Australian Fulbright Alumni Association 

We recently invited AFAA members to share their news. Listed alphabetically, here's a snapshot of member activity! 

• Prof James Arvanitakis has taken on the role of Executive Director of Fulbright Australia. "I started on 1 June and though working remotely, am  loving the role" https://www.fulbright.org.au/fulbright-team/

• During the bleak depths of this year's Victorian COVID lockdowns, Dr Iain Butterworth decided to set himself a challenge to write and self-publish a series of articles on one of his favourite topics, "sense of place". Recently, a colleague at Vanderbilt University, who edits a book series for The Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues, invited Iain to turn this series into a book proposal.  

• Dr Jane Hardie is a musicologist with an expertise in Spanish liturgical music and manuscripts from the Medieval and Early Modern period. Jane is currently Honorary Associate of the Medieval and Early Modern Centre at the University of Sydney. She is also a member of an interdisciplinary and international research team (musicology, art history, history, archivists) on a four-year Spanish Grant (Corpus Processionarium Hispanarum, CPH) led by Dr David Andrés Fernández at the Complutense University, Madrid. You can read more about Jane here. 

• Eliza Howard has established her own consultancy. "Working with academics, academic and university teams, postgraduates, and some corporate clients, I run interactive and entertaining workshops which gather qualitative data for use in organisational goal setting and strategic planning. I also run research training workshops for academics and HDRs."

• Dr Rod Kennett, Senior Manager for STEM Content at Questacon (and incoming AFAA National President) writes: "Way back in pre-history (2019) I hosted Professor Robert De Salle at Questacon - The National Science and Technology Centre in his role as the 70th Anniversary Distinguished Chair. Rob is an extraordinarily clever and generous genius and his 6 months at Questacon has left a lasting impact." You can read more here about Rob De Salle's collaboration with Rod. 

• In May this year, after three years of working in the NSW Government as Principal Energy Advisor and Executive Director in Energy Policy (DPIE), Cameron O'Reilly joined Marsden Jacob Associates as an Associate Director. It is an economics and public policy firm specialising in water, energy, recycling and climate change. "I am doing an energy project for the Asian Development Bank (ADB) on the Central Asian Region Economic Community (CAREC) – which takes in 11 countries in Central Asia running from China through to Georgia. If there are any Alumni with a knowledge of the region I’d be delighted to hear from them."

• Professor Kim Rubenstein (postgradraduate Fulbrighter 1991-1992 and Senior Fulbright Scholar 2002-2003) has recently announced her intention to run as an Independent to represent the ACT in the Senate in the next Federal election. In order to be above the line on the Senate ballot paper she formed the Kim For Canberra party. Her application, containing over 1500 members, is currently being processed by the Australian Electoral Commission. 

• Professor Mark Tompkins is Professor of Infectious Diseases and Director at the Center for Influenza Disease and Emergence Research at the University of Georgia in the United States. Mark writes: "  It has been a busy couple of years for me, with working on the pandemic and with the award of a new center". The University of Georgia and five other institutions has received funding through the National Institutes of Health to establish Center of Excellence for Influenza Research and Response. As part of this, in April 2021 Mark estavblished the Center for Influenza Disease and Emergence Research (CIDER), based at UGA. CIDER has investigators at several instituitons, including the University of Melbourne. You can read more from Mark about CIDER here. 

We will invite further member updates soon.