I’m working on my Research Opportunity & Performance Evidence (ROPE) section for future grant applications to the Australian Research Council. Here’s my summary of my pre-doctoral research (1994-2011):
Pre-Doctoral Research: My freelance journalism with original research (1994-2004) and pre-doctoral research (1999-2011) focused on subculture analysis, understanding how global risk events affected journalists, digital culture and internet sociology, and theory-testing in journalism and disruptive innovation. As a freelance journalist I wrote for 21C, REVelation, Marketing, Desktop, Internet.au and Artbyte—including interviews with J.G. Ballard, Noam Chomsky, Jack Sarfatti, Robert Anton Wilson, and Terence McKenna. I also edited and wrote for the United States-based former subculture website Disinformation (1998-2008) for which I covered the September 11 terrorist attacks, and the 2000 and 2004 United States elections. I presented on this original research to the This Is Not Art (1999-2004) and Straight Out of Brisbane (2002) youth culture festivals.
I undertook Masters studies at Swinburne University in strategic foresight (2002-04) and at Monash University in counter-terrorism studies (2005-06) which provided research mentoring opportunities with Professor Richard Slaughter, Dr Joseph Voros, Dr Peter Hayward, Associate Professor Pete Lentini, Dr David Wright-Neville, and Mr Philip Gregory. I contributed Masters essays to several of Professor Slaughter’s projects including The Knowledge Base of Futures Studies: Professional Edition (2005) which have since been cited and re-published in book and peer reviewed CD-ROM anthologies. My 2006 MA mini-thesis ‘Fearful Asymmetries: Herman Kahn’s Nuclear Threat Models and the DPRK’s Nuclear Weapons Program’ with Dr Andrew Butfoy developed an escalation model using Kahn’s insights to understand North Korea’s nuclear missile development and testing.