Lecturer, Australian Catholic University Dr Kathleen McGuire is an Australian-American music educator, composer and conductor with four decades’ experience. Committed to social justice advocacy, which is reflected by research and artistic contributions. Career highlights: a decade as Artistic Director of the San Francisco Gay Men’s Chorus; conducting at Carnegie Hall, The Kennedy Center; Sydney Opera House; collaborating on major, recognised commissions to co-create the cantata Street Requiem - performed in multiple countries to focus on the plight of homelessness and violence against innocents; also No Excuses!, a choral suite for women inspired by true stories from victims of domestic violence. Qualifications: DMA (Colorado), MMus (Surrey), GradDipEd (Monash), GradDipA, BMus (Melbourne).
PhD Candidate, Deakin University Kylie is a PhD Candidate within the School of Exercise and Nutrition Sciences at Deakin University. Her research is focused on the potential to harness meal kit subscription services as a health-promoting tool to improve food literacy and vegetable intake among families with young children. Kylie's research areas of interest include early childhood and family nutrition, food literacy and behaviour change.
Senior Lecturer in Black, Caribbean, and African History, The Open University Katie Donington is a Senior Lecturer in Black, Caribbean, and African History at the Open University. She researches the history and legacies of British Caribbean transatlantic slavery. She is also interested in the representation of slavery in public history. She has a PhD in History (UCL), MA in Art Gallery and Museum Studies (University of Leeds) and BA in English Literature and History (University of Leeds). Between 2009-2015 her doctoral and post-doctoral research was with the Legacies of British Slave-ownership project (UCL) with a focus on slave-ownership in Britain and Jamaica. Her publications include (co-authored with Catherine Hall, Nick Draper, Keith McClelland and Rachel Lang) Legacies of British Slave-ownership: Colonial Slavery and the Formation of Victorian Britain (Cambridge University Press, 2014); (coedited with Ryan J. Hanley and Jessica Moody) Britain's History and Memory of Transatlantic Slavery: The Local Nuances of a "National Sin" (Liverpool University Press, 2016); The Bonds of Family: Slavery, Commerce and Culture in the British Atlantic World (Manchester University Press, 2019). She has worked with a variety of local and national museums, art galleries and heritage organisations as a curator and an advisor. In 2018 she co-curated 'Slavery, Culture and Collecting' at the Museum of London Docklands. She served as an advisor on the National Trust project 'Colonial Countryside' between 2018-21. She is regularly invited to offer expert opinion to the press and has contributed to radio and television programmes on the topic of slavery. Her research and public engagement have been funded by the Economic and Social Research Council, Arts and Humanities Research Council, Arts Council England, and the British Academy.
Lecturer in Civil and Structural Engineering, Munster Technological University Kieran Ruane is a Chartered Civil and Structural Engineer and a lecturer in the Department of Civil, Structural and Environmental Engineering at MTU. Kieran is a former director of RPS where he was Head of Bridges and he has 30 years’ experience in the design and delivery of civil engineering works of all scales. Kieran has an extensive industry and academic network in the engineering sector in Ireland. He was Chair of the Institution of Structural Engineers, Republic of Ireland Group in 2018 and 2019 and he is currently President of the Civil Engineering Research Association of Ireland. Kieran has active research projects in the area of repurposing composite materials including a recent award from SEAI. He designed and oversaw the fabrication and construction of the BladeBridge for Cork County Council.
PhD Candidate, Marine Tropicalisation, University of Southampton I am a PhD student at the National Oceanography Centre (University of Southampton), using traditional surveys and molecular techniques to document how coastal species change their distributions in response to climate change, and how that impacts them on the ecological and genetic levels. My research interests range from changes in global biodiversity patterns, through to ecosystem and population level changes. My Master’s dissertation at the University of Leeds focused on herbivory across subtropical and tropical coral reefs. Aside from my passion for research, I am also interested in sustainability and education.
Associate Professor, Human Rights, University of Winnipeg Kristi Heather Kenyon is an associate professor in the human rights programme at the University of Winnipeg's Global College. With an emphasis on sub-Saharan Africa, her research focuses on health and human rights, examining how and why civil society groups mobilise on stigmatised conditions and populations, and how health and human rights are understood in social and cultural context. Her 2017 book Resilience and Contagion: Invoking Human Rights in African HIV Advocacy (McGill-Queens University Press) interrogates why, when and how NGOS use human rights in HIV advocacy. Prior to her current appointment, she held a SSHRC postdoctoral fellowship at Dalhousie University and a Centre for Human Rights postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Pretoria. She completed her PhD in political science at the University of British Columbia supported by the Trudeau Foundation and SSHRC. Her research is informed by more than 15 years of work in, with and on civil society, including work as a human rights practitioner in southern Africa and southeast Asia and service on the board of local and international development organisations in Canada and Botswana. She was a 2017-2019 CIFAR-Azrieli Global Scholar with the Canadian Institute for Advanced Research, and is a research fellow with the Centre for the Study of Security and Development at Dalhousie University.
