Sparking transformation

Katrina Schlunke is an expansive conversationalist, approaching every topic with curiosity, insight and enthusiasm. She invites the listener to share in her musings and offer their own perspectives. And when she laughs, it's with her whole body.

The Associate Professor of Cultural Studies is discussing the ongoing evolution of the Communication program at UTS. “I’m wondering what we do in the future,” she says, “because it’s not just the technologies that are converging, but the skills as well.

"The thinking used to be: we’re making a journalist or a filmmaker or a person who will do advertising or someone who will write creatively… now that’s all going to be in one person.

"We’ve got to skill students up so they can be a junior sound, film or picture person and a writer.”

Filming on Possession Island. Photographer: Matt Davis

Schlunke has just returned from filming an episode of the Coast documentary series on Possession Island with writer, scientist and explorer Professor Tim Flannery. She says the crew for the trip comprised just four people, responsible for the entire production process for eight shows of 'television quality'.

The island was where Captain Cook claimed British ownership of the east coast of Australia – a pivotal event for Schlunke's research. 

"One of my key interests is understanding how non-Indigenous Australians come to be 'at home' both culturally and institutionally in Australia, given there is enduring Aboriginal sovereignty over the country."

These research themes took on personal significance for Schlunke when the Blue Mountains home she shared with her partner was destroyed in the bushfires last year.

Although she says she was homeless for a “tiny moment”, it’s a strong point of connection with other people who’ve experienced “a complete ‘loss of stuff'” through fire, relationship breakup, violence or other factors.

“Because it’s more than ‘stuff’ – it’s how you’ve put it together and built that place in your relationship,” she says.

Burnt reading glasses. Photographer: Katrina Schlunke

"There’s also a connection between that and being interested in possession for so long – what possessions are and what it is to possess something – because that moment of dispossession in Australia, that’s what happened. People’s homes were taken."

The experience also gave her new insights into the workings of the media.

"Here we are teaching about moral panics and what media does, but it’s the very same media frenzy that produces people’s knowledge about the event and results in enormous outpourings of generosity.

“So I can only say it's paradoxical."

This ability to engage with the world in critical and adaptive ways is something Schlunke hopes to pass on to her students.

"All of the training for that kind of broad thinking goes on in the core of the communication degree: How does the past work? How do we make sense of language? Why do we think that about those people? 

“I teach the core subject Language and Discourse, and I value having a hand in passing on that passion.”

Schlunke is also the Director of the Transforming Cultures Research Centre, and reflects on the challenges for humanities research in a climate that emphasises impact. "We don't have a single project that would immediately attract commercial funding.

"We’re not solving cancer, but we are ameliorating racism, we are looking for alternatives to rabid nationalism. And we create a culture that excites people about their research and lets them know how it can grow in the world."