Masterclass: Change, protection and creation
Keynotes: Dr Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox (University of Queensland) and Dr Danish Sheikh (Monash University)
When: 12 November 2026
Where: Deakin Downtown Campus
This masterclass is open to graduate students and academics (especially ECRs and MCRs)
This interdisciplinary, one day masterclass brings together academics and creators from all career stages and diverse disciplines, including sociology, law, history, theatre and cultural studies, to explore the potential of creative methods in academic scholarship. We will hear from experts who work at the boundaries of scholarship and creative practice, including scholars who have transformed their academic work into plays and art, to consider how experimentation with different creative methods, genre and form can extend the reach of academic work, engage diverse publics, and generate impact. The masterclass will focus on how academic scholars concerned with questions of social change, law reform, harm and protection play with creative methods to generate reflection on the harms associated with institutions of various kinds (including governments and legal systems) and how creative methods might foster hope and repair. The masterclass is a joint initiative of Deakin University’s Anthropology and Sociology and Social Change (ASSC) and Cultures of Technoscience (CoT) groups in the Faculty of Arts and Education, and the Centre for Law as Protection, in the Deakin Law School, Faculty of Business and Law.
Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox, PhD, M. Phil, B.A, is an interdisciplinary researcher and visual artist based in Meanjin/Brisbane, Australia. She is an Honorary Research Fellow in the School of Communication and Arts, The University of Queensland. Her research and creative practice examine issues associated with contemporary militarised technology, and the militarise-ability of civilian technology. She has a particular interest in increasing civilian and military technological reliance on frequencies in the electromagnetic spectrum for communication and connectivity. She conceives the earth-to-satellite environment as a techno-colonised space, occupied by visible material infrastructure and invisible signalic infrastructure. To visualise these ideas in her creative practice Kathryn experiments with ideas of scape, from landscapes, comic-scapes, to signal-scapes. Her research is published in peer reviewed journals and edited books. She has exhibited her paintings in Australia and internationally.
Danish Sheikh is a Senior Lecturer at Monash Law School. His work examines how law shapes queerness, and how queer communities, in turn, creatively reshape law through resistance. He approaches these questions by developing performance as a method of legal inquiry, drawing on queer theory, theatre and performance studies, and law and humanities scholarship. A central concern of his work is how queer creativity unsettles inherited assumptions about legal pedagogy and legal method.
Danish is the author of Love and Reparation, which restages the litigation challenging India’s sodomy law through a hybrid form combining courtroom transcripts, archival research, and personal memoir. His research on the legal regulation of sexuality has been cited by the Supreme Court of India in its decision to decriminalise homosexuality. His forthcoming monograph, Lawful Repair: Reimagining Law through Queer Dissent, to be published by Duke University Press in 2027, advances an account of repair as a method of queer legal dissent. His work has received several awards, including the Law, Literature and Humanities Association of Australasia’s Early Career Researcher Article Prize (2023) and Postgraduate Paper Prize (2021).
Alongside his scholarly work, Danish is a theatre practitioner who approaches performance as a site of jurisprudential and pedagogical experimentation. His lecture-performance Much to Do With Law, But More to Do With Love, won the 2025 Queer Playwriting Award and was presented at Gasworks Arts Park as part of Midsumma Festival 2026. His play Bureaucracy: A Love Story was a finalist for the 2026 Griffin Theatre Award. His plays have also been nominated for the Bruntwood Prize and the Hindu Playwriting Award.
Painting: Kathryn Brimblecombe-Fox, Ghost Sky, Oil on linen, 56 x 122cm, 2023
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