Amy Thomas

Research assistant, University of Technology Sydney
Amy is an academic in the Faculty of Arts and Social Sciences, where they work across the Schools of International Studies and Education and Communication.

Their collaborative study, co-authored with Professor Heidi Norman, Emeritus Professor Andrew Jakubowicz and a majority Aboriginal research team, was published by Aboriginal Studies Press in 2020. 'Does the media fail Aboriginal political aspirations? 45 years of news media reporting of key political moments' is the result of a major investigation of media representations of Aboriginal initiatives for self-determination. They produced the subsequent Black Stories Matter seminar series, and collaborated to create the podcast of the same name with Impact Studios in late 2020.

They are the recipient of the Vice-Chancellor's Research Excellence Scholarship for their PhD research, which focuses on the contest between ideas of self-determination and assimilation in Indigenous bilingual schooling in northern Australia since the 1970s. For an essay on this topic, they were awarded the Northern Territory Literary Award in 2018 in the Essay category. Amy was a 2018 Shopfront Community Research Fellow with UTS.

In 2018, they were awarded a UTS Teaching and Learning Award alongside the teaching team from the Masters of Education (Learning and Leadership).

Their research interests include Indigenous studies, critical studies in education, language, and literacy, historical and educational sociology, political economy, policy and political discourses, and gender and sexuality, particularly within late modern Australia. They have also worked on evaluation and learning design for tertiary programs, and as an English language and adult literacy educator, campaigner and advocate.

They have published in both academic and popular press, including Sexualities, History Australia, History of Education Review, Labour History (forthcoming), The Guardian, Crikey, Overland Literary Journal, and The Lifted Brow (as a founding co-editor).