, sports media and environmental media. His recent books include the research monograph, Sport Beyond Television: The Internet, Digital Media and the Rise of Networked Media Sport (Routledge, 2012, with David Rowe), and the international edited collections, Environmental Conflict and the Media (Peter Lang, 2013, with Libby Lester) and Digital Media Sport: Technology, Power and Culture in the Network Society (Routledge, 2013, with David Rowe)
Greg Martin is an Associate Professor of Socio-Legal Studies in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. After obtaining his degree in sociology from the University of Exeter, Greg conducted ethnographic fieldwork among New Age travellers for his PhD, which he also completed at Exeter. He then did a Postgraduate Certificate in Education, taught in the Department of Sociology and Social Anthropology at Keele University and was a Research Fellow in the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Leeds. Subsequently, Greg travelled the world, completed a law degree at the University of Western Australia, wo
