Associate Professor Heather A Horst, Senior Research Fellow

VISUAL: Dr Heather A Horst. Vice-Chancellor’s Senior Research Fellow, School and Media and Communications. RMIT logo.

AUDIO: Ambient music.

VISUAL: Dr Horst sitting the a lecture hall, facing the camera. This is intercut with shots of Dr Horst teaching and working at RMIT in classrooms.

DR HORST SPEAKS: The transition of coming to Melbourne was actually fantastic. I mean, RMIT has been really supportive in initiated collaborative projects but also helped me in very pragmatic ways. Like looking for places to live; where are the best sorts of restaurants those sorts of things. I have fantastic colleagues all of whom are doing really interesting work. And I also just really like that RMIT is right in the centre of Melbourne. You really sort of feel connected to other institutions, other people and the sort of the arts and culture. It's really sort of great to be able to walk outside your door and be in Melbourne Central or Fed Square. There is always something going on. So the VC fellowship really gives me both the space and the time to build up a research concentration into the movement of people across the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic.

VISUAL: Multiple shots of people living near the border of Haiti and the Dominican Republic. They are selling food at street markets, riding motorcycles and using mobile phones.

DR HORST SPEAKS: This particular instance I really wanted to start looking at the intersection of both consumers, companies, as well as states and other state agencies creating these mobile marketplaces. Where culture, goods and commodities and information are trafficked.

VISUAL: Return to Dr Horst facing the camera.

DR HORST SPEAKS: So the VC Fellowship is really giving me an opportunity not only to sort of expand the scale of some of the projects I'm conducted in the Carribean over the years but also to move into new geographic directions.

VISUAL: Map demonstrating the distance between Haiti and Australia. Return to Dr Horst sitting facing the camera, intercut with shots of her working and lecturing at RMIT.

DR HORST SPEAKS: Being located in Australia offers a unique vantage point on the Pacific. There has been research support, colleagues support. There is just a lot of people around who are really excited and willing to support you that elsewhere you'll have less flexibility and you have to jump through a series of different hoops to actually make that happen. The great thing about are RMIT is not only are we sort of encouraged and supported to do really high caliber theoretical empirical work. We are also encouraged and really supported to do work that looks at the real world implications. We're really encouraged to think about influencing policy, influencing new forms of design, influencing new sort of lifestyle products etc… It's great to be in a place where I can actually work at all of these levels.

VISUAL: Fade to white.

WRITTIN TEXT: Find out more at www.rmit.edu.au/research/opportunities RMIT logo.

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