We’re going on an adventure! [2025 edition]

Happy New Year! As I wish you all the best for what’s to come in 2025, I also want to share some reflections and plans for my next adventure.

Regular readers of my various online ramblings will be aware, in late-December 2024 I accepted a new job. I’ll be starting as a Lecturer in Public Relations at RMIT University in a few weeks. As such, I’m spending the first day of this year reflecting and planning for what I want to achieve in this pivotal first step on the academic career ladder.

There’s a strange experience when you come from industry to the academy, especially when your research may not appear to have a direct correlation to your career. I have been met with more than a few quizzical looks, probing questions, and one exclamation of ‘PUBLIC RELATIONS?!’ And while I understand these questions, there are two very relevant explanations for this apparent confusion:

1. Communications, public relations, and advertising are my professional expertise. I loved my professional career. I still love my professional career – it’s why I joined the board of the Melbourne Queer Film Festival, to contribute my expertise to an awesome creative organisation. My knowledge, skills and industry experience are a huge part of what brought me to the academy. I started teaching because I wanted to contribute positively to students who came from a background like mine, who had to prioritise rent, food and bills over study, and therefore found the university system difficult to engage. In this role, I can continue and expand upon these efforts in new and meaningful ways.
2. Communications and publicity practices are part of my PhD research into how queer stories are negotiated through production processes to appear in Australian scripted television. Questions about public relations approaches are asked at the development stages of a television project, and a lack of publicity potential can be a death knell for an original/innovative idea (you’ll learn exactly how – and how these anxieties were overcome – when I turn my thesis into a book). It seems many people overlook this component of Australia’s billion dollar television industry (hence, it’s a good topic for my future research). Certainly, there is a major component of this topic that I would like to have explored further in my thesis. But, as often happens, I had to reign in my ambitious scope and recognise that it’s just a PhD.

Lessons from 2024

Completing a thesis is no small feat, and I think the major lesson I take away is to trust my instincts and have greater confidence in my own work.

I’m no stranger to imposter syndrome. Academia is not the first industry where I’m a clear outsider. It’s not the first industry where I’ve been asked what high school I attended, nor the first time I received a blank stare when naming my regional public school and not some elite institution with it’s own polo team. Yet, I still had moments where I felt I didn’t belong, and certainly I let the behaviour and comments of others determine how I felt about my own work.

I may still be waiting for examiner reports, but I am so proud of my thesis – it’s bold, innovative, and pushes for a more nuanced understanding of queer television representations as products of a mainstream industry – one that will ultimately be incremental in its progressive advances.

With all that said, the major lesson I take away is the importance of kindness. And I don’t mean saying nice things. Kindness to me is being direct and honest, telling people what they need to hear, at the time they need to hear it. Kindness to me is saying what you’ll do, and doing what you say. Kindness is always ensuring people know where they stand, where they are going, and what they need to do to get there. I received a lot of kindness over the 3.5 years of my PhD, often from people who were going above and beyond what was expected (you know who you are) – for that, I will forever be grateful.

I’ve long said my mantra is Work hard and be good to work with – and that mantra stands. But in 2025, I’m updating that mantra to: Work hard, be good to work with, and lead with kindness.

Plans for 2025

Today is about planning for 2025. Therefore, for the purposes of this post, I have a few broad goals, and a few specific goals that I know will be on that list:

• Dive in and get familiar with my new role as a Lecturer, Public Relations at RMIT University, and make the most of all the joy it will offer!
• Expand my understanding of my research fields, look at ways they intersect, and how they could be better intergrated
• Submit a book proposal from my thesis (by February 2025)
• Submit three journal articles from my existing data (by March 2025)
• Commence a new program of research to expand upon my thesis, and uncover new insights about public relations in creative an entertainment industries
• Present at a communication conference
• Conduct data collection through an online survey to bring my industry experience of this type of work into my academic wheelhouse
• Submit at-least one journal article from my new program of research (by September 2025).

While not a comprehensive list, this is my starting point as I take pen to paper this morning, and begin mapping out the next 12 months.

Wishing all of you the most fabulous and successful 2025. And watch this space for updates!

Damien