Biography

Dr Kayt Davies started her career as a finance journalist on a metropolitan daily in Perth. She then moved to London to work on international news before returning to Perth. As a single mother she worked on a wide range of publications, as well as completing and undergraduate (honours) degree in psychology, and a masters degree. She then moved into academia and completed a PhD, while teaching journalism. Her teaching focuses on writing skills and instilling enough knowledge about civic processed to spark curiosity and generate questions. Through her units she has taught students to navigate the complex webs of the political, science and business fields. A true believer in the vital role of journalism in equitable democratic systems she encourages students to think about how journalism will be created and disseminated in the near future, as the architecture of its business model warps and flexes. Issues she grapples with through her research include how academics can teach journalism students to thrive in the Era of Big Data and how journalists and sources in oppressive and hostile situations can be kept safe. She is also pioneering ways that universities can work together to make a significant contribution to the Australian media landscape. As site coordinator of The Junction (junctionjournalism.com) a news service published by the Journalism Education and Research Association of Australia she is tackling the myriad problems involved in new media production in the current climate. Her other key area of interest in the use of journalism as a methodology for scholarly work. This involves application of the methods of journalism to explore real world questions, and presentation of the data in a scholarly and reflexive manner. There is currently a stream of research exploring this issue and she is a regular contributor to the evolving debate.

Her publications are visible here via Orcid: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9718-391X