Ethical methodologies in art and language

As speakers address the important contribution of the arts and humanities to communities in crisis or facing disaster and extreme weather events, they consider what can be learned about best practice from examples of projects. Artists and scholars who collaborate with communities under duress recognise that there needs to be careful consideration of the methodological approaches that are being used in circumstances that involve lived experience. The choice of methodology can ensure the effectiveness of the project. Therefore it is crucial to ask: what are the most ethical methodologies that can be used in particular circumstances? In theatrical performance, for example, practitioners recommend group development of verbatim and documentary modes when working with the community that has experienced trauma.  In designing an online dictionary of family law terms for those with  low reading skills, the conventional alphabetical access is replaced by a thesaurus-like front end. Common concepts are  foregrounded by means of graphics and audio recordings as the focus and context for groups of terms.

Speakers

Emeritus Professor Peta Tait (Chair)

Peta Tait is Emeritus Professor at La Trobe University and a Fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities. She has authored and edited 12 books and 75 articles and chapters including: the authored: Forms of Emotion: Human to Nonhuman in Drama, Theatre and Contemporary Performance (2022); Theory for Theatre Studies: Emotion (2021); the co-edited Feminist Ecologies: Changing Environments in the Anthropocene (2018) and the edited The Great European Stage Directors volume one (2018); and the authored Fighting Nature (2016). She co-edited The Routledge Circus Studies Reader (2016). Her recent published plays include Eleanor and Mary Alice (2018) about Eleanor Roosevelt, and in two languages Retrato de Augustine/Mesmerized (Brazil: Praxila 2024) about Charcot and performing hysteria. She is co-author of the forthcoming book, Ecology and Climate in Theatre and Australian Performance.

Dr Tamara Borovica

Tamara Borovica is a researcher and creative practitioner whose interdisciplinary work explores the intersections of health, embodiment, and social justice. Currently a Vice-Chancellor’s Postdoctoral Fellow at RMIT University, Dr. Borovica draws on critical theory, affect studies and arts-based methodologies to investigate how young people experience and respond to planetary and mental health challenges. Her research foregrounds lived experience and creative methods — including dance, visual art, and storytelling — to generate new insights into trauma, grief, and resilience. She has led and contributed to ARC and industry-funded projects, with outcomes influencing public mental health initiatives. Her work supports the development of training strategies for health organisations, emphasising empathy, connection, and equity. She has been recognised by two major research awards, including RMIT’s Research Excellence Award (2024) for her contributions to creative research into experiences of health and illness

Professor Helena Grehan

Helena Grehan is Vice Chancellor’s Professorial Research Fellow at Edith Cowan University. Her research deals with the intersections of art, technology, politics and spectatorship in the contemporary context. She has published four scholarly books and two co-edited books, as well as numerous articles and book chapters. Several of her publications have won prizes for research excellence. She has also led major ARC funded collaborative grant projects. She has held leadership roles including Dean of Research, Associate Dean of Research, Deputy Dean and Acting Executive Dean in the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences at Murdoch University.

She has a passionate interest in mentorship and supporting the sector to adapt to meet the challenges of the contemporary context. As such, she speaks at international fora on collegiality and care, adjudicates promotions and fostering the development of staff as well as running conferences, examining theses, participating in award panels, and assessing grant applications from a range of disciplines internationally. She has supervised over 20 Research Higher Degree candidates to completion. She is the Deputy Editor of Performance Research.

Emeritus Professor Pam Peters

Pam Peters is an Emeritus Professor at Macquarie University — where she held a Personal Chair in Linguistics until retiring in 2007. She was Director of Macquarie University’s Dictionary Research Centre (2001-07), and a member of the Editorial Committee of the Macquarie Dictionary (1986-2006). She continues on the editorial boards of English World-Wide, English Today, and the ICAME Journal. In other professional roles, she served from 1996-2024 on the ABC’s Language Committee (formerly SCOSE), as a Distinguished Editor of Australia’s Institute of Professional Editors, and contributed 6 chapters to the Australian Government Style Manual (6^th ed. 2002). She led the compilation of reference corpora of Australian English (ACE, ICE and ART) for researching Australian English usage. Her major monographs are Cambridge Guide to Australian Style (1996), Cambridge Guide to Australian English Usage (2007), and their international counterpart, her Cambridge Guide to English Usage (2004) – its revised second edition to be published in 2026. Her current research interests are varieties of English in the Indo-Pacific (the VEIP project endorsed by the Union Academique Internationale), and the readability of health messaging for the general public, along with creating online termbanks in cancer medicine (HealthTermFinder), family law (LawTermFinder), and building and construction (ArchiTermFinder).

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