At a typical academic conference keynote presenters will talk about their research. While that’s all well and good, what you don’t get to hear so much about is their story. How did they get to where they are today? Why are they so passionate about what they do? We’ve picked three of the most interesting people we know in research and have asked them to present a “keystory” instead. Here’s a little about each of them:

Monday

Dr Fiona Tweedie | @FCTweedie  Data Scientist, The Australian Ballet

“Ivory towers and revolving doors”

After falling in love with the Roman orator Cicero in first year, Fiona Tweedie completed a PhD in Roman History at the University of Sydney. During her candidature, she taught Ancient History and Latin as well as working as a tour guide in Rome and Pompeii. The trials of Roman Law and getting groups of school children safely up and down Mt Vesuvius persuaded her that she is indestructible.

Post PhD, she left the Academy and worked in research and policy for the NSW and Australian governments, where she struggled with the tyranny of dot points while relishing weekends free of the feeling that she should be writing. Meanwhile, she moved to Melbourne and began volunteering with Open Knowledge Australia and discovered the world of hackathons. In 2014, she joined Research Platforms Services at the University of Melbourne to bring a humanities flavour to a science-heavy team. She spent two years building up the Digital Humanities capacity at ResPlat while wrangling an increasingly complex training program.  

Fiona now works at the Australian Ballet as their first in-house data scientist, where she is combining her loves of data and culture.

Tuesday

Ri Liu | @riblah

“Finding truth, beauty and purpose in data”

Ri is a data visualiser who uses design and code to paint narratives of structural inequalities. In her work, Ri focusses on expressing data in novel ways and exposing social injustices; from creating art out of motion captured dance data, to exploring the gaps between men and women around the world.

In 2015 Ri's Close the Gap project was a finalist for the UN Human Development Data Visualisation Competition and was awarded an honourable mention in the Kantar Information is Beautiful Awards. Her work has been featured in various online and offline publications including Fast Company, Wired UK and The Washington Post.

She has worked on projects for Google, Facebook, Foreign Affairs, The Conversation, The Nation, Popular Science and Pew Charitable Trusts.

Although lacking in substantial academic qualifications, Ri is a researcher in spirit, guided by curiosity in her work and a motivation to contribute a net positive to the world.

Wednesday

Dr Tseen Khoo | @tseenster Co-Founder of The Research Whisperer, Convenor of the Asian Australian Studies Research Network (AASRN)

“Why am I here again, and again?”

Tseen can’t seem to work out what she wants to be when she grows up. She has swapped between academic and non-academic roles four times in her career so far, and is constantly lured back to academia by the idea of doing research.

As a PhD student, she helped found a national research network – the AASRN – that has become the peak body for the area of Asian Australian Studies internationally. She is currently still the research network convenor, and has previously been a University of Queensland Postdoctoral Fellow (2001-2004) and Monash University Research Fellow (2004-2010). Tseen has landed a couple of major grants, various minor ones, and published on critical race studies (particularly focused on Asian Australian cultural production and politics), early career researcher experiences, and academic research and funding cultures.

While working as a research grant developer at RMIT, Tseen created and runs The Research Whisperer (a recognised research culture and development blog) with Jonathan O'Donnell. She is a former editor (and current editorial board member) for the Journal of Intercultural Studies, founding editorial advisor for Peril (an arts and culture magazine), and has been recently appointed to the editorial board of Australian Universities’ Review.

At the moment, Tseen is a lecturer in research education and development at La Trobe University. She wears many social media hats, and is a zealot about the value of building digital networks to create communities for collegiality, personal support, intellectual sharing, and access to great memes.