Meet the team researching Aussie kids’ TV
The ACTC research project is being carried out by an experienced team of researchers from Swinburne University of Technology and RMIT.
The team boasts internationally recognised experts in children’s media, audience research, and Australian national identity.
Chief investigators
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Associate Professor Liam Burke
Associate Professor Liam Burke is the discipline leader of Cinema and Screen Studies at Swinburne University of Technology, Australia, where he is also a member of the Centre for Transformative Media Technologies. Liam has published widely on comic books, animation, adaptation, transmedia storytelling, and media and national identity. His books include The Comic Book Film Adaptation, Superhero Movies, and the edited collections Fan Phenomena Batman and The Superhero Symbol. Prior to entering academia Liam worked for a number of arts organisations including the Irish Film & Television Academy (IFTA). Liam is a chief investigator of the Australian Research Council funded project Superheroes & Me.
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Associate Professor Jessica Balanzategui
Associate Professor Jessica Balanzategui is an Associate Professor in Media at RMIT University. Her research speciality is screen genres for and about children, particularly how they are impacted by techno-industrial change and changing cultural definitions of childhood. This work has been widely published in leading international journals including New Media and Society, Convergence, The Journal of Visual Culture, Television and New Media, and Celebrity Studies. Jessica’s books include The Uncanny Child in Transnational Cinema (Amsterdam UP, 2018) and Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres, and Intergenerational Viewing (with Baker and Sandars, Routledge, 2023). She is the Founding Editor of Amsterdam University Press's Horror and Gothic Media Cultures series, and was awarded the 2020 AFI Research Collection Fellowship for her archival research on Australian children’s TV.
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Dr Joanna McIntyre
Joanna McIntyre is the Course Director of the Bachelor of Media and Communication and a Senior Lecturer in Media Studies at Swinburne University. Joanna has published widely on the topics of Australian screen history, Australian screen cultures, gender, celebrity, queer and trans screen representation, and Australian ‘national identity’. Her research interests include children’s media and its intersections with issues of gender and celebrity. Her edited collections include Gender and Australian Celebrity Culture (Routledge, 2021) and The Routledge Companion to Gender and Celebrity (Routledge, forthcoming). She is the author of the book Transgender Celebrity (Routledge, forthcoming). Joanna regularly writes articles for news media, including The Conversation.
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Dr Djoymi Baker
Djoymi Baker is a Senior Lecturer in Media and Cinema Studies at RMIT University, and formerly worked in the Australian television industry. She has published work on children’s television history, family television in the streaming era, and intergenerational television fandom. Her other research interests include film and television genres, myth in popular culture, and the ethics of representing the non-human on screen, from animals to aliens. Djoymi is the author of To Boldly Go: Marketing the Myth of Star Trek (IB Tauris, 2018) and the co-author of The Encyclopedia of Epic Films (with Santas, Wilson and Colavito, Rowman & Littlefield, 2014) and Netflix, Dark Fantastic Genres and Intergenerational Viewing (with Balanzategui and Sandars, Routledge, 2023). Her work can be found in leading journals such as Critical Studies in Television, Celebrity Studies, and Studies in Documentary Film.
