Prof Denise Meredyth
Professor Denise Meredyth
Director
Denise Meredyth is the founding Director of Outside Opinion. She also holds an Adjunct Professorship at RMIT University. As Director, Denise has led multiple external reviews and large-scale bid campaigns, advised on multiple successful ARC projects including Centres of Excellence, Laureates and Future Fellowships and provided a series of engaging workshops and public talks, many on how humanities scholars are adapting to changing research environments and to the challenges of partnership, networks and interdisciplinary alliances.
Before launching Outside Opinion, Denise was a Pro Vice Chancellor (Education, Arts & Social Sciences) at the University of South Australia (UniSA), working across teaching, research, industry and community engagement in a Division serving over 6,000 students across multiple campuses and many disciplines. She was also Deputy President of the Deans of Arts and Social Sciences (DASSH) and deeply engaged in sector debates on the social and vocational role of the humanities.
Her earlier roles include Executive Director for Humanities and Creative Arts at the Australian Research Council (ARC) from 2013-5. There, she had an outreach role across the higher education sector and advised on the development and administration of major grant programs, including Linkage Projects and Australian Laureate Fellowships. She took a strong interest in digital humanities and in linking universities to the GLAM sector and to cultural infrastructure, and she worked to make the institution more transparent and to build trust.
Previously, as Deputy Pro Vice Chancellor (Research & Innovation) at RMIT University (2011-13), she refreshed research strategy and leadership in the College of Design and Social Context, working with the research leadership of seven large schools. Her achievements included building new leadership teams, fostering new Centres, increasing research income streams and strengthening research quality and impact, including in creative disciplines. As Deputy Director of the Institute for Social Research at Swinburne University (2002-11), she led projects in citizenship and social innovation and was a CI on 14 ARC funded collaborative projects, including Linkage and Discovery projects centred on shared public resources, digital platforms for inclusion, and creative cultural policy partnerships. She was also a chief investigator and RMIT node leader for the ARC Centre of Excellence in Creative Industries and Innovation.
Denise is an appreciative recipient of an interdisciplinary humanities research education at Griffith University, where she worked aa a lecturer and research fellow in the 1990s. She has also worked in Education at QUT and as a secondary English and History teacher in the ACT.