Consulting

I am delighted to share my particular skills and expertise with you across a wide range of activities. My academic leadership in research, teaching and management feeds into my consultancy services, as does my specialist knowledge across history, French Studies, linguistics, literary, translation, cultural and cross-cultural studies. Here are a few examples of my expert consultancy as well as ways that I may be able to help you or your organisation.

Research Strategy, Grants, Fellowships and Awards

I have excellent knowledge of both the New Zealand and Australian research and research funding landscapes. In New Zealand, in addition to achieving an “A” ranking in Humanities and Pacific Research in the 2018 PBRF exercise myself, I worked for 2 years at the Royal Society Te Apārangi as a Senior Research Assessor in the Research Funding team and have in-depth understanding of the Marsden Fund, Rutherford Discovery Fellowship, CoREs, Rutherford Foundation Fellowship and the James Cook Fellowship.

In Australia, I was Director of Research for the large Department of International Studies at Macquarie University. To increase the department’s national and world ranking, I nurtured research relationships with government, non-profit and commercial partners, developed a research strategy through consultation with stakeholders, mentored colleagues through grant applications and strategic publishing decisions, facilitated domestic and international research collaborations, advised on social media use for engagement with the broader community and managed workshops and research seminars. On the university level, I helped set up a Pacific Research Cluster that brought together staff from across the university, from other Sydney universities and from the community to engage in discussion and collaboration on research projects. I was also involved in the organisation of international conferences and engaged in the analysis and review of national and international research. I was, for instance, an ERA Expert Peer Reviewer for the Australian Research Council for Historical Studies, Cultural Studies, Linguistics, Literary studies, and Language Studies and a peer reviewer for numerous publishers and academic journals. I personally brought in hundreds of thousands of dollars to the department through research grants, awards, PhD supervision and publications.

With this background, I can offer expert consultancy to Research Offices or departments at universities, CRIs and other tertiary institutions or to individual researchers.

Expert Consultancy in Pacific history, linguistics and culture

As an academic, my specialism in francophone Pacific history, colonialism, linguistics and culture has led to numerous consultations:

On the SBS television series, “Who Do You Think You Are?” I advised on the episode on John Newcombe (which includes blackbirding in the Loyalty Islands) that screened in Australia on 1 November 2016. 

As only one of two internationally recognized experts on New Caledonian language, Tayo, I was asked to consult on the development of the “Lexique illustré en Tayo”, an educational resource for high school teachers of Kanak languages produced by the Académie des Langues Kanak in New Caledonia.

I have literally written a book on doing business cross-culturally (New Zealand-France) and can advise on linguistic and cultural matters for businesses working in or looking to get into working in French-speaking markets.

My expert knowledge across disciplines and linguistic spaces serves a range of clients including writers, film makers, academics, universities, government agencies, non-profits, businesses and other organisations.

Learning & Teaching

In my roles as Associate Professor, Head of French Studies, and Director of Learning & Teaching of International Studies at Macquarie University, I led the review of the overall programme of study creating 10 new courses in French to ensure that students had a broader perspective and meaningful engagement around the Francophone world. The resulting shift in the programme of study significantly increased satisfaction with the programmme itself, and increased interest and enrolment in the follow-on Master’s and PhD programmes.

I drove the development and implementation of a postgraduate research programme that allowed International Studies at Macquarie to realise significant financial gains from government and student funding and increase the University’s global standing.  I successfully applied for grants, led working parties, developed a range of undergraduate courses which taught critical content, devised an Honours programme and Master of Research courses that allowed retention of students through to PhD. In addition, I met with international stakeholders and promoted our programme to French universities thereby growing international PhD enrolments. In French, for instance, there were no postgraduate students when I started in 2004 but when I left at the beginning of 2017, I had supervised five theses to completion and was supervising four enrolled PhDs, all of whom had obtained a range of prestigious scholarships.

My innovation and curriculum leadership was recognized through a National Teaching Award: the Australian Learning and Teaching Council Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning. I was awarded $10,000 for “creativity and innovation in the design of curricula and resources with an international and interdisciplinary outlook.” This was in addition to a Faculty of Arts award and a Vice Chancellor’s Learning & Teaching award recognizing my excellence in the teaching space. Through the development of curricula, workshops, strategic approaches, initiatives, policies and solutions to Learning & Teaching issues at the departmental, faculty and university levels, I became a leader in Learning & Teaching at Macquarie.

I am currently consulting as a research mentor for a number of OPNZ staff who are at a range of different stages on their research journeys and pursuing a variety of social science and humanities topics.

My expertise in curriculum development, strategic planning, course writing (face to face and online), innovative pedagogy and online learning can help universities and other learning institutions as well as lecturers, teachers and trainers.   

Keywords: research consulting, academic consulting, research funding consulting, research grants consultant, research awards consultant, research landscape, New Zealand, Australia, education consulting, tertiary education consulting, research mentor, curriculum development, Learning & Teaching consultant, cross cultural consultant, intercultural consultant, cross cultural communication consultant, French consultant, Francophone consultant, New Caledonia consultant, Pacific history consultant