An international cohort of academics, artists and designers
Lecturers from all around the world who are experts in their fields teach the courses from their native countries, such as Australia, Germany, Dubai, Serbia, South Korea, and Pakistan. Some courses also invite international creative professionals who use cross-disciplinary approaches in their practice, to contribute lectures and join student discussions.
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Rick Bennett, Senior Lecturer,
Head of COFA Online
 Australia
Since 1998, Rick Bennett has undertaken continuing research investigating online collaborative creativity (OCC) between distanced artists, designers and theorists worldwide. Having established numerous online and global creative projects through a succession of research grants, COFA is now a leading player in online visual communication practice and theory research.
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Simon McIntyre, Lecturer,
COFA Online Coordinator
Australia
Simon McIntyre is the Online Course Coordinator (Postgraduate) at the College of Fine Arts, The University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. He has co-operatively pioneered learning and teaching approaches for fully online art and design education since 2003, and has helped establish an internationally recognised quality online learning reputation for the Faculty’s online learning and teaching unit, COFA Online.
Simon has since drawn together educators, researchers, and creative professionals to focus on researching the development and design of sustainable and effective online learning programs through the development the COFA Online Course Author Fellowship Program. The program provides cross-disciplinary staff training and support in curriculum development and teaching approaches specifically for the online environment, and has resulted in an 92% rate of student satisfaction with online teaching, and a 91% rate of student satisfaction with COFA Online course design in 2007 (Results from 2007 COFA Online course evaluations). COFA Online runs up to thirty fully online courses in a wide variety of art and design disciplines. For a full list of available courses, please see the COFA Online website.
Simon’s research has culminated in the co-development and supervision of this international, fully online Master of Cross-Disciplinary Art and Design program for COFA.
In 2006, McIntyre and colleague Rick Bennett’s research and implementation of online learning and teaching research was nationally recognised by the Carrick Institute for Learning and Teaching in Higher Education by being awarded a Citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning for Pioneering internationally recognised best practice in online education in the creative arts and design.
McIntyre is currently undertaking a PhD examining fully online collaborative learning communities under the supervision of the Omnium Research Group and the UNSW Learning & Teaching Unit, and is focusing on addressing the under-researched area of online education within the creative arts. Through his continued research and online teaching practice, Simon continues to help develop systems that improve the quality and delivery of online education in creative arts and design disciplines.
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Ian McArthur, Lecturer
Australia
With over 25 years experience as designer and educationalist Ian has worked in leadership roles in Australia and South East Asia including Program Director of Graphic Design and Multimedia at La Salle DHU International Design College, Dong Hua University, Shanghai, PRChina. In 2000 Ian received the NSW Education Minister’s Award for Excellence in Teaching which acknowledged his contributions to vocational education.
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Karin Watson [Architecture]
Australia
Karin is an architect that has studied and worked in London, South Africa and Sydney. She has been teaching at UNSW as a part time tutor and lecturer since 2003 at COFA's School of Design Studies (Design Studio and Environment/Spatial Design), FBEOutThere! (the Faculty of Built Environment's interdisciplinary community engagement and outreach programs) and COFA Online. Karin also coordinates online and special projects for COFA Online, and is currently co-coordinator of the Blended Learning Pilot Study Program.
In August 2008, Karin was awarded a citation for Outstanding Contribution to Student Learning from the Australian Learning and Teaching Council. Karin currently teaches the "Spatial Design: Retail, Exhibition and Hospitality" online course.
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Zoja Bojic [Art History and Theory]
 Serbia
PhD Art History, Curatorship and Film Studies (ANU, 2005), BA/MA Art
History (University of Belgrade, 1985), BA Literature, BA Classical
Philology (both University of Belgrade, 1987). Zoja is the authour of four
scholarly books including Stanislav Rapotec, a Barbarogenius in
Australian art and Imaginary homelands - the art of Danila
Vassilieff (both published 2007), and has been regularly publishing
her essays, articles and arts reviews in a variety of Australian and
international scholarly, specialised and popular publications.
She taught art history at the University of Delhi 1989-1993 and has been
teaching at COFA Online since 2005.
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Zoë MacDonell [Textiles]
Australia
Zoë MacDonell is a visual artist. She has received various awards for her work and exhibits regularly on a national and international level. Zoë is a graduate of the College of Fine Arts, University of NSW. Over the last few years Zoë has taught part time at COFA UNSW and University of Technology Sydney. Zoë is the author of this online course ‘Textiles: Tradition and Contemporary Technology’.
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Andy Polaine [Interactive Media]
 Germany
In 1994 Andy Polaine co-founded of award-winning new-media agency antirom in London and has worked with clients such as the BBC, the ABC, Levis Strauss and Co. and The Science Museum. Antirom was born out of an arts background (it was initially funded by The Arts Council of Great Britain) and the self-titled CD-ROM is widely recognised as one of the few classics in the short history of multimedia. Antirom closed its doors in 1999.
Andy also spent a spell as a senior producer at Razorfish in London. Tired of the London life, Andy visited Australia in 1999 to travel, lecture and get a tan. Charmed by the lifestyle he moved to Sydney and started the interactive department of visual effects company, Animal Logic.
Andy left Animal Logic in 2001 and was a Senior Lecturer in Interactive Media at UNSW's College of Fine Arts and Head of the School of Media Arts until he moved to Germany in 2006. He also works as a freelance designer and writer. He writes a column called Foreign Policy for Desktop magazine and occasionally for other publications such as Creative Review, IdN and Computer Arts. He has lectured, spoken and performed in various countries around the world.
After a Guest Professorship in Design for New Media Environments at the Bauhaus University in Weimar, Germany, he is currently completing (hopefully) a PhD at UTS on interactivity and play and continues to work with the Omnium Project and teach both in Germany and for COFA Online.
His own blog can be found here at Playpen.
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Bonita Ely [Sculpture]
Australia
Bonita's interest in other cultures began when she was ten years old and began writing to a pen pal in Japan. This opened a door onto a culture that has continued to fascinate her. At present Bonita is working on an installation of video and drawings for an exhibition in Performance Space, Sydney in May. Bonita's own artwork includes photography, video, drawing, painting as well as sculpture, performance and installation. She also enjoys writing, travelling and getting to know people well.
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Jonathan Rez [Graphic Design / Built Environment]
Australia
Based in Sydney, Jonathan Rez has been working in visual communication over the past 8 years or so. Currently working with an Environmental Graphics Design consultancy focusing on strategy, planning and design of visual information in the built environment. When not playing around with typography, Jonathan is fascinated by the potential of design to create meaningful human experiences in the built environment. At times, the two collide. Jonathan wrote the course Visual Identity in the Built Environment and has been teaching it at COFA, UNSW since 2003.
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Kim Dong Jun [Graphic design & visual communication]
 South Korea
Kim has developed a keen interest in visual culture in print media associated
with various kinds of contemporary visual cultural theory since BA(hons)and
M.Des programme. Kim's research interests centre on semiotics in visual culture
with visual grammar,visual rhetoric and visual communication theory and its
practice in the print media; cultural studies and design movements.
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Emma Robertson [Creative Thinker]
Australia
Emma was born in Scotland, but went to school in Guyana and Baghdad,
before studying design at Glasgow School of Art. After her honours
degree she went to Manchester to complete an MA, specialising in
textile design. Emma worked as a designer in the Swiss firm Jakob
Schlaepfer in St Gallen, producing fabrics for the fashion/couture
industry in Europe. Emma won and
worked on several large scale architectural textile installations in
the UK, including the Prince and Princess of Wales Hospice, and the
boardroom for Coats Patons world headquarters. Emma is currently an Associate Professor in the School of Design Studies, and her passions
are drawing and creative thinking processes.She wrote a chapter in the
book The Creative Edge on the Top Ten Inhibiters in Creative
Thinking (2007). Her work is in six Public Collections in four
countries, including the Hospital Trust for Scotland. In 2008 she was
the Artist in Residence at the Sydney Royal Botanic Gardens. Her work
has been recently selected for the JADA, the International Biennial of
Drawing (prizewinner), and the Adelaide Perry Prize for Drawing.
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Britta Campion [Photography / Visual Sociology]
Australia
Britta is an editorial photographer who has worked across a broad range of publications in Sydney. She is currently a staff photographer at News Limited.
Her pictures have been published in mX, The Daily Telegraph, The Sunday Telegraph, The Australian, Courier Newspapers and The International Herald Tribune, as well as a range of magazines.
She holds a Bachelor of Design (Hons) in Visual Communication from UTS and an MFA from UNSW, researching the potential of photography as a method of visual sociology.
Having first picked up a camera at the age of 8, photography quickly became her passion in life. The medium's ability to reveal insights into what it means to be alive in our world remains a constant intrigue to her.
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Paula Dawson [Drawing / Holography]
Australia
Mostly Paula is known for making the world’s largest laser transmission holograms which are of large interior architectural spaces. Her PhD in fine arts is also on the topic of large laser holograms however her undergraduate study was in more traditional media such as drawing, painting and sculpture. Over the past eight years Paula has been teaching drawing to students from undergraduate to PhD level at COFA. Drawing forms an important component of the previsualisiation her holograms. In the last couple of years Paula has been making cast bronze mirrors similar to the ones made in ancient Roman times. These works feature embossed holograms in the mirror so when you look into the mirror you see yourself and also a hologram image. Her most recent art work uses a hologram of a drawing made to create a light field around a figure. If you would like to see this and other works go to www.pauladawson.com.au.
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Dr Pem Gerner [Urban Planning]
Australia
Pem is an architect-planner with a PhD in urban design. He has practised extensively in Australia and overseas in planning and urban design and taught these subjects at several Australian Universities to both undergraduates and postgraduates. He is co-editor of Cityscape an email-distributed journal designed to provide links for all practitioners in the built design fields so they may keep in touch with innovations and issues of concern. He believes that of all the design disciplines associated with the built environment, urban design is the most comprehensive and integrative in assisting society to better fashion it’s cities and towns. He is opposed to specialist ‘silo-type’ disciplines with their thinking and designing in isolation, and believes cross-disciplinary involvement is the only way forward in this complex society. In this regard he has backed his beliefs and is qualified and professionally practised in music, literature and environmental science.s
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Charles Santoso [Graphic Design]
Australia
Charles have been working extensively in the areas of Illustration, Concept Art (trading card games, comics, concept development for games, children books) and Graphic Design (websites, book covers, CD covers, booklets, brochures, logos, posters, icons) over the last few years.
In 2004, he joined The Omnium Project as a graphic designer and online project administrator and has been actively involved in the production and facilitation of major online projects such as Creative Waves and Superstudio. During these years, he have also taught graphic design and digital illustration course for a couple of semesters through COFA Online.
He is currently working at Animal Logic on an upcoming animated featured film, creating concept art and design.
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Yiorgos Zafiriou [Visual Artist]
Australia
Yiorgos' creative interest is in the interplay between the materiality of the body and its relationship to the art object. His Visual Art and Design experience spans twenty years with Performance Art as a mainstay of his production.
With a solid exhibition practice, driven by Performance, he's known as a conscientious maker with studio production of art objects that relate to his performance work. He has established a firm connection between the art object; photography, video, assemblage, drawing, printmaking and 3D objects and performance. His background in Design Studies has been the focus of his teaching over the last decade. Having established a successful Graphic Design studio in the late 90s he moved to working with student Designers in Design History/Theory, Design Process, Typography, Digital Imaging and Computer Graphic Skills from 2000.
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Bruce Carnie [Textiles]
Australia
Bruce has worked as a design practioner in the textile field for over twenty five years. Working for a diverse group of clients in both the clothing and home wares/interior sectors. Bruce has designed textiles for a wide variety of consumer sectors including, such international brands as, Donna Karen, Armani, John Kaldor, Speedo, Sheridan Australia, K-Mart and Target.
Bruce has a successful Design Consultancy, specialising in textile design solutions for interiors, spanning historic houses to digital textile solutions for conteporary interior spaces. Currently a PhD candidate at the University of NSW, Bruce is researching the area of Design Management for the Digital Textile Print Industry. His research case study sites are in Australia, The Netherlands,Thailand and the U.K. Bruce is currently awaiting the resuls of the submission of his PhD thesis.
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Pierre Mol [Archaeology]
Australia
At one time or another Pierre has worked as a lecturer, writer, researcher and theorist completing, meanwhile, undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral studies at both the University of NSW, COFA, and the University of Sydney’s departments of Archaeology and Philosophy. He gained his PhD in Art Theory in 2002.
With strengths in both the practical, theoretical and historical disciplines of the Visual Arts, He also work as a fine artist and has successfully entered numerous art competitions throughout Australia and has produced commissions for clients all over the world, including the largest mural projects in the southern hemisphere for the Sultan of Brunei.
Currently researching 3D visual treatments of ancient sites in Crete and illustrating a graphic novel.
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Steve Weymouth [3D Modelling and Animation]
Australia
Steve's interest is in all things graphic dates back to early childhood
where he drew with different coloured found objects on the foundations of
the suburban house he grew up in. His talents became more realised with
formal art training gained at the old East Sydney Technical College (now
the National Art School). He later moved on to complete a Fine Art Degree
and a Post Graduate year at Sydney College of the Arts.
In 1997 after the completion of his Masters in Computer Aided Graphic and
Technical Applications (CAGTA) at the University of Teesside he gained
employment at the Sony PlayStation Europe (SCEE) based in London. There he
created computer graphics for in-game and out-of-game requirements as part
of the Special Projects team.
In 2000 he returned to Sydney and decided to take a year off to counter
living in London for the past 15 years and lived in a tent while
travelling around Australia with his partner.
Returning to Sydney in 2002 he freelanced as a 3D CGI artist working with
many of the Post Production houses around town and with others interstate.
In late 2003 Steve started teaching 3D CGI Modelling and Animation at the
College of Fine Arts and has built up the CGI animation profile within the
Digital Media Degrees ever since.
He is also employed from time to time in his old form as CGI artists
producing graphics for TVC’s, DVD’s and gives advice on a consolatory
basis.
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Michele Barker [New media arts]
Australia
Michele Barker is presently investigating the area of neuroaesthetics in new media art practice. Her research draws upon the processes of genetic and neuroscientific digital visualisation techniques. These advanced imaging processes are harnessed to facilitate an immersive and interactive space which is part artist generated and part responsive to user/audience interaction.
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