Sue Ledger
Research Director & Journal Manager AIJRE
A dedicated educator, researcher, and advocate for the teaching profession, Sue is Head of School – Dean of Education at University of Newcastle. She draws on her lived experience in rural, remote, international, and diverse settings to inform and lead innovative projects. She has led a range of teaching and learning initiatives that prepare teachers to teach diverse students within diverse schooling contexts. She enjoys researching collaboratively to connect people, projects, and places to improve educational policy and practice around the globe.
John Guenther
Managing Editor AIJRE
John Guenther is a researcher with 20 years’ experience working in overlapping fields of social inquiry, typically in areas related to education and training, and its intersections with mental health and wellbeing, justice, employment, child protection and welfare. In the last 10 years he has more intentionally focussed on issues affecting Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people living in remote parts of Australia. He led the Remote Education Systems project under the CRC for Remote Economic Participation (2011-2016) and is currently the Research Leader for Education and Training with the Batchelor Institute of Indigenous Tertiary Education, based in Darwin, Northern Territory. John is a leading academic in the field of remote education and has published widely on his findings, often under the banner of ‘Red Dirt Thinking’.
Melyssa Fuqua
Editor, AIJRE
Dr Melyssa Fuqua is currently a lecturer at the University of Melbourne in the Melbourne Graduate School of Education. Her PhD explored through narrative inquiry how rurality shapes the work and experiences of Australian pathways advisors. Her research interests include youth pathways and careers education, social justice, and ruraling education research. In addition to having taught at a P-12 school in rural Australia, Melyssa has taught a variety of education subjects at various universities. Melyssa is a manager of the Rural Education Research Student Network that connects research students, early-career researchers, and experienced scholars who have an interest in rural education research; it hosts an annual International Emerging Rural Scholars Summit in conjunction with major rural research conferences around the world.
Serena Davie
Editor, AIJRE
Dr Serena Davie is an educator with a passion for ensuring no child gets left behind. Firstly, a teacher with experience in the UK, regional and metropolitan Western Australia as well as the remote context in Far North Queensland. Serena also has 10 years of experience in the tertiary sector (teacher education) and currently works for the Western Australian Department of Education.
Natalie Downes
Editor, AIJRE
Natalie Downes is a senior research assistant in the Rural Education and Communities research group in the Centre for Sustainable Communities research centre in the Faculty of Education at the University of Canberra. Her research interests include education for rural-regional sustainability, school-based distance and online learning, and the influence of academic research on rural communities. These works focus on exploring the way that the needs and interests of marginalised communities (particularly the rural) are represented in society, and how different knowledge systems contribute to reproducing or countering inequities in society. Natalie has worked on project funded by the ARC, government departments, and not for profit organisations and is currently studying her PhD that focuses on academic knowledges and rural-regional sustainability.
Robyn Henderson
Editor, AIJRE
Robyn Henderson has held an honorary appointment at the University of Southern Queensland since her retirement. Her research has investigated literacies education, with a specific focus on rural locations. In particular, she is interested in the literacies learning of mobile students, such as itinerant farm workers’ children, and the pedagogies that teachers use when teaching students who have moved from school to school. Her passion for the effects and affordances of rural contexts was preceded by a long career as a teacher in rural schools.