THE BOARD & Key Personnel

Pat has taught cultural theory across multidisciplinary programs in arts, media and new media in Griffith University’s School of Humanities since 1990, and was Head of School 2000 - 2005. Formerly best known as a cultural policy researcher, she has become increasingly engaged in urban studies. She has a long-standing interest in approaches to fashioning flexible and responsive policy frameworks appropriate to the rapid transformations typical of ‘new’ cities and emergent city-regions like the Gold Coast. Her other key research focus is on how people develop ideas of community in areas marked more by change than settled identity, more by differences than commonalities. Her work suggests that imaginative uses of public, corporate and private spaces can encourage flexible, dynamic community-building in which a dynamic mix of people from diverse backgrounds, with diverse aspirations, comes to be central to the region’s self-identity. Pat’s experience contributes to the development of SWELL’s programs as well as providing insights into our community.