University of Bolton

Faculty Member, Arts and Media Technologies

Professor of Creative Media and Head of Photography and Creative Media

University of Bolton

About

Tara Brabazon is the Professor of Creative Media and Head of Photography and Creative Media at the University of Bolton, Fellow of the Royal Society for the encouragement of Arts, Manufactures & Commerce (RSA) and Director of the Popular Culture Collective.  Previously, Tara has held academic positions in Australia, Aotearoa/New Zealand and Canada.  She has won six teaching awards, including the National Teaching Award for the Humanities, along with other awards for disability education and cultural studies.  In 2005, Tara won both the Murdoch University Postgraduate Supervisor of the Year and the Teaching Excellence Award.  In 2009, she won the Teaching Excellence Award at the University of Brighton for both undergraduate and postgraduate education.

Tara holds three Bachelor degrees:  a first class honours in History, alongside qualifications in Literature and Communication and Professional Education (passed with distinction).  She also has three Masters Degrees:  a Research Masters in history (passed with distinction), a Master of Letters in Cultural Studies and a Masters of Education (with first class honours).  She also holds a Doctor of Philosophy.  At the end of 2001, she gained a Graduate Diploma in Internet Studies, again attained with Distinction.  She is currently working on her higher doctorate, a Doctor of Letters, from the University of Western Australia.

She is the author of eleven books:  Tracking the Jack - A retracing of the Antipodes (Sydney:  University of New South Wales Press, 2000), Ladies who Lunge:  Celebrating Difficult Women (Sydney:  University of New South Wales Press, 2002), Digital Hemlock:  Internet education and the poisoning of teaching (Sydney:  University of New South Wales Press, 2002), Liverpool of the South Seas:  Perth and its popular music (Perth:  UWA Press, 2005), From Revolution to Revelation:  Generation X, popular memory, cultural studies (Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2005), Playing on the periphery:  sport, identity and memory (London:  Routledge, 2006), The University of Google:  education in the (post) information age (Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2007), The revolution will not be downloaded:  dissent in the digital age (Oxford:  Chandos, 2008), Thinking Popular Culture: war, writing and terrorism (Aldershot:  Ashgate, 2008,) Popular Music:  Topics, trends and trajectories (London:  Sage, 2011) and Digital Dialogues and Community 2.0:  After Avatars, Trolls and Puppets (Oxford:  Chandos, 2012).

A series of books are in differing stages of the publication cycle.  She has completed a book on information literacy, titled Digital Dieting: Managing Information Obesity, which is currently under review.  An edited collection, City Imaging:  Regeneration, Renewal, Decline is similarly under review.  Tara is in the final stages of completing What would Brian Eno do?  Sonic Media for New Times and is writing Understanding Cultural Studies for Sage through 2012.

Tara is author of over one hundred refereed articles and book chapters, alongside journalistic works, including for the Times Higher Education and Sri Lanka's Montage magazine in The Observer.  Tara is also the Director of the Popular Culture Collective.

Community and public service remains integral to Tara’s portfolio of interests.  This commitment to public education and media literacy resulted in Tara being a finalist for the 2005 Australian of the Year and the 2005 Telstra Businesswoman of the Year in the Community Service category. In 2009, Tara was nominated for the Australian Woman of the Year in the UK.     

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