Teaching

At Federation University Australia I teach a range of sociology units at the Gippsland and Ballarat campuses, as well as online. These units include the introductory unit The Sociological Imagination, as well as the second and third year units Sociology of Families & Relationships, Sociology of Health & Illness and Examining Race & Ethnicity. I have also taught into the Major Research Project unit in the Bachelor of Arts and I am looking forward to contributing to Fed’s upcoming Graduate Certificate in Local Government.

In my previous position, as the Hans Mol Research Fellow at the ANU, my teaching tasks were primarly postgraduate supervision and the annual National Graduate Student Workshop on “Representing Belief,” convened for students from across Australia researching issues of culture, society and belief.  I have also lectured in the courses Youth Culture and Consumption at UWE Bristol, Contemporary Social Research at Deakin University, Spirituality and Secularization in the West at the University of Helsinki, and Music, Sound and Society also at the University of Helsinki – here is the youtube playlist I put together for the course with my co-lecturer Heikki Wilenius. I have also guest lectured in courses at the ANU and Helsinki.

As a teacher, clarity is very important to me. Many of my students have spoken English as their second (or third, or fourth) language, and often my classrooms have included students from different class backgrounds, with different expectations, and with different ambitions and motivations. I feel that it is important for me to make clear to my students what they should be able to comprehend at the end of a course and at the end of a class. It’s then our joint responsibility to make sure that each student reaches that level of comprehension. So I am always looking for new ways and new methods to clearly explain the concepts that we work with in the social sciences, to understand the case studies that we investigate, and to appreciate the relevant changes that have taken place in society and in scholarship over the years, especially changing ethical practices.