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Professor Chris Nash

Head of Journalism

View contact details in Monash Staff Directory

Latest Work

Chris and two colleagues, Phil Chubb and Bill Birnbauer, in 2009 completed a study of the reporting in the News Ltd broadsheet The Australian of climate change as a factor in the Black Saturday bushfires of February 2009 in Victoria. The research was presented at the Global Dialogue Conference in Aarhus, Denmark in October 2009, and is currently under review for publication. Chris also presented a plenary address at the Global Dialogue Conference on ‘What can we expect of Journalism in confronting climate change?’, which is also to be published.

Biography

Chris joined Monash University as Professor of Journalism in February 2008. For the previous ten years he had been Director of the Australian Centre for Independent Journalism (ACIJ) at the University of Technology, Sydney.

Chris is particularly interested in the interface between intellectual and creative media activity.  He has worked professionally in radio and television at the Australian Broadcasting Corporation, and as an independent documentary film producer/director. He has won the Walkley Award for Journalism, and his best-known documentary film Philippines, my Philippines had international television and film festival release.  An earlier film, Brigadistas, was shown at film festivals in Australia and Latin America.  Both titles are available through the National Film and Sound Archive

Chris was the Director and Co-Producer with Shirley Alexander at the Institute for Interactive Media and Learning (IML) of the Australia Street Archive, which was a collaborative WWW social documentary between UTS and the Australian Museum. Chris was the Australian leader of the Tumblong project, a collaborative WWW venture between the IML at UTS and the Ruskin School of Drawing and Fine Art at Oxford University, working with cultural institutions in both countries. Tumblong involved the collaborative production of art on the Web about the relationship between the two countries by artists working in the UK and Australia, and was financially supported by the Australia Council for the Arts and the Arts Council of England.

Research Interests

Keywords

environmental journalism, investigative journalism, journalist–source relations, comparative journalism; issues surrounding freedom of communication and information; urban and regional studies; political economy, communication and culture

Areas of Supervision

Journalism; journalism studies; media and social theory; media and urbanism, the environment and social justice; research methodologies in journalism and the social sciences

Current Research Projects and Grants

Chris has two current research projects:

  • Communication Struggles in the Construction of Sydney as a Global City, 1983–2008
  • Journalism as Research (engaging with the minimalist art of Hans Haacke)

Teaching

Chris teaches in the practice and theory of Journalism. In 2010, his teaching program includes:

  • JCS3611 Journalism: Practice and Discourse
  • JCS4001 Journalism Studies research Seminar
  • JRM4904 Journalism Studies
  • research supervision at the honours and postgraduate level.

Selected Publications