
  • Staff
  • Students
  • Library
Flinders University Logo Flinders University Logo
  • Study

    Study areas

    • Business
    • Computer science and information technology
    • Creative arts and media
    • Criminology
    • Defence and national security
    • Education
    • Engineering
    • Environment
    • Health
    • Humanities and social sciences
    • Innovation and enterprise
    • International relations and political science
    • Languages
    • Law
    • Medicine
    • Nursing and midwifery
    • Psychology
    • Science
    • Social work
    • Sport

    I am...

    • a high school student
    • a non-school leaver
    • a future honours student
    • a future postgraduate student
    • a future research student
    • a future online student
    • a future Indigenous student
    • an international student
    • a parent
    • a school counsellor/teacher
    Explore
    Admission pathways
    Apply
    Contact us
  • Study

    Study areas

    • Business
    • Creative arts
    • Education
    • Engineering
    • Environment
    • Government
    • Health sciences
    • Humanities
    • Information technology
    • Law
    • Medicine
    • Nursing
    • Psychology
    • Public health
    • Science
    • Social sciences
    • Social work

    International websites

    • China
    • Vietnam
    Explore Flinders
    Apply
    Contact us
  • Research

    Research areas

    • Engineering and technology
    • Health and medical
    • People and society
    • Science, environment and natural resources
    • Emerging research - Defence

    Fearless Research

    • Research Changing Lives

    I am...

    • a potential collaborator
    • a researcher
    • a potential research student
    • a current research student
    Research@Flinders
    Institutes and centres
    Partner with us
    Participate
  • Research

    Research areas

    • Engineering and technology
    • Health and medical
    • People and society
    • Science, environment and natural resources
    • Emerging research - Defence

    Fearless Research

    • Research Changing Lives

    I am...

    • a potential collaborator
    • a researcher
    • a potential research student
    • a current research student
    Research@Flinders
    Institutes and centres
    Partner with us
    Participate
  • Engage

    I want to...

    • Engage with us
    • Connect with students
    • Locate a clinic
    • Book a campus venue
    • Find a tender
    • Give to Flinders
    • Work at Flinders
    • Participate in a research study
    • See what's on
    • Shop Flinders merchandise
    • Explore Indigenous education

    Related links

    • Flinders New Venture Institute
    • Alumni
    • Health2Go
    • Flinders University Museum of Art
    • Flinders One Sport and Fitness
    Business and government
    Community
    Culture
    International
  • Alumni

    I want to...

    • Join an alumni network
    • Establish an alumni network
    • Share a memory
    • Access career services
    • Order a transcript
    • Give to Flinders
    • Update my details
    • Find a classmate
    • Shop Flinders merchandise
    Our alumni
    Benefits and services
    Get involved
    Stay connected
  • Giving

    Donate today

    • Donate online
    • Donate by mail
    • Giving online FAQs (PDF)
    • Staff Workplace Giving Program
    • Contact us

    Ways to give

    • Give in celebration or in memory
    • Leave a gift in your Will
    • Giving from overseas
    • Give a cultural gift
    • Get involved

    Donate to
    Why give
    Our donors
  • About

    The 2025 agenda

    • Vision and mission
    • Our strategic plan
    • Our values and ethos
    • Flinders Village

    Governance and leadership

    • University Council
    • Chancellor
    • Vice-Chancellor

    Our organisation

    • Colleges
    • Library
    • Professional services
    • Staff directory
    • Sustainability at Flinders

    Campus and locations

    • Bedford Park
    • Tonsley
    • City Campus
    • Flinders in the NT
    • Health and Medical Research Building
    Fast facts
    History
    Structure
    Contact us
  • Staff
  • Students
  • Library
  • You have no saved courses.

    Continue to explore your course options.

     
    Explore our courses

    Your saved courses

    {{{courseName}}}
    mail_outline
    delete
    View all saved courses
  • Quick links 
    • Current students
    • Staff
    • Library
    • Flinders dashboard (Okta)
    • Ask Flinders
    • Flinders Learning Online (FLO)
    • Parking
    • Campus map: Bedford Park
    • Staff directory
    • Jobs at Flinders
    • Shop Flinders merchandise

 
  • College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences 

    Teaching programs and research sections

    • Creative and performing arts
    • History and archaeology
    • Languages, literature and culture
    • Social sciences
  • Study with us
  • Our research 
    • Creative & Performing Arts research
    • History, Archaeology & Geography research
    • Indigenous Studies research
    • Language, Literature, Culture & Society research
    • Inequality research
  • Who we are 
    • Language, Literature, Culture and Society
    • Language, Literature, Culture and Society
  • Contact us
  • Industry Advisory Board

Creative Writing Research

Creative Writing Research

Research categories 

Projects 

Researchers 

Vision / mission statement

Our research explores the powerful moral and socio-cultural dilemmas of our time through the analysis and creation of accessible and industry engaged literature and art. Our writing drives cultural conversations, inspires empathy, and instigates creative thinking. We are interested in transformative storytelling, focussed on the human condition and non-human actors. Our mission is to create change through the power of story.

Approach to research-led practice and practice-led research

Our award-winning and bestselling researchers employ interdisciplinary approaches, using methodologies of both research-led practice and practice-led research to produce impactful scholarship and literature. We value an integrated approach to creative research and specialise in popular genre fictions.

Research categories

  • Speculative fiction
  • Historical fiction
  • Romance fiction
  • Commercial fiction 
  • Life writing
  • Writing about writing
  • Performance writing

Projects

someone-elses-bucket-list.jpg
Women's Fiction/Book Club Fiction keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews

Summary:

My research focusses on women's fiction and book club fiction: high quality general fiction that concentrates specifically on women's stories.

I am interested in the intersections between the literary and the commercial, and in the boundaries between genres and ways they can be explored and/or stretched.

Grants:

CHASS funding

Someone Else's Bucket List

Category:

Romance fiction

Commercial fiction

impossible music.jpg
Writing for young adult and middle grade readers keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Sean Williams

Summary:

I write novels and short stories in series or as standalone stories that use the tropes of the fantastic (science fiction, fantasy, horror, etc) and other genres to explore pressing contemporary issues, such as identity, disability, and social justice.

These works are intended for middle grade (10+) or YA (13+) readers, are set in contemporary and pseudo-historical periods, and are occasionally written with a collaborator, such as Garth Nix.

With Dr Lisa Harper-Cambell, I am co-writing the definitive book on the trope of the matter transmitter ('Beam me up, Scotty'), which will be published by Peter Lang in 2024.

Awards:

2021 Shortlisted, Patricia Wrightson’s Prize for Young People’s Literature, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for Her Perilous Mansion

2021 Nominated, Aurealis Awards (Best Children’s Fiction) for Her Perilous Mansion

2021 Notable Book, Children’s Book Council of Australia for Her Perilous Mansion

2020 Shortlisted, Ethel Turner Prize for Young People’s Literature, NSW Premier’s Literary Awards for Impossible Music

2020 Notable Book, Children’s Book Council of Australia for Impossible Music

2016 Nominated, Aurealis Award, Best Science Fiction Novel for Twinmaker: Fall

Grants:

Sean received an Arts SA grant in 2017 (New Work, $8,000) to finish writing Impossible Music (previously funded by the Australia Council)

Honour Among Ghosts

Her Perilous Mansion

Impossible Music

Have Sword, Will Travel 1

Let Sleeping Dragons Lie

Funny Bones

Category:

Speculative fiction

Commercial fiction

Historical fiction

the-ursula-project.jpg
The Ursula Project: Speculative Fiction Storytelling for Technology Foresight keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Professor Kim Wilkins (University of Queensland)

Dr Helen Marshall (University of Queensland)

Dr Lisa Bennett (Flinders)

Summary:

The Ursula Project is a collaboration between The University of Queensland, Flinders University, and the Australian Department of Defence, Science and Technology.

Our aim is to adapt story-telling techniques drawn from speculative fiction (across books, games, and screen) into workshop material that will help Defence personnel prepare for the potential disruptive effects of new technologies.

Writers of speculative fiction have expert knowledge in building and populating imagined worlds and communities, and playing out chains of cause and effect within them.

The skill set that we aim to develop into transferable skills for technology foresight are the four key domains of speculative fiction storytelling, broadly: setting, character, plot, and style.

Grants:

  • ORNet Defence Innovation Partnership grant ($98,000)

Categories:

Speculative fiction

Writing about writing 

bound-for-sin.jpg
Love and Romance keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews

Summary:

My research focuses on the generic conventions of popular romance and the intersections between feminisms and romance fiction and includes the novels I write under the names Amy T. Matthews, Amy Barry, and Tess LeSue.

This large-scale project has multiple outcomes (novels, short stories, a short film, and exegetical and scholarly papers and articles) and considers the cultural conversations enacted in popular fictions; the interplay between progressivism and conservatism in the genres of romance and women’s fiction; the cultural and economic power of this more than $1billion industry; and the tensions between love and romance.

Grants:

This project has received internal funding from CHASS.

Amy T Matthews

Amy Barry

Tess LeSue

Kit McBride Gets a Wife

Marrying off Morgan McBride

Bound For Eden

Bound for Sin

Bound for Temptation

Bound for Glory

You write what? In defence of romance.

Crush: Stories about love

The Hopeful Romantic

Text Prose: Graduation

Removing Blood Stains

Entangled: the exegetical process of a romance writer

Entangled

Category:

Romance fiction

creating-new-climate-stories.jpg
Creating New Climate Stories: collaborative posthuman approaches keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews (CI), Dr Tully Barnett, Dr Rachel Hennessy (University of Adelaide/University of Melbourne), Dr Alex Cothren (Research Associate, Flinders) 

Summary:

As a research team, we consider posthuman theory and climate change fiction, exploring the artistic and emotionally supportive possibilities of collaborative storytelling.

Our research considers how narrative and storytelling might counter affective responses of solastalgic anxiety; our project includes analysis of existing climate fiction, an enquiry into the health and wellbeing of authors as they create climate change fiction, and the development of posthuman artist laboratories focussed on developing collaborative writing processes.

Grants:

Funded internally by Assemblage project funding, Assemblage next level project funding and CHASS research funding – developing towards an ARC DP application.

Read the article

Category:

Speculative fiction

Writing about writing

songs-for-dark-seasons.jpg
Speculative Fiction Short Stories keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Lisa Bennett (writing as Lisa L. Hannett), Dr Sean Williams

Summary:

Among practitioners, ‘speculative fiction’ is used as an umbrella term for all fantastical modes of writing, including, but not limited to, fantasy, science fiction, horror, magical realism, post-apocalyptic fiction, alternate history, utopian and dystopian fiction.

All of these subgenres concern themselves with a “world that is and isn’t ours” while readers can “expect intrusive unreality” within their narratives.

Between us, we have published over 200 original speculative fiction short stories. Our works have won or been shortlisted for numerous national and international award, including the World Fantasy Award, the Aurealis Award (over 40 times), the Australian National Science Fiction Award (20 times), the Australian Shadows Award, and the Norma K. Hemming Award. 

Uncanny Angles

Little Labyrinths: Speculative Microfictions

The View From the End of the World

Songs for Dark Seasons

Category:

Speculative fiction

Commercial fiction

(re)creating-antarctica.jpg
(Re)creating Antarctica keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Sean Williams

Summary:

In 2017, I was part of the Australian Antarctic Division's expedition to Casey research station, on a funded Fellowship to bring experiences of our southern territories to greater public awareness through the Arts.

This expedition has resulted in a string of creative works that continue to the present day, each of which explores Antarctica through the lenses of creative and speculative history.

With my fellow investigators of the multi-institutional Creative Antarctica ARC grant, I will be continuing my exploration of the "far south" through music and a novel-in-progress.

Some details below, and more under Links.

2022, forthcoming. “Last of the Rational Actors at the End of the Unnatural World,” Griffith Review (short story)

2019. “The Second Coming of the Martians,” War of the Worlds: Battlefield Australia, eds. Steve Proposch, Christopher Sequeira & Bryce Stephens, Clan Destine Press (short story)

2017. “An Alien Landscape,” Writers Victoria (article)

Grants:

  • ARC Discovery Project “Creative Antarctica: Australian artists and writers in the far south” through University of Tasmania with CIs Elizabeth Leane, Hanne Nielsen, Carolyn Philpott, Philip Samartzis, Martin Walch, and Sachi Yasuda (2022-2025)

  • Australian Antarctica Division Arts Fellowship (2017)

  • ACT Eminent Writer-in-Residence - partnership between ACT Writers’ Centre, the Museum for Australian Democracy at Old Parliament House, and the Ainslie and Gorman Arts Centre

The Winter Gardener

In Antartica

Mawson and the Martians: What if…?

An Arts Fellow’s Eye on Antarctica

Reflections on Returning from Antarctica

Sean’s Antarctica blog entries

Categories:

Speculative fiction

Historical fiction

Commercial fiction

Writing about writing 

navigating-the-kingdom-of-night.jpg
Fictionalizing the Holocaust keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews

Summary:

In 1949 the critic Theodor Adorno famously proclaimed that ‘To write poetry after Auschwitz is barbaric.’

Adorno’s statement, made so soon after the horrors of the Holocaust, still resonates today and can be (and is) applied critically to all imaginative literature about the Holocaust. 

My work considers the ethics of fictionalizing the Holocaust in the context of this heated critical debate.

The award-winning novel End of the Night Girl, the exegetical monograph Navigating the Kingdom of Night, and scholarly chapters and articles are the outcomes of this work.

Navigating the Kingdom of Night

End of the Night Girl

Creative Writing with Critical Theory: Inhabitation

Antipodes

Category:

Historical fiction

Writing about writing

word-docs.jpg
Word Docs keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews, Dr Alex Vickery-Howe, Dr Sean Williams

Summary:

Word Docs is a pioneering podcast, featuring three academic Creative Writers in exegetical conversation.

These three creative scholars and practitioners explore and complicate questions of research and the limitations of creative research in the academe.

Using examination of their own processes, methodologies, and creative works (Matthews as a novelist; Williams as novelist and musician; and Vickery-Howe as a playwright) and those of other authors (including Garth Nix and Lisa L. Hannett) the researchers seek to expose and unpack the frameworks of creative research.

The podcast serves as exegesis for projects including Decameron 2.0 and Watchlist (Vickery-Howe); Impossible Music and His Perilous Mansion (Williams); and Bound for Glory and Someone Else’s Bucket List (Matthews).

This assemblage of new knowledge and analysis hints at intriguing future possibilities for the exegesis. 

Word Docs Podcast

Word Docs' Facebook page

Categories:

Writing about writing 

Listen to the latest episode

Listen on Apple Podcasts
solarpunk.jpg
Narrative in Music keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Sean Williams

Summary:

As a composer of music as well as literature, I am fascinated by the transmission of meaning through both artistic practices.

Under the name "theadelaidean", I craft works in the ambient experimental genre that test traditional notions of musicality employing contemporary and traditional methods of composition, creation, and post-production.

By embedding storytelling and literature in works of music (and vice versa), through narrative, spoken word and experimental uses of the human voice, I am exploring the cross-pollination of words and musical notes, such as the contemporary mass and opera.

2023. Bárbaros inSPACE project premiering 26/7, with Lina Limosani (movement) and Thom Buchanan (visual art). In development since 2016.

2022, forthcoming. Eternity Is (album) (as “theadelaidean”), Projekt Records.

2022. Solarpunk (album) (as “theadelaidean”), Projekt Records.

2020. “Disjecta Membra”, Alive in the Hall of Possibility (album) (as “theadelaidean”), Projekt Records.

2016. “M-Cubed” (libretto), Cabinet of Oddities, Melbourne Fringe Festival. With Sam van Betuw (composer)

Grants:

  • Australia Council for the Arts: 2016 - Project Grant, $30,000 - Bárbaros
  • Arts SA: 2020 - New Work, $26,680 - Bárbaros
  • Arts SA: 2022 - Bringing Bárbaros to world premiere performance in the Adelaide Festival Centre's 50th year

Bárbaros

Alive in the hall of possibilities

Solarpunk

Category:

Speculative fiction

viking-women.jpg
Viking Women: Life and Lore keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Lisa Bennett (writing as Lisa Hannett)

Summary:

There is an enduring fascination with Vikings in literature and popular culture — and yet, even now, when we think of them it’s often men who take centre stage: Vikings like Ragnarr loðbrók, Sigurd the dragon-slayer, Eirík the Red and his brave sons, who discovered North America centuries before Columbus set sail.

Stories about Viking women — if they get told at all — tend to focus on three incredible but fantastical figures: shieldmaidens, goddesses, Valkyries.

Regular women too often get overshadowed by their flashier legendary sisters, though their feats and personalities are no less impressive despite being tied to everyday life in this world.

Viking Women: Life and Lore delves into these women’s astounding everyday lives and their far-reaching legacies.

It presents engaging historical context alongside thoroughly-researched speculative biographies of women from all ages and social strata: slaves, housewives, mothers, far-travellers, young girls, old widows, and anchoresses. 

Category:

Life writing

Historical fiction

kit-mcbride-gets-a-wife.jpg
Writing Revisionist Historical Fiction for Commercial Markets keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews

Summary:

This interdisciplinary project considers the politics of representation in commercial fiction.

My research sits in the fields of Creative Writing, Literary Studies, and Cultural Studies, and looks at intersections of race and gender in historical commercial fiction set in colonies.

My research considers issues of masculinities, femininities, and the frontier (in the American Western and the Ozstorical); invasion and violence; imperialist nostalgia and colonial reinscription; and the role commercial fictions play in representing and reinscribing colonial history.

This project includes my fiction written under the names Tess LeSue and Amy Barry.

Grants:

This work has received internal research funding from CHASS.

Amy Barry

Tess LeSue

Category:

Commercial fiction

Romance fiction

first-nations-commercial.jpg
First Nations Commercial Fiction Fellowship keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Amy Matthews (in partnership with HarperCollins and Writers SA)

Summary:

In partnership with Harlequin/HarperCollins and Writers SA, this project sought to create a pathway for Indigenous authors to publish in the Australian commercial fiction landscape.

The Fellowship invited submissions from emerging First Nations authors, and Angie Martin was selected to develop her novel Melaleuca.

The Fellowship ran 2019-2022: Angie attended Adelaide Writers’ Week; participated in Writers SA masterclasses; was a visiting Fellow at Flinders; was mentored through three drafts of her novel with Dr Amy Matthews at Flinders; underwent a publisher’s edit of the novel with Jo Mackay, Head of Local Publishing at HQ/HarperCollins, and has recently signed a two-book deal as an outcome of the Fellowship.

Grants:

This work has received internal research funding from the DVCR and CHASS.

First Nations Fellowship

Category:

Commercial fiction

Romance fiction

writing-bestsellers.jpg
Writing Bestsellers: Love, Money and Creative Practice keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Lisa Bennett, Professor Kim Wilkins (University of Queensland)

Summary:

While the term 'bestseller' explicitly relates books to sales, commercially successful books are also products of individual creative work.

Our monograph presents a new perspective on the relationship between art and the market, with particular reference to bestselling writers and books. 

We examine some existing perspectives on art's relationship to the marketplace to trouble persistent binaries that see the two in opposition; we break down the monolith of the marketplace by thinking of it as made up of a range of invested, non-hostile participants such as publishing personnel and readers; we articulate the material dimensions of creative writing in the industry through the words of bestselling writers themselves; and we examine how the existence of bestselling books and writers in the world of letters bears enormous influence on the industry, and on the practice of other writers.

Writing Bestsellers

Categories:

Commercial fiction

Writing about writing

life-savings-portrait.jpg
‘Life Savings’ – Filmmaking through interdisciplinary collaboration keyboard_arrow_up

Investigators:

Dr Sarah Peters, Dr Tom Young, Dr Sean Williams, Helen Carter, Rebecca Edwards, Dr Nicholas Godfrey, Shane Bevin, Katie Cavanagh, Jason Bevan

Summary:

The Life Savings project began in May 2021 with the establishment of an interdisciplinary writers room.

Our goal was to identify and experiment with innovative ways of working collaboratively in the development of a short film, generating a case study of methods and strategies which can then be implemented both in the classroom and in wider industry environments.

Grant:

  • Assemblage Funding

Categories:

Interdisciplinary collaboration

Meet our Creative and Performing Arts researchers

At Flinders, our researchers at the College of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences include experienced experts from many different areas. Shaping our ever-changing world, our practice-based research allows us to stay at the forefront of modern education.

lisa-bennett.png

Research Section Head:

Dr Lisa Bennett

Creative and Performing Arts researchers

ASSEMBLAGE

Centre for Creative Arts

Assemblage is Flinders University’s research centre for artistic enquiry and art creation.

It is the meeting point of art and science, health, technology, engineering, industry and community. We embrace new technologies and ambitious collaborations to dissolve perceived barriers between artforms, disciplines and areas of research to uncover boundless possibilities.

Find out more

Flinders University Logo

Sturt Rd, Bedford Park
South Australia 5042

South Australia | Northern Territory
Global | Online

Information for

  • Future students
  • Alumni
  • Media
  • Business and community
  • Current students
  • Staff
  • External contractors

Directories

  • Contact us
  • Campus and locations
  • Staff directory
  • Colleges
  • Library
  • Research Institutes and Centres

Follow Flinders

Facebook - Flinders University
Instagram - Flinders University
TikTok - Flinders University
LinkedIn - Flinders University
Bluesky - Flinders University
YouTube - Flinders University
Brand SA logo Innovative Research University logo Indigenous communities

Website feedback

Disclaimer

Accessibility

Privacy

CRICOS Provider: 00114A      TEQSA Provider ID: PRV12097      TEQSA category: Australian University

Last Updated: 15 Apr 2025

FOREVER FEARLESS

This website uses cookies

Flinders University uses cookies to ensure website functionality, personalisation and a variety of purposes as set out in its website privacy statement. This statement explains cookies and their use by Flinders.

If you consent to the use of our cookies then please click the button below:

Accept all cookies and continue

If you do not consent to the use of all our cookies then please click the button below. Clicking this button will result in all cookies being rejected except for those that are required for essential functionality on our website.

Reject all non-essential cookies and continue