DrBunty Avieson

MPhil, PhD (Macquarie)

Bunty Avieson spent a year in 2008-2009 in the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, jointly funded by the United Nations and the Bhutan Observer newspaper, to teach journalists and editors, as well as to advise media stakeholders, as part of the country’s move to democracy. This provided the opportunity to undertake research for her PhD thesis, which she completed in 2013, receiving the Vice Chancellor’s Commendation from Macquarie University. During the year-long posting in Bhutan she acted as a consultant to Reporters Without Borders, Asia-Pacific desk.

Avieson’s Master of Philosophy (Macquarie, 2008), titled The Poetics of Paranoia, investigated the construction of self with reference to the theories of Jacques Derrida and 1st century Indian philosopher Nagarjuna.

Avieson’s journalism practice includes news and feature writing in Britain, Australia and Asia for newspapers, including The Australian and the Straits Times in Singapore, as well as a wide range of Australian magazines, including Good Weekend and Good Reading. In the 1990s she was editor of Woman’s Day, and editorial director of New Idea.

She has published three novels, a novella and two memoirs, which have been variously translated into Japanese, German and Thai, and been awarded two Ned Kelly Crime Writing Awards for her crime fiction.

She has taught across a variety of media subjects since 2008, including news journalism, feature writing, creative non-fiction and international communications. She joined University of Sydney in 2014.

Since 2018 Bunty Avieson has been a Principal Investigator (Bhutan) in the Worlds of Journalism Study. In 2020 Avieson was awarded a Discovery Early Career Research Award by the Australian Research Council for a project titled: The Bhutan-Wiki project: knowledge, literacy and orality in the digital age.