STAFF PROFILE
Ms Masa Mikola
Casual Academic
College of Design and Social Context
School of Global, Urban and Social Studies
Melbourne City campus
Dr Masha Mikola is a casual lecturer and researcher in the School of Global, Urban and Social Studies.
Masha finished her PhD in Intercultural Studies in Slovenia in 2010, after spending two extensive research periods in Melbourne. During her PhD, she received a prestigious Endeavour fellowship from the Australian Government and collaborated with the researchers in the Anthropology Department at the University of Melbourne. Since the completion of her PhD, Masha moved permanently to Australia and worked as a Research Fellow at Deakin University and then as a lecturer, coordinator and tutor at RMIT University and the University of Melbourne.
Masha's research work is interdisciplinary and spans the disciplines of urban anthropology, cultural studies, sociology and philosophy. Her work focuses on the questions of mobility and migration, space and place, boundaries and citizenship.
As a lecturer and tutor, Masha has worked across a number of courses in anthropology, political science, cultural and international studies. Courses she has taught include: Race, Ethnicity and Racism, Anthropology of Religion, City Cultures and Australian Studies. In the last couple of years, she has also coordinated courses related to work-integrated learning at the University of Melbourne and Australian Studies at RMIT.
Masha is a keen supporter of experiential learning and combining in-class learning with out-of-class learning activities.
Masha has been coordinating and lecturing in the course 'Introduction to Australian Society' since 2014. The course has been primarily introducing RMIT exchange students to Australian history, and the social, economic and demographic realities of contemporary Australian society. Previously, Masha tutored in the courses: Race, Ethnicity and Racism; Global Mobility and Global Processes.
Besides coordinating and teaching, Masha has also collaborated in research projects on temporary migrants in the Australian labour market, a project investigating media responses to the Sydney Siege and a project on health and wellbeing in Melbourne's west.
- PhD In Intercultural Studies (University of Nova Gorica, Slovenia)
- BA (Honours) in Journalism (University of Ljubljana, Slovenia)
- “On Being and Becoming in Marketplaces” in C. Evers & K. Seale (eds.), Informal Urban Street Markets, Routledge, New York, 2015, pp. 28-37.
- “Race Lines and New Spaces of Political Action among Migrant Youth” (with F. Mansouri), Journal of Youth Studies, Studies, 18(4), 2015, pp. 500-514.
- “A multicultural nation and its (Muslim) Other? Political leadership and media reporting in the wake of the ‘Sydney siege’” (with V. Colic-Peisker and K. Dekker), submitted to the Journal of Intercultural Studies, December 2015.
- “Crossing Boundaries: Acts of Citizenship among Migrant Youth in Melbourne” (with F. Mansouri), Special Issue of the Journal Social Inclusion on ‘Migrant Youth, Intercultural Relations and the Challenges of Social Inclusion’, 2(2), 2014, pp. 28-37.
- “Behind the Iron Fence: (Dis)placing Boundaries, Initiating Silences”, in Gronseth, A. (ed.), Being Human, Being Migrant: Senses of Self and Well-Being, Berghahn Books, Oxford, 2013, pp. 139-151.
- “In the Middle of Somewhere: Containing Memories of Bonegilla”, TASA 2013 published proceedings. “Migrant youth in Australia: Social Networks, Belonging and Active Citizenship” (with F. Mansouri et al.), Research Report, Centre for Multicultural Youth, Melbourne, 2013.
- “Migrant Youth and Social Inclusion in Multicultural Australia: Exploring Cross-Cultural Networking” (with F. Mansouri & L. Effeney) in F. Mansouri (ed.) The Multicultural Challenge: Cultural, Religious and Political Contestations, Springer, pending/forthcoming.
- “Rethinking Migration: New Theoretical and Empirical Perspectives: Portes, Alejandro and Josh DeWind (eds)”, Review article, Social Anthropology, Vol. 17, no. 2, 2009.
- “Mesto pretrganih podob: prostorskost, lokaliteta in poetika urbanih intervencij” [‘The City of Discontinuous Images: Spatiality, Locality and the Poetics of Urban Interventions’], Časopis za kritiko znanosti, vol. 36, no. 231-232, 2008, pp. 194-205.
- “Internet kot medij ohranjanja narodne in kulturne dediščine med Slovenci po svetu: stare dileme novih rešitev’ [Internet as a medium of preserving national and cultural heritage among Slovenians abroad: old concerns, new solutions’]” (with J. Gombač), Dve Domovini/Two Homelands, vol. 28, 2008, pp. 39-56.
- “Hearing Diversity: Representations and Sonic Landscapes of the Culturally Heterogenous City”, in S. Velayutham and A. Wise (eds.), Proceedings of the Everyday Multiculturalism Conference of the CRSI, 28-29 Sept 2006: online publication. Sydney: Centre for Research on Social Inclusion, Macquarie University, 2007, pp. 1-7.