Marnie Badham

Associate Professor Marnie Badham is known internationally for her expertise in socially engaged and public art, cultural policy and evaluation, and participatory research and creative practice methods. Through dialogic 'forms for encounter and exchange' with attention to relational ethics and care, Marnie’s research partnerships and community pedagogies often bring together disparate groups of people (artists, local communities, government) in dialogue to examine and effect local issues. Her art-research practice is co-created with long term collaborators in the context of Indigenous-settler-migrant relations, critical hospitality and food-art-politics, climate anxiety, affective engagement in public space, and creative cartographies.

Marnie leads complex multi-site and intercultural research partnerships across community, industry, and government, currently leading the interdisciplinary team for Public Art and its role in connecting people and place - The social benefits provided by public art at Sydney Metro stations with iMOVE (2025). With Vicki Couzens she co-leads community projects focused on developing ethical cultural frameworks: Listening to Country, Listening to Community: towards a co-created framework of people and place-based value and values for the Dandenong Creek Art Trail (2020-22); Sharing Oral Knowledge with Genevieve Grieves and GARUWA (2023-24); and with Jody Haines pedagogic films The Power That We Have… Listen Up! (2020) and Revisiting the Possum Skin Cloaks (2019). With Ye Lui, she co-curated the Huaniao Island Public Art Festival (2022, China-Australia) and designed consultation and writing of the NAVA Code of Practice on public art commissioning following review of 27 LGA public art policies (NAVA, 2019).

Marnie co-leads the Cultural Value Impact Network with Bronwyn Coate, is Adjunct Professor, Thompson Rivers University in Canada and serves on the Board of Directora for Res Artis: global network of artist residencies.  She co-leads industry research including the ARC Linkage Ambitious and Fair: towards a sustainable visual arts sector with NAVA and AMaGA (McQuilten et al. 2021-24) and is expert advisor for public art, residencies, and funding (Canada Council, Creative Victoria, Nillumbik, Saskatchewan Arts, Cardinia, Australia Research Council, Social Sciences and Humanies Research Council). She has delivered 13 partnered evaluations including: 2025 Sydney Metro (public art and placemaking; 2024, 2022, 2017 All the Queens Men (queer seniors); 2024, 2021, Ngamumu (Indigenous mothers); 2024 MAPCo Fed Square (discovery paper); 2015 Artback NT (Indigenous dance), and 2011 Arts Access Victoria (disability access training). Marnie is widely publioshed and has co-edited books for arts practice, policy and industry Tastes of Justice: the aesthetics and politics of food-art-politics in Asia and Australia (Routledge, 2025), Visual Arts Work: sustainable strategies for the Visual Arts Sector (Springer, 2025), and Making Cultural Count: the politics of cultural measurement (Routledge, 2015). 

Marnie has a PhD in Creative Arts and Cultural Policy (University of Melbourne, 2012), a Masters of Community Cultural Development (University of Melbourne, 2008) and undergraduate degrees: Bachelor of Fine Arts, Inter-media and Bachelor of Arts, Art History (University of Regina, 1996 & 1996). In her role as Associate Professor at School of Art at RMIT Univeristy, Marnie is Program Manager of Graduate Certificate of Creative and Cultural Production and specialises in teaching in art, photography, social practice, intercultural partnerships, and cultural industries. 

www.marniebadham.com