Stephanie Hemelryk Donald is Dean of Media and Communication at RMIT University in Melbourne, and Honorary Professor of Chinese Media Studies at the University of Sydney. She was China Node co-ordinator for the ARC Asia Pacific Futures Research Network in 2009, and was President of the Chinese Studies Association from 2007-2009. She is a Fellow of the Academy of the Social Sciences, Australia, and a Fellow of the Royal Society of the Arts (UK).
Stephanie is co-author, with Robert Benewick, of The State of China Atlas as well as The Pocket China Atlas is a respected international scholar. She was educated in the UK and Singapore. She worked in the 1980s and early 1990s as an actor and production assistant in the UK.
Stephanie’s first degree was in Chinese at the University of Oxford and her DPhil thesis at the University of Sussex investigated public spaces and politics in Chinese film. She has been working in the Australian higher education sector since 1997, and her career has spanned research, teaching and management responsibilities. Her research and writing focuses on film, media, children’s experience, and the Asia Pacific region.
In recent years Stephanie has worked specifically on urban branding, intra-regional perspectives on cosmopolitanism and migration, and the idea of class in China. Her exhibition on Chinese propaganda art is available online at www.chinaposters.com.au