Associate Professor Olivia Guntarik

Olivia has a passion for the history of our cities and in unearthing stories of the past through critical engagements with our natural, built and cultural heritage. She is drawn to human experiences that tend to be overlooked, misrepresented or relegated to the margins, and chooses to situate her work alongside the histories, narratives and cultural politics of Indigenous, migrant, refugee and women's experiences. This is a political position from which she writes and chooses to privilege.

Olivia's central research focus is on how media shapes our environment, identities and interactions, and how we in turn shape media. This research has appeared in writings on how we use old and new media in protests (edited with Vicki Grieves-Williams for Bloomsbury) and a special issue on different styles of literature, storytelling and performance in creative expression (collaboration with Michael Taussig and Michael Angelo Tata for New Writing, Routledge). This interest extends into her teaching in popular culture, and industry collaborations designing location-based augmented and virtual reality experiences and downloadable audio walks.

Industry Engagements: Olivia is a regular presenter for ACMI (Australian Centre for the Moving Image) and its Education in Games Summit and MPavilion. She works closely with schools, community groups and the creative industries, implementing digital storytelling and media workshops focused on extending skills and knowledge. 

Speciality areas include:

• Community archives
• Interactive technologies and place-based user experiences
• Cultural tours using mobile apps (audio sound walks)
• Digital strategy and engagement 
• Digital curriculum development 
• Environmental, technological and spatial design (museums, galleries, cultural centres, memorials, parklands and public art spaces)

See LinkedIn profile for upcoming speaking engagements and events: https://www.linkedin.com/in/olivia-guntarik-30058410b/

Higher degree research supervision: Olivia welcomes project proposals from prospective students interested in pursuing postgraduate study in areas relevant to her research in cultural studies (especially popular culture), Indigenous media and creative practice research (including postcolonial literature, creative non-fiction, memoir and ficto-criticism). She has experience supervising students undertaking both creative practice-based research, and traditional MAs and PhDs. She is a regular examiner of doctoral and Masters level theses and practice-based projects for a wide range of Australian and international universities.

Teaching: Olivia coordinates the Approaches to Popular Culture contextual studies minor based in the School of Media and Communication. She teaches into the following courses: Pop Culture in Everyday Life; New Perspectives in Contemporary Pop Culture and Television Cultures.

Grants, awards and honours:

• 2019 DSC/RMIT Europe Fellowship
• 2018 ARC Kathleen Fitzpatrick Laureate Fellowship @ the University of Melbourne with Joy Damousi (convener)
• 2017 Research Fellow, Institute of Critical Social Inquiry @ New School for Social Research, NYC (Fellow in Michael Taussig's seminar 'Thought-Images, Body and Mimesis in Walter Benjamin'.
• 2017/18 Award recipient Creative Victoria, Virtual Artists in Schools program (with Ben Byrne and Patrick Kelly)
• 2016/17 Award recipient Creative Victoria, Virtual Artists in Schools program
• 2016/17 Research grant, Lowitja Institute & the Australian Institute for Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander Studies (AIATSIS) for the project, Koorramook Yakeeneeyt (Possum Dreaming): Cultural Revitalisation Practices, Health and Wellbeing in Aboriginal Communities (with Vicki Couzens)
•  2016 Teaching grant, RMIT, Office of the Dean, Learning and Teaching Investment Fund (LTIF) for the project, Learning on the Go: Mobile-Learning and Indigenous Pedagogy
• 2015 Teaching Fellowship, RMIT, Office of the Dean, Learning and Teaching for Sustainability (LTfS) for the project, Place Narrative: Strengthening Students' Environmental Literatures through Aboriginal Art Education

Industry and Community Experience

Olivia works with creative agencies, schools, Indigenous communities and organisations, and the cultural heritage sector to bring digital ideas to life. This includes developing models, tools and strategies for a range of place-based technology-focused problems related to urban planning considerations, environmental challenges and the constructive uses of public spaces. Maps, archives, artefacts, audiovisual and cultural heritage material are important features of her work. This interest brings her into contact with people working across multi-disciplines and industries from writers, artists, gamers, designers and digital experts to geographers, ethnographers, psychologists, educators, ecologists, historians and computer scientists. Her site-specific digital work seeks to create experiences that are attentive to place, change, flow, social connections, disruption and cultural difference. 

Personal Acknowledgement

Personal acknowledgement: I acknowledge RMIT, Creative Victoria, Department of Education and Training, Australia Council for the Arts, Lowitja Institute, Boonwurrung Foundation, Dja Dja Wurrung Clans Aboriginal Corporation and the Victorian Aboriginal Corporation for Languages, for their generous support. This has enabled me to continue my research over the years. I respectfully acknowledge that I live and work on the unceded, ancestral and traditional territories of the Eastern Kulin Nations (Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups). I extend my acknowledgement to their elders and leaders past, present and emerging. I acknowledge my ongoing relationships, connections and commitments to the First Peoples, and the benefits and obligations these bring.

• PhD UniMelb (The Australia Centre, Faculty of Arts and School of Historical Studies)
• MA RMIT (School of Media and Communication)
• BA Latrobe (Cinema Studies and Sociology)
• GradDip RMIT (School of Education)