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Biography
Antonia is a social anthropologist and Senior Research Fellow with the Centre for Children and Young People (CCYP) at Southern Cross University, Australia. In 2017, she won the Higher Degrees Research Excellence Award for her PhD 'Voices from the Margin: Youth, Identity and Belonging in a Tourist Destination'. She has continued to pursue her interests in children's rights, wellbeing and participation through her involvement in large-scale research projects, including several ARCs.
Antonia's work contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals
Research
Antonia is passionate about working with marginalised children and young people across diverse settings, including schools, disability services, residential care, and the tourism industry. Her work is grounded in social justice and critical pedagogy with an emphasis on participatory, collaborative and ethnographic methodologies to empower children and young people to contribute to research, policy and practice. She has worked across several areas, including children's rights; child safeguarding; identity and belonging in childhood; youth activism for sustainable tourism; ethical research involving children. Antonia is currently a Senior Research Fellow on the ARC Linkage project ‘Promoting Belonging and Identity for Children in Kinship Care.'
Community Engagement
Antonia has led collaborative projects with industry partners like Byron Youth Theatre, co-developing a training program to help young people research tourism issues in their community. Their findings inspired a youth-led theatre production used to advocate for sustainable tourism. The performance toured local high schools in 2021 and led to a responsible tourism pledge for Byron Bay.
Antonia is also currently working with On Us Business Coalition for Safeguarding Children, an initiative of the Australian Childhood Foundation, to explore Australia’s efforts to implement child safeguarding measures to protect all children before, during and after the 2032 Brisbane Olympic Games.