President

Bryan Fricker

Portfolio

The President is the official representative of MPA in all dealings with the University, and shall report to the MPAEC on any such dealings.

The President is responsible for:

• chairing all meetings of the MPA and the MPAEC

• implementing the decisions of the MPAEC in consultation with the staff of MPA

• hearing grievances, complaints or suggestions to do with any aspect of the workings of MPA
  from any postgraduate student or any member of the MPAEC, and to ensure that appropriate action is taken

• convening meetings of the MPAEC Office Bearers when necessary

• presenting and arguing for the MPA budget submission

• other responsibilities as may be determined by the MPAEC from time to time

Background

I'm a Dja Dja Worrong man and my mob come from the Bendigo area.

After working near enough to 30 years in the electronics industry and as a musician (took me that long to get over the aversion therapy to education I got at school) I decided there had to be more to life than that so, at 46, I enrolled for my undergrad at Melbourne. Then did my Masters in Linguistics (socio-phonetics) there. During that period I also completed a Diploma in Professional Counselling and an NLP Practitioner's Certificate. Decided that Monash was the place to be, so I enrolled here for my PhD, still in Linguistics, but this time dealing with language and media. I expect to be finished by 2012.

Research

The Indigenous community is not held in very high esteem by sections of the broader population and has been described in very negative terms since the time of William Dampier (1688). As the views of politicians and the country at large are conditioned by the media, I will be looking at what actually makes the news regarding Indigenous people and issues and how that news is treated and constructed by the media. I will then investigate how that treatment affects political attitudes, which are in turn reported by the media. Hopefully, the underlying biases will be exposed and an awareness of the inaccuracies surrounding reporting of Indigenous issues will be created.

Personal interests

Although uni keeps me fairly busy, I still find time occasionally to play a bit of music and ride my "real" motorbike - the CBX 1000, not the scooter I ride to uni. I'm also a member of the Ulysses Club and the CBX 6 Club.

Back to top

Back to MPAEC