Professor Catherine Manathunga

IAS Fellow at St Cuthbert's Society, October - December 2025

Contact Details

• Home Institution email: cmanathu@usc.edu.au
• Durham email: TBC
• Durham Tel: TBC 

Professor Catherine Manathunga (PhD) is a Professor of Education Research in the School of Education and Tertiary Access and Co-Director of the UniSC Indigenous and Transcultural Research Centre at the University of the Sunshine Coast (UniSC), Australia. She is an historian who draws together interdisciplinary expertise in historical, sociological and cultural studies research to bring an innovative perspective to higher education research. Her current research is focused on First Nations and transcultural education, decolonisation, academic subjectivities, critical university studies and university histories. Her most significant books include Doctoral Research Supervision, Pedagogy and the PhD: Forged in fire? (Routledge, 2023) co-authored with Bill Green and Alison Lee; a two-volume edited collection on academic work for the Palgrave Macmillan series Critical University Studies, Resisting neoliberalism in higher education: seeing through the cracks (Vol. 1) and Resisting neoliberalism in higher education: prising open the cracks (Vol. 2) (Palgrave Macmillan, 2019) co-edited with Dorothy Bottrell; and a sole-authored monograph, Intercultural Postgraduate Supervision: Reimagining time, place and knowledge, (Routledge, 2014).

Professor Manathunga has held visiting fellowships at National University of Ireland, Galway; Nagoya University, Japan and RMIT, Australia. Her research has been funded by the Australian Research Council, Australian Department of Foreign Affairs & Trade Australia China Council, Australian Learning and Teaching Council, Ako Aotearoa (NZ Centre for Tertiary Education), Higher Education Research & Development Society of Australasia, Nagoya University Japan, Hiroshima University Japan and industry partners.  She has jointly won a number of University of Queensland and Australian national teaching awards for programs that enhance research students’ learning.  She has had lengthy experience in working with culturally diverse and Indigenous peoples in Australia, Aotearoa New Zealand and South Africa.

Professor Catherine Manathunga is currently working on a philosophical and theoretical project that contributes to debates about how 21^st century universities might work towards achieving global knowledge justice. Her planned monograph argues that First Nations and transcultural philosophical and theoretical resources and multisensory methodologies could be used to reimagine higher education futures. This monograph traces the philosophies and theories of eight First Nations and transcultural theorists across time from the 14^th century CE to the present; and across place, incorporating the lands of Australia and Aotearoa New Zealand as well as locations in the Middle East/North Africa, South America, Africa and Asia.

At the IAS, Professor Manathunga will be working with Professor Catherine Montgomery and Dr Craig Stewart on an exciting project entitled ‘Surfacing knowledge from doctoral research: mining the hidden potential of international doctoral theses’. This project aims to explore the knowledge and impact of the research produced by PhD studies in UK universities housed in the EThOS repository. The EThOS repository contains 637,000 digital doctoral theses, representing an aggregated total of almost 2 million years of research across a range of disciplines. The EThOS collection holds records dating back to 1650 and reflects a history of academic disciplines across almost four centuries. We will be exploring some of the histories and philosophies represented in the collection, and the ways in which it is part of the colonial encounter.

Professor Manathunga holds a BA Honours (First Class) and a PhD (History) from The University of Queensland and a PG Cert Education (Higher Ed.) from the Queensland University of Technology in Australia.

Events

TBC