Category Archives: ECA Blog

ECA Blog | One Year As An Indigenous Early Career Researcher

One Year As An Indigenous Early Career Researcher.
Sharna Motlap

NAIDOC Week 2025 marks a powerful 50-year milestone of honouring and elevating Indigenous voices, culture, and resilience, its theme, “The Next Generation: Strength, Vision & Legacy,” resonates deeply with my personal journey. 

The journey into academia, particularly as an Indigenous researcher, is paved with unique challenges and rewards. As I reflect on my first year as an Early Career Research Fellow (ECMR),

ECA Blog | Bridging Continents: Teaching Master of Public Health in Bangladesh and Australia

Bridging Continents: Teaching Master of Public Health in Bangladesh and Australia
Dr Sheikh Mohammad Alif

Teaching the Master of Public Health (MPH) courses in two vastly different contexts, Bangladesh and Australia, has been a transformative work experience for me over the past decade. With five years of MPH teaching in Bangladesh, followed by over five years in Australia, I have encountered unique challenges and insights that have deeply informed my classroom approach to public health education.

ECA Blog | Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses

Don’t forget to stop and smell the roses.
Dr Nathan Dawes

Starting out as an early career academic was both exciting and challenging, a journey that, looking back, I realise could have been much smoother with a few key insights. When I first transitioned from a decade-long career as a clinician to an academic, I approached it with an intense determination and a detailed roadmap. I had mapped out timeframes for every milestone: the completion of my PhD,

ECA Blog | Failures – I’ve had a few

Failures, I’ve had a few
Senior Academic Perspective
ECA Blog: July 2024
Professor Richard Franklin
Disipline of Public Health and Tropical Medicine, James Cook University

It is not easy to write about your failures, let alone make them public. However, I believe that for every failure I have had (and there have been a few), I have learnt and grown, both as a person and an academic.

ECA Blog | Empowering Students: Tailoring Course Content Through Active Engagement

Empowering Students: Tailoring Course Content Through Active Engagement
ECA Blog: June 2024
Dr Mikaela Wheeler, Early Career Academic Committee
Lecturer, School of Public Health, The University of Queensland

As I sat at my desk planning for the semester ahead, I wondered: what skills did my students want to learn this semester? What motivated them? And how could I connect the two to deliver a fun, meaningful, and impactful semester?

ECA Blog | Learning how to be a good PhD candidate!

Learning how to be a good PhD candidate!
ECA Blog, Senior Academic Perspective: May 2024
Anonymous Senior Academic
School of Psychology and Public Health

As experts in our chosen field, often we are doing a PhD because we are experts in our chosen field. This is particularly so if we are mature-aged with years of work experience – not academic experience. That was me. The first thing I had to learn was that doing a PhD is a whole different world to the one in which I work,

ECA Blog | Move Forward To Find Opportunities To Have An Impact

Move Forward To Find Opportunities To Have An Impact
ECA Blog: May 2024
Helen Scudamore, Early Career Academic Committee Secretary

I tossed up between doing a GOAT (Greatest of All Time) experience or a failure. The tendency is to want to talk about what went well in the past and accomplishments, but for a little bit of fun let’s consider a “failure”.

One that jumps out in my mind is when I was not successful in renewing a contract.

ECA Blog | Navigating Teaching Cultures: Theory vs. Practice in India and Australia

Navigating Teaching Cultures: Theory vs. Practice in India and Australia
ECA Blog: April 2024
Dr Tanmay Bagade, Early Career Academic Committee member

Reflecting on my journey from being a medical graduate in India to a teaching-intensive faculty member at a university in Australia, I am struck by the contrasting differences in educational approaches between these two countries. I feel that the teaching philosophies are entirely different and deeply rooted in the academic cultures of both countries.

ECA Blog | My GOAT networking experience and what I learnt

My GOAT networking experience and what I learnt: Take that chance, immerse yourself in the experience, and pay it forward.
ECA Blog, Senior Academic Perspective: April 2024
Associate Professor Helen Keen-Dyer

Disaster Management and Health, School of Health, Medical and Applied Sciences, CQUniversity Australia, Senior Fellow, Higher Education Academy

In an earlier blog post, Associate Professor Megan Teychenne reflected on the importance of surrounding yourself with GOOD people, and I wholeheartedly echo that sentiment.