Youth Mobilities, Aspirations and Pathways
YMAP Team
Chief Investigators
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Anita HARRIS
Anita HARRIS is a Research Professor in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University, Melbourne. Anita is a leading expert in critical youth studies, with a particular interest in youth identities and youth cultures; youth, mobility and multiculturalism; young people’s civic lives and citizenship practices; and girlhood studies. She has most recently published on young people and everyday multiculturalism, young people’s urban multicultures, and citizenship among young Muslim Australians.
Loretta BALDASSAR
Loretta BALDASSAR is a Vice Chancellor Professorial Research Fellow in the School of Arts and Humanities at ECU. She is Professor of Anthropology and Sociology. She is also an Adjunct Principal Research Fellow at Monash University. Previously she was Professor of Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia. Loretta is a leading global expert on transnational migrants, families and caregiving, and migration and ICTs. Her scholarship has focused on young migrants through studies of second generations as well as study abroad and intercultural learning. A leading scholar of the Italian diaspora in Australia, she has most recently published an edited collection on Chinese migration to Europe.
Shanthi ROBERTSON
Shanthi ROBERTSON is a Associate Director at the Insight Centre and Adjunct Principal Research Fellow at Western Sydney University. In her consultancy work for the Insight Centre, Shanthi leads high quality research projects and delivers research strategy and advisory for clients with social purpose and social impact objectives. She mobilises research towards evidence-led strategic planning, stakeholder and community engagement, and communications and advocacy. Her academic work has gained national and international recognition in migration, cultural diversity, youth studies and urban sociology.
Partner Investigator
Project Officer
Laura GOBEY
Dr Laura GOBEY has worked at Deakin University as a sessional academic and research assistant. Laura’s research focuses on the intersection of youth and migration studies. She has recently completed her PhD, which examines how young people from migrant and refugee backgrounds are constructed within Australian government and third sector youth policies.
Contact: laura.gobey@deakin.edu.au
Survey Manager
Simon CHAMBERS
Dr Simon CHAMBERS' research background is in cultural sociology and the application of methodologies which bring together quantitative and qualitative analysis in a complementary manner. A consultant at APRA AMCOS and the Australian Music Centre, he has also worked on a range of ARC projects spanning the dynamics of Australian cultural fields, the value of music exports and the development of personalised recommendation algorithms. His recently submitted PhD examined the notion of distance in the similarity and familiarity of music.
Research Associates
Xinyu (Andy) ZHAO
Dr Xinyu (Andy) ZHAO is Associate Research Fellow in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. He completed his PhD at Deakin University in 2020 and is particularly interested in the intersections of transnational mobility, digital technologies and young people. His PhD thesis was an ethnographic study of how Chinese international students in Australia make sense and use of social media in and across the spheres of everyday life.
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Lara McKENZIE
Dr Lara McKENZIE is a Research Fellow at Deakin University and The University of Western Australia, and an Honorary Research Fellow in Anthropology at Macquarie University. Her research focuses on Australia, particularly on gender, age, love, kinship, family, reproduction, and cultural change. Lara’s book, Age-dissimilar couples and romantic relationships: Ageless love? (2015), explores age-dissimilar couples in Australia. She has also undertaken research on inequality and cultural difference in education. Lara also conducted a study on recent PhD graduates’ experiences of looking for stable academic work, and her writing here addresses the themes of gender, age, family, precarity, and audit practices.
Johanne ELDRIDGE
Johanne ELDRIDGE is a first-generation young adult migrant from the United Kingdom, and PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia.
Her interdisciplinary research backgrounds in psychology, public health, and sociology/anthropology focus upon identifying the adverse effects of transnational youth mobility (e.g. psychosocial isolation, discrimination, and sense of disconnect); and whether the protective role(s) of social and familial relationships maximize life chances and wellbeing that are crucial to their engagement as positive transnational citizens throughout the life-course.
Previous Project Officer
Anna VASSADIS
Prior to joining the YMAP team, Dr Anna VASSADIS worked as a research assistant and in research administration on a wide range of research projects. She has a PhD in Sociology and is experienced with qualitative research methods. Anna’s research interests include ethnicity, ethnic identity and culture, multiculturalism and migration. She also thoroughly enjoys providing technical and operational support for research activity.
PhD Students
Alex LEE
Alex LEE is a PhD student in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research project will explore young Australians' everyday practices of emplacement and belonging in transnational lives, with a focus on Australians of diverse cultural and migrant backgrounds. She examines how their embodied relation to places, people, and identity labels, can create a sense of place or displacement. Alex completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Sociology at the Australian National University. Her research interests include multiculturalism, race and whiteness, gender, mixed identities, family, and place.
Giulia MARCHETTI
Giulia MARCHETTI is a PhD candidate in Anthropology and Sociology at the University of Western Australia. Her research project will examine how transnational mobility can impact on identity and youth-to-adulthood transition among young Italians who have moved to Australia and those who have returned to Italy. Giulia’s research interests centre on migration, refugees, racism, women, youth and ageing population in Italy.
Yan WANG
Yan WANG is a PhD candidate at the Institute of Culture and Society, Western Sydney University. Her research project will focus on transnational mobility among Australian youth who move to China, and the Chinese young people who move to Australia. Yan is passionate about contributing to the development of theory in relation to migration, youth and ageing population in China, as well as reforms in public policy and social welfare. She has a Masters of Research in Management at Lanzhou University and a Bachelor in Economics at Lanzhou University of Finance and Economics.
Hao ZHENG
Hao ZHENG is a PhD student in the Alfred Deakin Institute for Citizenship and Globalisation at Deakin University. Her research project explores Chinese lesbian students’ transition to adulthood in Australia. She focuses on this particular group’s intersectional identities as lesbians, women, international students and migrants. Hao’s research interests are in the areas of gender and sexuality, intersectionality, Chinese lesbianism and multicultural communities. She completed a Bachelor of Arts (Honours) in Cultural Studies at the University of Melbourne. Her honours thesis examines Chinese lesbians’ double marginalisation in the digital era.