معرفی
Dr Janine Little is a Senior Lecturer in Communication at Deakin University's School of Communication and Creative Arts within the Faculty of Arts and Education. With over 16 years of teaching experience at Deakin (2008-2024), she will transition to predominantly postgraduate Communication programs from 2025. Her academic journey includes previous positions as a Lecturer in Print Journalism at the University of Southern Queensland and sessional academic roles at Queensland University of Technology, The University of Queensland, and Murdoch University.
Her educational background includes a Doctor of Philosophy, Master of Arts, and Bachelor of Arts (Honours) from the University of Queensland, along with a Graduate Certificate in Tertiary Teaching & Learning from the University of Southern Queensland. Dr Little brings a professional journalism background to her academic work, having worked in metropolitan and regional newsrooms in Australia and internationally.
Dr Little's research focuses on the role of mediated culture in perpetuating and disrupting gendered violence, with particular attention to how ethics and law intersect with this urgent social justice issue. Her work spans cultural/media/gender studies, literary studies, and media law/ethics, with an abiding belief in the value of relational ethics to lifelong learning. She has published extensively across more than three decades, examining topics including domestic and family violence in film, TV, news, and creative writing, media law and ethics, and class and culture studies.
Her most recent publications reveal a consistent focus on gendered violence in media representations, particularly examining how true crime narratives frame perpetrators and victims, the intersections of class privilege with gendered violence, and the ethical responsibilities of media in reporting on domestic violence cases. This work demonstrates her interdisciplinary approach, bridging media studies, gender studies, criminology, and legal studies to address urgent social issues.
Dr Little has received significant recognition for her work, including:
- 2022 Most Distinguished Paper Award from the Australian Women's and Gender Studies Association
- Dean's Commendation for Outstanding Achievement, Faculty of Education, USQ (2007)
- Qld Country Press Association Award for Individual Journalistic Excellence (2000)
- The George Essex Evans Prize (UQ, 1991)
- The Venerable Archdeacon Edward Leo Hayes Scholarship (UQ, 1993)
- Australian Postgraduate Award (UQ, 1993)
As an educator and supervisor, Dr Little has contributed to scholarly conversations about class, race, and gender politics while mentoring students to develop confidence in marginalized voices. She currently supervises PhD candidate Natalia Vedric's project "Communism, Conspiracy and Croatian Australians," and has previously supervised doctoral research on topics including humor in contemporary feminist literature and representations of single mothers. Her teaching expertise spans media law and ethics, Indigenous Cultural Awareness, Literary Theory, Creative Writing, and Journalism Ethics, with recent unit chairing roles including "Gutenberg to Zuckerberg: Communication in Everyday Life" and "Writing the News." Dr Little's work with the Deakin University Human Research Ethics Committee and international consultancy on journalism ethics further demonstrates her commitment to ethical practices across academic and professional contexts.
