Dr Owen Bullock is a poet specialising in haiku and experimental works. He is Chief Investigator for the Poetry and Wellbeing program (UC Hospital), Co-Investigator on the Defence Arts for Recovery, Resilience, Teamwork and Skills (ARRTS) Program, and Discipline Lead for Creative Writing & Literary Studies at the University of Canberra.​

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Dr Lachlan Brown is a senior lecturer in English at Charles Sturt University, Wagg Wagga. He is the author of two books of poetry with Giramondo and has collaborated with artists including Tony Curran, James Farley, Christine Reid, and Juanita McLauchlan. His commissioned work includes a poetic biographical portrait for Memory Book: Portraits of Older Australians (eds Cassandra Atherton and Jessica Wilkinson), poetry about running about the Parramatta River for The River Project (the Powerhouse Museum, edited by Jemma Birrell), and poetry about COVID19 daily walks for ABC Everyday . Lachlan’s poems have been shortlisted for prizes including the Blake Poetry Prize, the Gwen Harwood Poetry Prize, the Peter Porter Poetry Prize, and the University of Canberra Vice-Chancellor’s International Poetry Prize. 

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Dr Paul Collis is a Barkindji man. His early life was informed by Barkindji and Kunya and Murawarri, and Wongamara and Nyempa story tellers and artists, who taught him Aboriginal Culture and Law. This background informs Paul's work on the Story Ground project, running workshops to elicit creative writing on Country. Novelist, poet and Director of Indigenous Engagement in the Faculty of Arts and Design at the University of Canberra, Paul was awarded Elder Uncle of the Year at the All First Nations Awards for 2024.

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Associate Prof. Jen Crawford is a poet with an interest in collaboration. Her critical and creative work focusses on the poetics of place and cultural engagement. Jen was Chief Investigator on the major ILA project, Story Ground: Using Oral and Written Story to Engage Indigenous Community Members with University Study, and is a part of the ongoing Story Ground team, working with Indigenous communities in Barkindji, Nyempa, Ngunnawal, Ngamberi and Yuin lands.

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Prof. Rachel Davey is the Foundation Director of the Health Research Institute with over 30 years of research experience in areas related to the prevention of non-communicable diseases. Rachel has extensive experience of conducting large-scale trials in both clinical and community settings in the area of physical activity, health and disease prevention. More recently, Rachel has focused on the use and development of ecological models that emphasize multiple levels of influence on health behaviours. She has designed and led large-scale community interventions that have resulted in sustained behaviour change and improved health. Rachel has been awarded over $20 million of research funding over the past 10 years and has supervised 24 PhD students to completion.  

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Dr Caren Florance is an adjunct assistant professor in UC's Centre for Creative and Cultural Research who juggles academic interests with her creative practice. Her word/image practice is strongly collaborative and centres upon textual poetics, using multiple techniques including handset letterpress. She has taught at university level as well as running workshops for multivarious community groups and is currently a visual arts mentor for the ARRTS program. She lives on Yuin-Monaro country.  

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Prof. Oz Hardwick is a poet and academic, with particular interests in prose poetry, ekphrasis, and collaborative composition. His recent work has focused upon creative writing and neurodiversity, and his current work explores temporal and textual fragmentation in relation to autism. His most recent poetry collection is the chapbook Retrofuturism for the Dispossessed (Hedgehog Poetry Press, 2024). Oz is Professor of Creative Writing at Leeds Trinity University (UK).​

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Associate Prof. Cathy Hope is a Senior Research Fellow in the Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, overseeing public space activation and community engagement for the Connect Up 2617 project – a preventative health research project connecting 18-30 year olds in Belconnen and Bruce. Cathy’s work operates at the intersection of community development, placemaking and research. She has co-facilitated numerous projects with and for the Canberra community and produced multiple government and industry reports to improve people and place outcomes. Cathy led the 2019 national award-winning Haig Park Experiments with a cross-sector consortium, which transformed the once unsafe and unused Canberra green space into a loved community hub.

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Dr Kim Huynh. At a carer consultation early this year, author and academic Kim Huynh suggested that the new National Carer Strategy should include A Statement from Australias Carers, and that it should be inspired by the gentle and powerful Uluru Statement from the Heart. He said that the language in the Carers Statement should shimmer and help bring the nation together around its three million caregivers. Months later, Kim was commissioned to write the Statement. Through a discussion of the drafting process he will explore the trappings, barriers and necessity for poetic words to transform politics and the bureaucracy. Kim is a politics lecturer and Deputy Director of the Humanities Research Centre at the ANU and an ABC Radio Canberra presenter. 

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Dr Jessica Kirkness is a writer and academic from Macquarie University. She is the author of The House With All The Lights On, a memoir about growing up with two Deaf grandparents. Her research straddles the intersections of life writing, health, and disability studies. She teaches nonfiction writing, and her current research explores the lived experiences and subjectivities of carers, especially women who care for an intimate partner. 

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Dr Ella Kurz is a former midwife and current poet. She received the University of Canberra Stephen Parker medal for her PhD which explored how written memories can be used to understand how identities come into existence in the healthcare world - and how this understanding can lead to better healthcare experiences. She co-edited the poetry anthology What We Carry: Poetry on Childbearing and is the author of the early reader, My Mother is a Midwife. 

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Dr Vic McEwan is an artist, artistic director, and researcher, who works in collaboration with diverse non-arts partners to explore complex, and often difficult themes using sound, video, photography, installation, and performance. His artistic outcomes have toured at venues such as the National Museum of Australia, and Tate Liverpool. Some of these key projects include The Harmonic Oscillator, which investigates the adverse effects of noise in hospital environments and Face to Face: The New Normal, developed in partnership with the Sydney Facial Nerve Clinic. Vic sits on the executive of the Arts Health Network NSW/ACT (AHNNA), is a Creative Producer for the Griffith Hospital Redevelopment, was a co-author of the RPA Hospital Curatorial Strategy, and in 2024 provided feedback on the NSW Health and the Arts Framework V2.0. In 2023, Vic became the first artist to complete an arts-led PhD from the Faculty of Medicine and Health at the University of Sydney.​​

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Prof. Paul Magee is Director of the Centre for Creative and Cultural Research (CCCR) at the University of Canberra. He writes poetry, and has also published extensively on the history, ethnography and philosophy of poetic composition, the links between orality and writing, and the relationship between creativity and traumatic thought. Paul's long involvement in socially-impactful deployment of Creative Arts for wellbeing and repair includes his decade-long role as a Co-Investigator on the Defence ARRTS Programme and his work with Indigenous communities as a member of the Story Ground team.

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​Irfan Master is an award-winning author of novels, shorts stories, poetry and plays. His debut novel, A Beautiful Lie, (Bloomsbury, 2011) was shortlisted for the Waterstones Children’s Book prize and the Branford Boase award for debut authors and translated into ten languages. His second novel for young adults,  Out of Heart (Hot Key, 2017), was longlisted for the Carnegie Medal. In 2019 he contributed an article highlighting the importance of greater representation in literature for young people that featured in Breaking New Ground, a round-up of British writers of colour produced by BookTrust and Speaking Volumes. Irfan is a passionate advocate for creative projects in the community and has developed programs and mentored young people in how to gain access to the creative arts. He has worked with English PEN, the British Council and the Arvon Foundation to deliver writing workshop, and is currently writing a PhD on postcolonial literature and eternal recurrence.​​​​​

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Dr Bridget Vincent works at the intersection of poetry and ethics. Her research interests include ecological writing, the ethical dimensions of ekphrasis, ecological writing, the changing critical and ideological fortunes of close reading. She is a lecturer in English at ANU.

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Associate Prof. Barbara Walsh is a Senior Research Fellow at the Health Research Institute, University of Canberra, as the project lead for Connect Up 2617 – a preventative community health research project connecting 18-30 year olds in Belconnen and Bruce. Barbara is an educator, researcher and communication and engagement strategist with a long and varied experience in professional communication in the UK, Sydney and Canberra, and in education and research at UC’s Faculty of Arts and Design.  

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Distinguished Prof. Jen Webb is Distinguished Professor of Creative Practice at the University of Canberra, where she researches the role of art and artists in society and writes poetry. Recent scholarly books focus on gender and the creative labour market and art and human rights in Asian contexts, while Jen’s poetry collections engage social, political and environmental issues. Her current research addresses the relationship between creative practice and wellbeing, specifically the role of arts mentors in health and wellbeing programs. She has supervised 52 PhD candidates to completion, and is currently primary supervisor for 6 PhD candidates, 5 of whom are working on arts/health projects.   ​​​​

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