Teaching
My teaching style embraces critical and feminist pedagogies with a commitment to embracing methods of learning that allow for the collective realisation of more equitable and just futures.
My teaching is inspired and informed by the writings of Eve Tuck, bell hooks, Chelsea Watego, Audre Lorde, Vine Deloria, and Aileen Moreton-Robinson. I am also continually inspired by the critical works of Gloria Anzaldúa, Toni Cade Bambara, Katherine McKittrick, and the literary works of Toni Morrison, Sylvia Wynter, Arundhati Roy, Dionne Brand, and Octavia Butler. Engaging with these writers has taught me to pay careful attention to the structures and systems of hierarchies that hold power both in the social world ‘out there’ as well as in the materialisations of these in the classroom and within institutions at large.
This mindfulness informs my teaching philosophy as I encourage students to embrace critical ways of engaging with disciplinary debates while also emphasising the importance of narrative, situatedness, and generosity in reading, learning, and writing practices. As a teacher this also enables me to situate concepts and frameworks within a broad socio-historical context that encourages students to critically think through various social phenomenon as well as connect these to power dynamics, both historical and contemporary. I design course materials and syllabi to reflect this attention to context, history, and power based on a selection of readings that are insightful, provocative, and generative for students’ thinking and writing.
I am particularly mindful of the complex histories and backgrounds that inform student engagement especially with respect to writing and reading tasks and I remain committed to making learning more accessible while also continually motivating student curiosity with new approaches and new perspectives.
My pedagogical praxis supports a learning environment where we learn not only from the assigned reading materials but also bring in our own lived experiences and perspectives. Importantly, this relational approach allows students to recognise themselves as active participants and contributors not only within the classroom but also in the communities and social worlds they inhabit and interact with. I am dedicated to ensuring students flourish in a rigorous, inclusive, and curiosity-driven environment that equips them with critical skills that support their journeys within the academy and beyond.
“When our lived experiences of theorizing is fundamentally linked to process of self-recovery, of collective liberation, no gap exists between theory and practice. Indeed, what such experience makes more evident is the bond between the two — that ultimately reciprocal process wherein one enables the other.”
Course Design and Co-ordination
CISS6022 Cybersecurity (postgraduate): This is an interdisciplinary Masters course taught collaboratively between the School of Computer Science and School of Social and Political Sciences introducing students to an understanding of cybersecurity that encompasses multiple entanglements of the social, political, and technical. The class is designed to enable students to apprehend the politics embedded in digital and cyber technologies and to recognise these technologies as socio-political artefacts. I offer lectures that highlight the power laden politics of the discursive and material capacities of cyber technologies and the ways in which these inform practices and narratives of what counts as cybersecurity and what does not. Along with written assignments in the form of an incident brief and an analytical essay, I also conduct an in-class crisis simulation exercise as part of the course assessments that encourages students to think critically about concepts and policies while applying them to real world scenarios. (Based on the success of this course, the University of Sydney has introduced a new intensive online version (OCIS6022) that builds on materials and concepts taught in CISS6022)
GOVT3999 Terrorism and Organised Crime (3rd year undergraduate): This course provides a rigorous investigation of the politics of violence, terrorism, and organised crime. The course materials are designed to emphasise the discursive, material, and representative aspects of terrorism through a comprehensive overview of mainstream and critical perspectives that account for the intersecting effects of race, coloniality, and gender in contemporary understandings of terror and crime. My lectures highlight the specific potencies of technology on the materialisation of terrorist threats and various forms of organised crime such as trafficking, maritime piracy, illicit financing, mafias, and money laundering. By emphasising the historical context of concepts, the lectures encourage students to pay careful attention to the ways in which knowledge on terrorism continues to be shaped by specific power dynamics in the afterlives of colonialism, imperialism, and empire. The course assessments include two exams (mid-semester and final) and a briefing paper that requires students to present written analysis on a specific terrorist/organised crime entity including theoretical application, threat assessment, and consideration of the wider political, societal, and economic dynamics within which the group operates and within which narratives/discourses of its threats and representations materialise.
Seminars and Tutorials
In addition to course design, course coordination, lecture design, and delivery, I have also had significant experience running undergraduate and postgraduate seminar and tutorial sessions. These sessions have the distinctive pedagogical purpose of allowing students to critically reflect on and ‘digest’ relevant concepts introduced in the readings and lecture materials while also giving them the space to engage in lively discussions and debates on topics. This is perhaps the most rewarding and challenging aspect of teaching that involves interactions with students and mediating their engagement with materials through thoughtful, informative, and insightful guidance. In these sessions, I use a combination of small group work and large group activities to enable students to tease out different ways of thinking through, both familiar and new questions. In these sessions, I am particularly mindful of the importance of creating and maintaining an inclusive, engaging, and intellectually encouraging space where students are pushed to critically question and reflect on their ideas and understandings and apply these to their assessment tasks and broader engagements with the course.
Courses:
Introduction to Politics GOVT1641 (first year undergraduate)
Politics and Popular Culture GOVT1661 (first year undergraduate)
Internet Transformations ARIN2610 (second year undergraduate)
Political Research Methods GOVT2991 (second/third year undergraduate)
International Organisations GOVT2226 (second/third year undergraduate)
International Organisations GOVT6116 (postgraduate)