Ronnie Scott

Associate Professor Ronnie Scott

Associate Professor

Details

  • College: School of Media & Communication
  • Department: School - Media & Communication
  • Campus: City Campus Australia
  • ronnie.scott@rmit.edu.au

Open to

  • Media enquiries
  • Masters Research or PhD student supervision

About

A/Prof Ronnie Scott is a novelist, comics scholar, studio leader in the Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing), and co-director of the non/fictionLab, a world-leading interdisciplinary research group. According to the Guardian, 'He writes frequently about intimacy and obligation and the ways that lives can turn on the briefest of encounters'.

His novel The Adversary (2020) was a book of the year in the Age and shortlisted for a Queensland Literary Award and the Australian Literature Society Gold Medal. His novel Shirley (2023) was a Guardian book of the year and shortlisted for the Christina Stead Prize for Fiction at the NSW Premier’s Literary Awards and the Voss Prize.

As a writer, he's a Montserrat Roig grantee, a fellow of Hong Kong Baptist University's International Writers Workshop, and a two-time MacDowell Fellow. His third novel, Letter to a Fortunate Ex, will be published by Penguin in 2026.

As a comics scholar, Ronnie is a Chief Investigator on Folio, a project about graphic storytellers funded by the Australian Research Council Linkage Scheme. Within that project, Ronnie collects oral histories of Australian comics-makers, helps to build the comics holdings at the National Library of Australia, and is lead editor of the first book of essays about Australian comics, to be published by Palgrave in 2025.

In the BA (Creative Writing), Ronnie coordinates the capstone studio COMM2652 Creative Writing Project and is third-year Academic Advisor, focusing on helping students to develop rigorous, challenging writing practices and sustainable careers.

In the non/fictionLab, Ronnie supports academics to collaborate with artists, industry and community, fostering connections between creative experiments, critical research and social engagement. He also co-convenes Gutter Stars, an intervarsity comics collective that will exhibit, publish a book and run workshops in 2025 with Pink Ember Studio, Glom Press and the Emerging Writers' Festival.

Ronnie's current research is into fiction and novels; AIDS memory and 'post-crisis' representation; consciousness and the nonhuman (including animals and AI); Creative Writing as an interdisciplinary field that can be applied to social challenges; cultures of Australian comics and graphic storytelling; and innovative ways for interviews to inform creative projects and map oral histories.

Please contact him especially about supervising graduate projects in comics, queer creative practices, and the novel.

Research fields

  • 360201 Creative writing (incl. scriptwriting)
  • 470599 Literary studies not elsewhere classified
  • 470107 Media studies

UN sustainable development goals

  • 10 Reduced Inequalities
  • 11 Sustainable Cities and Communities
  • 5 Gender Equality
  • 9 Industry, Innovation and Infrastructure

Supervisor projects

  • The allegory of annihilation - the Universe Gun
  • 18 Jul 2024
  • Devising an Empathetic Framework: identifying antecedents and implications in female-authored true crime
  • 16 Jul 2024
  • Exploring the unexplored and unwritten: A creative exploration and contribution to representation by closing gaps within YA gay literature.
  • 10 Nov 2023
  • The Blue House/ On Flower Time: A Slow Methodology for Experimental Life Writing
  • 4 Jun 2023
  • The Animal Trying to Escape: Embracing an Unruly, Hybrid, Visual-textual Approach to Creative Writing Practice
  • 9 May 2023
  • The Doubting Memoir & Doubt and Craft in Creative Writing
  • 1 Jan 2023
  • What is the creative process of exploding and reassembling a novel draft and what are the effects and consequences on the published novel?
  • 1 Jan 2023
  • The Reparative-Drawer: A New Critical Approach to Reading Comics in a Time of Crisis
  • 8 Jul 2022
  • Queer Joy: Comedy in Queer Graphic Narratives
  • 28 Jun 2022
  • Deleuze, deterritorialization and plot in novel writing
  • 24 Jun 2022
  • Between Fact and Fiction: Using Found Family Photographs and Fiction to Tell Personal Stories with Agency and Remaster Memories
  • 5 Jul 2019
  • Living as Rotten Girls: Women’s Affects and Queer Fandom in China
  • 13 Jun 2019
  • Houses of Moss: Hybridity in Novels, Multiple and Moss
  • 5 Jun 2019
  • You Are What You Feel: The Feeling of Precarious Work in the Contemporary Novel
  • 1 Mar 2019
  • For a Rainbow to Be Seen, the Sun Must Be Behind an Observer Who Is Facing Falling Rain
  • 2 Jan 2019
  • Beyond the Diary: Selfhood and Womanhood in Contemporary Autofictive Narratives. 
  • 6 Aug 2018
  • The Unbearable Whiteness of Being Asian Australian: Confronting Assimilation Through Autoethnographic Reflection
  • 28 Feb 2018
  • The Museum of the Lost and Found: A Creative Practice Approach to Telling Adoptees' Stories
  • 2 Oct 2017

Teaching interests

Key activities

Academic advisor, Third-year BA (Creative Writing)

Course coordinator, COMM2652 Creative Writing Project

Co-director, non/fictionLab research group

Co-convenor, Gutter Stars comics studies group

Supervisor interest areas

Contemporary fiction and nonfiction, voice and form
20th Century literature and literary modernism
Graphic narrative and graphic storytelling
Australian comics 1980-present
Queer storytelling
Creative writing and social change
Consciousness, the nonhuman, animals and AI

Programs

Bachelor of Arts (Creative Writing)

Research interests

Research keywords
Fiction, Nonfiction, Comics, Graphic Storytelling, Creative Practice, Applied Creative Writing

Initiatives and links

aboriginal flag
torres strait flag

Acknowledgement of Country

RMIT University acknowledges the people of the Woi wurrung and Boon wurrung language groups of the eastern Kulin Nation on whose unceded lands we conduct the business of the University. RMIT University respectfully acknowledges their Ancestors and Elders, past and present. RMIT also acknowledges the Traditional Custodians and their Ancestors of the lands and waters across Australia where we conduct our business - Artwork 'Sentient' by Hollie Johnson, Gunaikurnai and Monero Ngarigo.