EXPERTS SEARCH

Melissa's career has been as an early childhood teacher and leader, with a strong wellbeing and people-centred focus. Her teaching and research interests encompass professionalism and legislative requirements, collaborative practices and partnerships, leadership, mentoring/coaching, and the arts. Melissa has thoroughly enjoyed over three decades of learning experience in the early childhood and education sector and her focus has remained on the wellbeing, social and emotional development of children, families and teachers. She brings authenticity and solid professional experience to her role as an academic. Melissa is passionate about quality education, listening and journeying with others, creative problem solving, harmonious workplaces and collective unity amidst shared ideas. Collaboration and social justice are essential to her endeavours, and she is delighted to have formed partnerships with students, staff and professional bodies that have strengthened her passion for creating supportive environments. 

As an early childhood teacher and leader, Melissa had the privilege of working across multiple municipalities to support children, families and teams and provide excellence in education. Her volunteer roles have included Vice President of the Association of Graduates in Early Childhood (AGECS), advisory board member for The University of Melbourne (ECPPP project) and Deakin University (BECE/BECPE). She has written and facilitated a range of parenting workshops across many municipalities in Victoria. As an academic she has taught and presented at Deakin University, The University of Melbourne and Swinburne University and has thoroughly enjoyed her role as a teaching coach at Deakin University. Melissa has supported preservice teachers to deeply contemplate and develop their preservice teacher wellbeing and forming teacher identity through strengthening foundations of theoretical perspective, contextual arrangements and solid foundations of professional knowledge. She is passionate about preservice teacher professional wellbeing and identity and how, through opportunity, knowledge, shared discussions about pedagogy and documentation, preservice teachers can establish a career in education that shapes, guides and supports healthy communities and world class education to children and communities.

Melissa hopes to inspire the next generation of teachers towards a career in education and care that supports them to flourish!

I am a researcher of education policy and globalisation, with a focus on how policies move, adapt, and take shape across borders. My work examines the global dynamics influencing education reform and the ways national systems respond to these pressures.

Currently, I study the implementation of Sustainable Development Goal 4 (SDG4) in the Asia Pacific, exploring how global education agendas interact with national priorities. I also research the rising influence of philanthropy and venture capital in shaping social entrepreneurial education policies, particularly in developing contexts.

I hold a PhD in Education from the University of Queensland (2019), a European Master’s in Lifelong Learning Policy and Management from Deusto University, Spain (2013), and an MA in Education from Aarhus University, Denmark (2012). My research aims to unpack how globalisation is reshaping education and policy worldwide.

Research Groups
Centre for Research for Educational Impact
([REDI](https://www.deakin.edu.au/redi)) - Deakin University

Dr Shahram Akbarzadeh is Professor of Middle East and Central Asian Politics

Director: Middle East Studies Forum (www.mesf.au)

He held the prestigious ARC Future Fellowship between 2013-2016, and was named Australia’s Field Leader in Middle East and Islamic Studies (The Australian Research Report 2019). He has also received the Elie and Sylvia Kedourie Prize for the outstanding article in Middle Eastern Studies (2020), Deakin University’s Research Leadership Award (2019), the Alfred Deakin Institute Award of Excellence for HDR Supervisor of the Year (2023), and the Deakin University Faculty of Arts and Education International Partnership and Engagement Excellence Award (2023).

He has an active research interest in the politics of the Middle East and Central Asia, religion in foreign policy, Islam, Muslims in Australia, and authoritarianism. He has been involved in organising a number of key conferences, including a Chatham House rule workshop on Australia’s relations with Iran, Iraq and Afghanistan (2007), sponsored by the International Centre of Excellence for Asia Pacific Studies, a conference on the Arab Revolutions in collaboration with Freedom House (2012), Iran in the World: Opportunities and Challenges (2014), Future of the Middle East (2016), Trump and the Middle East (2018), The Islamic Republic of Iran at 40 (2019), The Middle East in Transition (2022), and The Middle East After the War on Gaza (2024).

In 2000 Professor Akbarzadeh was the Middle East Studies conference convener and served as the Central and West Asia Councillor for the Asian Studies Association of Australia (1999-2004). He has promoted Asian studies through contacts with industry and academia by research and publication. He guest edited a special issue of Asian Studies Review on Central and West Asia (Vol. 25, No. 2, 2001) and a special issue of the Journal of Arabic, Islamic and Middle Eastern Studies on Globalisation and the Middle East (Vol. 5, No. 2, 1999). He was also founding director of the Centre for Muslim Minorities and Islam Policy Studies at Monash University, Deputy Director of the National Centre of Excellence for Islamic Studies at the University of Melbourne, and served in senior leadership roles at Deakin University, including Deputy Director (International) and Acting Director of the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation.

He has published more than 70 refereed journal articles and a substantial body of scholarly books and edited volumes. Among his publications are Uzbekistan and the United States,  Presidential Elections in Iran, US Foreign Policy in the Middle East, The Politics and International Relations of the Middle East: Crisis Zone, and Muslim Active Citizenship in the West, as well as major field-defining collections including the Edward Elgar Handbook of Middle East Politics, the Routledge Handbook of International Relations in the Middle East, and the Routledge Handbook of Political Islam.

Professor Akbarzadeh was the founding editor of the Islamic Studies Series, published by Melbourne University Press, and is a regular public commentator. He has produced key reports for the Australian Research Council (ARC) on Australian-based scholarship on Islam, for the Department of Immigration and Citizenship (DIAC) on Muslim Voices and Mapping Employment and Education, and on Islam in the Australian media. He acted as Convenor of the Islam Node for the ARC Asia Pacific Futures Research Network. He is Academic Editor of Third World Quarterly, founding editor of Studies in Iranian Politics with Palgrave Macmillan, and a member of the editorial boards of Global Change, Peace & Security, the Journal of Muslim Minority Affairs, and the Journal of Asian Security & International Affairs. He was the founding President of the Australian Association of Islamic and Muslim Studies (AAIMS) from 2016 to 2019. His research has attracted more than AU$15 million in external funding, including ARC, DFAT, Carnegie Corporation, Qatar National Research Fund, Gerda Henkel Stiftung, and Victorian Government support.

Dr. Mohammed M. Ali is a research fellow at the Alfred Deakin Institute (ADI) for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. He completed his PhD in Criminology at Griffith University in 2023. He holds a graduate diploma (Psychology) from Deakin University and a Bachelor of Social Science (Psychology) from RMIT University. Owing to his cross-disciplinary training, Dr. Ali conducts research in the areas of forensic psychology and criminology with a focus on culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) populations. Dr. Ali is currently pursuing three lines of research (1) antecedents of attitudes towards legal authorities, (2) pathways into and out of violence, and (3) crime prevention and intervention programming. He has published on these topics in academics journals such as Policing and Society, Psychology, Crime & Law, The Journal of Criminology, and Psychiatry, Psychology, and Law. Dr. Ali was awarded the 2023 Allen Austin Bartholomew award by the Australian and New Zealand Society of Criminology for the best paper in the Journal of Criminology in 2022. 

Hi, I’m Bree. I’m a feminist settler scholar. I want to get people talking about gender inequality in housework and parenting and how it affects women and families.

I believe people of all genders are equally capable of nurturing children, preparing a meal, doing laundry, and cleaning a toilet. I want to help create a world where women (and people of all genders) have greater choice about how they lead their lives, greater satisfaction in their relationships and the roles they play in their families and communities.

My approach to research has been shaped by growing up in country Victoria on the lands of the Wadawurrung people in the 1980s and 90s, my cultural background (Scottish, Irish and English), and working in feminist organisations with family violence victim-survivors over the last 15 years - among many other things. Now living in Naarm (Melbourne) on the lands of the Wurundjeri people, I am engaged in the perpetual process of learning, including about the value and limitations of what I know.