The research team
Dr Lucas Walsh
As Director of Research at FYA, Dr Walsh coordinates, commissions and conducts research as part of a national agenda for policy change. His PhD (Monash) examined the impact of education policy reform on Australian democracy during the latter twentieth century.
Lucas has held three academic research fellowships in areas such as international education, technology and political participation, e-learning and citizenship and democracy. He was research fellow at the Centre for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Monash Centre for Research in International Education (MCRIE) and postdoctoral research fellow of Democracy and New Media in the School of Communications and Multimedia at Edith Cowan University. He also managed the Online Curriculum Centre within the International Baccalaureate Organisation in the UK.
Lucas has research and applied expertise in education, technology, and its political implications – particularly in the areas of e-government, e-learning and new forms of political participation. He has worked as consultant for and been invited to speak to local and international bodies on areas of participation, education and technological innovation such as the Australian Government Information Office, the Citizen Access and Transformation unit of the Victorian Department of Innovation Industry and Regional Development, United World College Singapore and the ITU World Summit on the Information Society, as well as local government initiatives in the use of ICTs for community building, such as Darebin eForum. In 2009 he was commissioned by the National Curriculum Board to write an advisory paper on online curriculum modelling for the national curriculum and was a speaker at the National Curriculum Board Learning for the 21st Century forum.
Rosalyn Black
Rosalyn Black is the Senior Manager, Research and Evaluation with The Foundation for Young Australians, a PhD candidate with the Youth Research Centre at The University of Melbourne and an occasional lecturer with the Melbourne Graduate School of Education.
Her career combines teaching, policy development and research across the school, higher education, government and nonprofit sectors. Her research interests include educational inequity, new models of schooling including school-community partnership, and youth participation and citizenship. These themes are combined in her PhD study, which investigates the democratic participation of young people from low socioeconomic backgrounds and the role of schools in this participation.
Ros is regularly published in recognised academic journals and is an international editor for Youth Studies Australia. She is the author of Beyond the Classroom: Building new school networks (ACER Press, Melbourne) and the co-author (with Lucas Walsh) of a new book, In Their Own Hands: Can young people change Australia? (ACER Press, Melbourne).
Dr Naomi Berman
Naomi is Manager, Policy and Evaluation with FYA. She recently completed her PhD on ‘The Transformation of Self aboard an Australian Sail Training Program’ (University of Sydney). Her previous work includes Research Fellow for an evaluation of VicHealth’s Community Arts Development Scheme measuring the impact of participation in arts activities on mental health and wellbeing, and Social and Field Research Manager for the BBC’s Digital Switchover Help Scheme. She has also worked on two national inquiries; mental health care in the Australian Defence Force, and suicide in the veteran community. Naomi is Associate Editor of the UNESCO Observatory Multidisciplinary Research in the Arts e-journal and has taught at the University of Sydney, Swinburne University of Technology and the University of New England.
