Lecturer: Creative Arts, UOW
Teaching across the inaugural year of UOW’s Bachelor of Creative Arts, from first-year core courses to a final-year research capstone.
I joined the University of Wollongong as a Lecturer in the School of Creative Arts and Humanities in February 2026, in the inaugural year of the new Bachelor of Creative Arts. Students come to the degree from creative writing, music, performance and theatre, and visual arts and design. My teaching runs across the degree’s arc, from first-year studio inquiry, through community-engaged creative practice, to a final-year research capstone. The thread is the same throughout: helping students treat creative practice as a way of knowing, and something with responsibilities to place, communities and each other.
Of the 45 students who rated my tutoring in my first semester at UOW, nearly all agreed or strongly agreed that I was well prepared, knowledgeable, fair and respectful, and gave helpful, prompt feedback. In CACS112, every one of the 12 students who responded did. Students quotes included:
"I found [Lizzie's] takes and expression of thoughts, concepts on artists practice very refreshing and unique. I was able to draw my own conclusion from her explanations while allowing myself to have space to digest the content and formulate my own arguments".
"Lizzie was always so welcoming in class and always encouraged me to put my ideas into action. She is a kind–hearted person, and her teaching style is very engaging. I always looked forward to classes".
Introduction to Creative Practice (CACS111): Tutor (Autumn 2026)
CACS111 introduces first-year students to practice-based learning and research. Each tutorial works as a “studio of inquiry” that moves between critical dialogue on the week’s lecture, a practical workshop where students test ideas through making, and an online forum for reflection. Students build a process journal across the session to gain insight into how and why they work. I tutored two groups and supported students through each of these tasks, from hand-drawn mapping of their early inquiry through to the final Journal of Inquiry portfolio.
Creative Knowledges (CACS112): Tutor (Autumn 2026)
I tutored in the first-ever offering of Creative Knowledges. It is built on place-based pedagogies, in which students learn through hands-on, outdoor making and develop a sustained relationship with place. The subject invites students to engage with Indigenous Country and knowledges as part of their own creative practice. It draws on my earlier work teaching Indigenous Geography at UOW. Working with these knowledges in a first-year, multidisciplinary classroom needed care. My focus was on creating a respectful space where students can engage critically and generously with knowledge systems that may be new to them, and be challenged by them.
Creative Communities (CACS114): Designer, Subject Coordinator, Tutor & Lecturer (Spring 2026)
I designed and wrote Creative Communities from scratch, and I coordinate it, lecture in it and lead its tutor team. The subject asks what it means to create value with and for communities. Students examine how creative practitioners collaborate across people, places and disciplines, and then work in interdisciplinary groups to a real-world challenge brief, producing a creative prototype for a community.
The subject moves from case studies of collaborative and socially engaged art, through whose knowledge counts and the ethics of working with communities, to a studio phase of planning, feedback and making. After an case study that assesses engagement and understanding of key concepts, students are introduced to the challenge brief about energy justice in the Illawarra Urban Renewable Energy Zone (UREZ). It asked how the transition to renewable energy can be made fairer and more inclusive. Drawing on what they learned from the case study, in interdisciplinary groups, they then developed a creative, collaborative project that contributes to that conversation. Each group produced a prototype and a written report, with each student writing an individual reflection on what they learned from collaborating. This global challenges informed approach also allowed for cross-university collaboaration.
Creative Research (CACS304): Tutor (Spring 2026)
CACS304 is the final-year capstone. Each student runs a creative project alongside the subject and builds a research frame around it: a research proposal, a literature or contextual review, and an exegesis that sets out their questions, context, methods and findings. Students come from different creative disciplines, so much of my work is helping each one find the research questions inside their own practice, locate their work among other artists and scholars, and choose methods that suit how they make.
This is also where my teaching meets my path towards research supervision. The subject takes students through the stages that structure early research candidature: shaping a topic, framing questions, reviewing context, choosing methods and ethics, and articulating findings. Guiding students through that work, across disciplines, is direct preparation for supervising higher degree research. It sits alongside years of industry mentoring, and the HDR supervisor training I completed at UOW.