Jill Bennett
Professor Jill Bennett
- Post Nominals: FAHA
- Fellow Type: Fellow
- Elected to the Academy: 2022
- Section(s): Cultural And Communication Studies
Biography
Jill Bennett is Scientia Professor and Australian Research Council Laureate Fellow at UNSW. She is Founding Director of The Big Anxiety Festival; the Big Anxiety Research Centre [BARC]; and the Felt Experience & Empathy Lab [fEEL] at UNSW, where she is also a co-lead of the Ageing Futures Institute, and Engagement lead of the NHMRC ALIVE Centre.
Her research is predominantly in the area of trauma and creative practice, spanning visual cultural analysis and psychosocial theory/evaluation. Her outputs include collaborative virtual reality/immersive media and public engagement projects, exploring the role of creativity and trauma-informed design in supporting mental and emotional health”as well as curated exhibitions and festivals. Her books include Empathic Vision (2005), Practical Aesthetics (2011), Curating Sydney (with Saskia Beudel, 2014), a number of monographs on media arts, and most recently, The Big Anxiety: Taking Care of Mental Health in Time of Crisis (Bloomsbury, 2022). She is series editor of Thinking in the World (Bloomsbury) for which she co-edited the Thinking in the World Reader.