DrLauren Halcomb-Smith

Lauren Halcomb-Smith is a third-space academic and library professional with a PhD in Educational Studies and a background in teaching, research, and leadership in higher education. As Lecturer, Open Education, Lauren's work is focused on research and academic capability building related to Open Educational Resources (OER) and OER-enabled practices at Deakin. Based in the Deakin Library, Lauren works across traditional boundaries to support Open Education in both practical and strategically impactful ways.

Lauren joined Deakin Library in April, 2023 after having spent nearly 10+ years in the Canadian higher education sector in a range of roles including: teaching, research, learning design, and academic capability building. While in Canada, Lauren co-founded the Journal of Belonging, Identity, Language, and Diversity (J-BILD), a diamond open-access journal designed to disrupt traditional publishing hierarchies through a non-anonymized peer-mentorship model. She also completed research and writing about complex educational and sociolinguistic phenomena using a range of creative methodologies, including walking interviews, participant-drawn language maps, polyvocality, and autoethnography. These experiences underpin Lauren’s current research, the Stories of Openness Project, where she is using podcasting to explore the impact of Open Educational Resources (OER) and OER-enabled practices at Deakin.

Lauren's research interests extend to the intersection of open education, generative AI, and copyright. In collaboration with colleagues from Deakin's Teaching Capability and Innovation team and the Library's copyright team, she has been exploring how open educational resources and open access research can unlock the equity affordances of generative AI for students.

Lauren’s approach to her work in the academic library sector is deeply values-based. She believes that education is a public good, and access to learning materials should not be a barrier to success. She images a future where Open is the default approach to curriculum design and resource sharing. Lauren sees libraries as playing a central role in making this future possible through strategy, services, research, and storytelling.