Professor Jillian Hamilton

Biography

Professor Jillian Hamilton is Director - Research, Innovation, and Impact, LTU, Chancellery, QUT. She leads strategic innovation in learning and teaching and the advancement of high-quality Higher Education research at QUT. This includes an evidence-based approach to learning and teaching innovation in strategic priority areas; and building networks and capacity for research in higher education. She is Director of QUT's Learning and Teaching Innovation CoLab, and Chair of the Higher Education Research Network.

Jillian is Vice President of the Council for Australasian Leaders in Learning and Teaching, the peak body of learning leadership in higher education. She is a Registered Expert for the Tertiary Education Quality and Standards Authority (TEQSA) and a course reviewer, quality assurer, and external examiner for art and design courses in Australian and International universities.

A Principal Fellow of the UK Higher Education Academy (PFHEA), Jillian has been recognised by numerous national awards including an Australian Award for University Teaching: Program Award (2017); Australian Award for University Teaching: Teaching Excellence (Arts and Humanities) (2013); AAUT Citation for Outstanding Contributions to Student Learning (2013); and Award for Institutional Excellence, and Overall Winner of the National Leadership in Benchmarking Sessional Teaching Award (2013). She has also been recognised by institutional awards as an individual and as part of a team; including Vice Chancellor's Award for Excellence, Vice Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award, Award for Institutional Advancement in Learning and Teaching, Award for Excellence in Teaching, Dean's Award for Excellence in Teaching and Dean's Commendation for Postgraduate Supervision. She was a QUT Teaching Fellow and was awarded best research paper by the Higher Education Research network in 2017.

Previously, Jillian led professional/academic development for early-career academics across QUT including as Course Coordinator: Graduate Certificate in Academic Practice (learning and teaching and curriculum, research, leadership, and academic career advancement). She also led the multi-national award-winning Sessional Academic Success program and Sessional Academic Success Advisors across sixteen schools. Before this, she was QUT's Director: Student Success and Retention, with a portfolio including the Student Success Program; Monitoring Student Learning Engagement; First-Year Experience and Retention; and Peer Programs Strategy. In these senior leadership roles, Jillian has led numerous boards and committees.

Prior to her senior leadership roles in the Chancellery, Jillian was an academic in the Creative Industries Faculty for over a decade. She was Discipline Leader of Art and Design (Interactive and Visual Design, Visual Arts, Animation and Creative Advertising), and taught interaction design, visual communication theory and practice, digital media theory, and professional practice for design.

Jillian supervises PhDs in fields of digital media transformation including the design of innovative technologies and applications for higher education, experimental film, digital storytelling, visual communication, and digital marketing communication for universities. She has supervised 8 PhDs to completion, and is a regular PhD examiner.

Jillian’s research focuses on academic leadership and academic recognition, learning and teaching innovation in transdisciplinary contexts, digital learning, co-design, and HDR supervision in practice-led and practice-based research. She has conducted practice-led research enabling online social collaboration, as well as digital applications for learning. She is particularly interested in qualitative methods, including practice-based research, participatory design, and visual methods.

Jillian is currently leading a Council of Australasian University Leaders in Learning and Teaching grant on recognition of good practice in higher education. She has led an Australian Government Office for Learning and Teaching (OLT) Strategic Priority Commissioned Good Practice Report: Postgraduate Research and Coursework Degrees in 2015, and in 2013 led an OLT Teaching Leadership for Excellence Grant: Building Distributed Leadership for Effective Supervision of Creative Practice Higher Research Degrees (LE12-2264), with project partners University of Melbourne; AUT University Auckland; the University of Western Sydney and UNSW. She has been a project team member of several national research projects on student mobility, student success, and recognition and benchmarking practice. She was co-convenor of the 2019 Learning Leaders in Higher Education Conference and Chairs the annual Advancing Academic Development conferences.